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“Password Safe” is still the best free product on the market and has stood the test of time in my personal experience.

Tried twice on my system (Win 7 Ultimate), but couldn’t instal downloaded .msi file – got an error message (think it was 2378 or 2738). No apparent ill effects so far.

Allan

For many years I have kept all recipes in Word/Recipes/Food Type (desserts, vegetables, lamb, pork , beef. etc) I format each one to a 4″ x 6″ size for printing to a card. Most recipes are extremely verbose & repetitive. With careful wordsmithing & by keeping font size as low as 10 I rarely require a second card. Your friends will appreciate this when you exchange recipes.

My computer slowdown due to Bitdefender occurred gradually and insidiously over several months, not suddenly from the time I installed it. That’s why I never connected the two and only discovered it accidentally when I decided to switch antivirus software for unrelated reasons. Can anyone out there explain this?

I’ve found that Roboform is a superior product.

Pose your problem to Syncback tech support at:
support@2brightsparks.com. They have the best software I’ve found to sync files between computers.

Allan

This is a real-life ‘puzzle’!

Problem 1

I have three PCs, A, B and C, each of which contains a directory DIR to which changes (additions, updates and deletions) may be made by that PC during the day.

I am interested at the end of each day in ensuring that the DIR directory on each PC contains exactly the same files at exactly the same update levels.

I have a program that will synchronise the DIR directory between two PCs.

What sequence of synchronisation runs must I do between the three PCs to achieve this result with the minimum amount of effort (that is, least number of synchronisation program runs and/or least amount of file copying)?

Problem 2

Once Problem 1 is sorted out, let us introduce an external hard drive connected to one of the PCs, or a NAS box on the LAN, I don’t think it matters which.

Assume now that this external hard drive/NAS box contains the ‘master copy’ of the directory DIR, and at the end of the day we want to reflect all the changes that have been made on each PC to its own copy of the DIR directory. Here we must do more synchronisations runs, now between four ‘devices’, the three PCs and the external hard drive/NAS box, to ensure that all four copies of the DIR directory are identical. Is this problem similar to the first one, but now between four devices?

I have worked out an answer (I think) to Problem 1, but for Problem 2, “my brain hurts”!

I’d be interested in what people come up with…

Re “Centronics parallel interfaces in a USB world” in recent Win Secrets letter:

My solution is to network my (old) machine running XP Pro to my new one running Win 7 Ultimate. You don’t need a monitor on the old machine but need XP pro on the old one and Win 7 Ultimate on the new. Type “run” mstsc and you can “see” the old computer on your new screen. With the old printer att’d to the old computer with centronics parallel port connexion I can print through the network on my old HP IIP Laserjet printer which is still in perfect working order (around 20 years old!!)

Have fun!

Allan Taylor (tayloga@sympatico,ca)