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Sarnia Computer Users' Group had what was known as "Disk of the Month" or DOM when software came on a floppy disc. Each month members got their DOM. This evolved into us getting a CD which was updated each month. We recently decided that we would post either the software or a link to it rather than using CD's. This software is normally the one that was demonstrated at a General Meeting.

The links in our table are to the software. Note that all the software is Free or sometimes Share Ware.

For information contact: The Shareware Librarian

Software Links

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Meeting Date Software Description
February 2010 At this site you will be able to select different paint colour and see how they look on the walls or ceiling of your house.
January 2010 3D Design
This program allows you to design the interior of any and all rooms in a house and shows you The finished product in a number of ways.

November 2009 Avery DesignPro for PC
Get the most flexibility while designing and printing Avery labels, business cards, dividers, t-shirt transfers, greeting cards and more.

October 2009 Book Designer. Which enables one to compile a photographic album, and if required have it published professionally.

September 2009 For the new season rather than have a software item I thought that a web site may be more appropriate as we have all been talking about the(most beautiful???) summer we didn't have chosen this web site as I feel that it is one of the better sites to find out about the weather we have ,Locally, Nationally and Internationally. I know that I look at it three or four times a day, especially when there is a storm about. Additionally if you are interested in upper winds, such as the jet stream, aviation weather, what it is like in Panama, Porto Rico etc it is all there. The more you explore this site the more fantastic it becomes. Have fun with www.sarnia.com/weather/frmain.html

June 2009 This month's freeware offering is a technician's dream come true. System Information for Windows will show you everything you want to know about your computer. It's more thorough than Belarc or Everest. It gives software and hardware information. It gives license information and passwords. The program is stand-alone which means it can be used simply by downloading and running, no install is required. This means that it can be run from a USB thumb drive.

May 2009 The Freeware selection for this month is a data recovery program called Zero Assumption. The download is a trial version but the picture recovery portion has no time limit. I was handed a camera memory card with no pictures on it even though it was suppose to be full of "once in a lifetime" photos. The program found the pictures and recovered all the them with no problems. Zero Assumption works with Windows 2000, XP and Vista.

April 2009 What is Jalbum?
Jalbum is your very own photo album site that you can share with friends and family. It's easy to make your first Jalbum.

March 2009 This month's freeware selection is a small, portable word processor called AbiWord.

AbiWord opens and saves documents in the following formats: Microsoft Word, Word Perfect, OpenOffice.org, RTF, HTML, Palm and more. It includes both grammar and spelling checkers. It's small enough to fit on a thumb drive so you can have a word processor in your pocket. It works on all versions of Windows.

Best of all, it's free.

February 2009 A freeware Windows utility that will restore files that have been deleted from your computer.
It is call "Recuva" (pronounced 'recover') by Piriform.
February 2009 Modern processors incorporate features beneficial to security. SecurAble displays the status of the three most significant security-related processor features. Free download.
January 2009 This month's free file is the latest version of Google's easy to use Picasa photo editing program.

Picasa 3 can be used on any computer running XP, Vista or Linux, 256 MB RAM and 100 megs of disk space. The installation program is over 100 megabytes so high speed Internet in recommended.

Picasa is an excellent program for organizing your photographs. When first installed it prompts you to indicate which folders on your hard drive to search for photographs. Picasa then searches through these folders and adds them to it's album. Picasa doesn't move the pictures, it remembers where they are and shows them in thumbnail view.

When you double-click on a thumbnail an editing window appears with several editing options. These edits are non-destructive which means that the original photo is not changed but the edits are saved in a special file. If you want the changes to be permanent, they can be.

Picasa can print, e-mail, make a slide show, burn a CD or DVD, export to another editor, upload the photo to a blog or to Picasa Albums.

Picasa Albums is an free on-line photo storing site which allows you to upload up to one gigabyte of photographs. The on-line albums can be private or public.

I've been using Picasa for many years and highly recommend it for organizing and quick editing of pictures.

For more information and a link to the download page, see the the SCUG website. For those of you that do not have high speed I have some copies of Picasa on CD.

November 2008 This month's free offering is a very small and fast search tool called Everything by Voidtools.

System Requirements: Windows 2000, XP, 2003 and Vista, local NTFS volumes.

Everything quickly indexes file and folder names. The index is refreshed each time the program starts, so it keeps track of file changes. Everything also adds a right-click menu item called "search everything". This search tool is much faster than XP search and infinitely faster and more useful than Vista "Find".

October 2008 This month's offering is free antivirus software called Avast Antivirus 4 Home Edition.

This is the top rated free antivirus program. I have always recommended AVG but have found that the latest version is bloated with additional anti-spyware capabilities which make AVG run very slowly and consumes too many resources for most computers.
By contrast Avast is small and quick. It doesn't use as much RAM so it doesn't slow your computer.
It has an on-demand scanner as well as background monitoring, automatic upgrades, mail and download scanning.
It can be downloaded from the manufacturer's website.

September 2008 Multiple Image Resizer, a free program.

Return to top

Meeting Date	Software Description
February 2010	At this site you will be able to select different paint colour and see how they look on the walls or ceiling of your house.
January 2010	3D Design This program allows you to design the interior of any and all rooms in a house and shows you The finished product in a number of ways.
November 2009	Avery DesignPro for PC Get the most flexibility while designing and printing Avery labels, business cards, dividers, t-shirt transfers, greeting cards and more.
October 2009	Book Designer. Which enables one to compile a photographic album, and if required have it published professionally.
September 2009	For the new season rather than have a software item I thought that a web site may be more appropriate as we have all been talking about the(most beautiful???) summer we didn't have chosen this web site as I feel that it is one of the better sites to find out about the weather we have ,Locally, Nationally and Internationally. I know that I look at it three or four times a day, especially when there is a storm about. Additionally if you are interested in upper winds, such as the jet stream, aviation weather, what it is like in Panama, Porto Rico etc it is all there. The more you explore this site the more fantastic it becomes. Have fun with www.sarnia.com/weather/frmain.html
June 2009	This month's freeware offering is a technician's dream come true. System Information for Windows will show you everything you want to know about your computer. It's more thorough than Belarc or Everest. It gives software and hardware information. It gives license information and passwords. The program is stand-alone which means it can be used simply by downloading and running, no install is required. This means that it can be run from a USB thumb drive.
May 2009	The Freeware selection for this month is a data recovery program called Zero Assumption. The download is a trial version but the picture recovery portion has no time limit. I was handed a camera memory card with no pictures on it even though it was suppose to be full of "once in a lifetime" photos. The program found the pictures and recovered all the them with no problems. Zero Assumption works with Windows 2000, XP and Vista.
April 2009	What is Jalbum? Jalbum is your very own photo album site that you can share with friends and family. It's easy to make your first Jalbum.
March 2009	This month's freeware selection is a small, portable word processor called AbiWord. AbiWord opens and saves documents in the following formats: Microsoft Word, Word Perfect, OpenOffice.org, RTF, HTML, Palm and more. It includes both grammar and spelling checkers. It's small enough to fit on a thumb drive so you can have a word processor in your pocket. It works on all versions of Windows. Best of all, it's free.
February 2009	A freeware Windows utility that will restore files that have been deleted from your computer. It is call "Recuva" (pronounced 'recover') by Piriform.
February 2009	Modern processors incorporate features beneficial to security. SecurAble displays the status of the three most significant security-related processor features. Free download.
January 2009	This month's free file is the latest version of Google's easy to use Picasa photo editing program. Picasa 3 can be used on any computer running XP, Vista or Linux, 256 MB RAM and 100 megs of disk space. The installation program is over 100 megabytes so high speed Internet in recommended. Picasa is an excellent program for organizing your photographs. When first installed it prompts you to indicate which folders on your hard drive to search for photographs. Picasa then searches through these folders and adds them to it's album. Picasa doesn't move the pictures, it remembers where they are and shows them in thumbnail view. When you double-click on a thumbnail an editing window appears with several editing options. These edits are non-destructive which means that the original photo is not changed but the edits are saved in a special file. If you want the changes to be permanent, they can be. Picasa can print, e-mail, make a slide show, burn a CD or DVD, export to another editor, upload the photo to a blog or to Picasa Albums. Picasa Albums is an free on-line photo storing site which allows you to upload up to one gigabyte of photographs. The on-line albums can be private or public. I've been using Picasa for many years and highly recommend it for organizing and quick editing of pictures. For more information and a link to the download page, see the the SCUG website. For those of you that do not have high speed I have some copies of Picasa on CD.
November 2008	This month's free offering is a very small and fast search tool called Everything by Voidtools. System Requirements: Windows 2000, XP, 2003 and Vista, local NTFS volumes. Everything quickly indexes file and folder names. The index is refreshed each time the program starts, so it keeps track of file changes. Everything also adds a right-click menu item called "search everything". This search tool is much faster than XP search and infinitely faster and more useful than Vista "Find".
October 2008	This month's offering is free antivirus software called Avast Antivirus 4 Home Edition. This is the top rated free antivirus program. I have always recommended AVG but have found that the latest version is bloated with additional anti-spyware capabilities which make AVG run very slowly and consumes too many resources for most computers. By contrast Avast is small and quick. It doesn't use as much RAM so it doesn't slow your computer. It has an on-demand scanner as well as background monitoring, automatic upgrades, mail and download scanning. It can be downloaded from the manufacturer's website.
September 2008	Multiple Image Resizer, a free program.

Software Links

Last Update: February 10, 2010