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WatchDog 9.3 – Parental Time Control Software

PChijack — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 05:51:43 +0000

Despite online dangers, internet is an effective tool in giving high-level of education and entertainment. However, it never means that parents will not do anything to safeguard their children from possible online dangers.

WatchDog 9.3 - Parental Control Software

WatchDog 9.3 is parental time control software which helps parents control and monitors their children’s computer usage. The software is loaded with lots of control features which regulate internet use and program together with numerous restrictions for Microsoft Windows. The following paragraph discloses how WatchDog 9.3 works in keeping your child safe from online dangers. Read on.

Features

WatchDog 9.3 parental-control software is equipped with lots of features standard for time-control software. The software features an online Monitoring Review website since majority of the applications are equipped in monitoring users’ activities which likewise allows parents in setting time restrictions and decide the activities their children could indulge while using the computer.

For instance, computer usage could be completely blocked when both parents are away from home or late night access could be limited to appropriate programs and entertainment. When it comes to time control, the software can restrict computer usage by day, week, and month as well as permit unlimited and restricted time of use.

Moreover, parents can set particular time and day of limitation which allows users of carrying over the unused and paused times. Furthermore, restrictions could be set on program titles as well as online games playing-time while system settings and web pages could be locked or completely blocked.

Usability

The software has low rating in terms of usability because the software includes plenty of features in which computer novices may find it overwhelming and even confusing. However, experienced computer users will definitely like the high control level available. In simple terms, the software offers Normal Security modes which allow computer novices feel at ease when using the software while High Security modes for experienced computer users.

Installation and Technical Support

Software installation posed no problem although after installation and account set up, the screen does not load automatically. You may have to click the small icon on the application’s task bar and may slightly confuse you. WatchDog does offer decent inter-program support with detailed instruction, screenshots and user guide. Also, online help is readily available on the FAQs corner and email them for your tech-support questions.

Pros and Cons

WatchDog’s advantages comprise the software’s rock-solid performance in time control and monitoring of children’s internet usage. On the contrary, the software’s numerous features may present a great challenge for computer novices and somewhat confusing.

WatchDog 9.3 parental-control software efficiently performs in controlling time restrictions as well as monitor computer usage offered in very affordable price package.

Eraser – Securely Delete Files from Your Computer

PChijack — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 11:12:56 +0000

For me, privacy is very important especially when disclosing some personal information on the web. However, it is not only restricted to the net as computer users normally store private information on their PC. No matter how you secure your computer system and even your personal information, hackers always had its way of breaking into your personal account.

Eraser - Securely Delete Files

But when you decide to remove these information from your system, what you think is gone forever is just lurking around the corner of your hard disk. This is what I found out when I run a secure deletion program like Eraser, into my PC system. I was totally impressed with how the program completely eliminates sensitive files stored in my system. I’ve noted and compiled some facts and features of the program that appeals to me. Read on.

Specifications

Eraser is made to support several computer platforms such as Windows XP, Windows 7 32-bit/64-bit, Windows Vista 32-bit/64-bit and Windows 2000. I was using the Eraser 6.0.8 version with a total file size of 8.70MB.

Features

The recent version of the program welcomes useful improvements. I quickly noticed the refreshed interface of the program that makes it much easier to use along with the inclusion of FAT directory cleaning capabilities which is better in wiping even USB flash drives. Deleting sensitive data is extremely easy by simply right-clicking the selected private folder or file and click the Eraser option then it instantly wiped these files immediately.

Completely deleting private file could be done either by overwriting these files several times before deleting them or run the Scheduler to delete automatically. Overwriting files several times to delete private data entails using different bit patterns that securely mess it up in which even a special data-recovery tool could not restore its contents.

Eraser - Setting Screen

On the other hand, deleting the files by running the scheduler requires setting up a schedule before automatically running secure deletions. I run the customizable Scheduler to completely remove the contents of the web browser cache of my PC system, Recycle Bin as well as idle hard drive space that destroys all files deleted earlier.

Pros and Cons

I love this program because it efficiently works in deleting sensitive files stored in my computer system in plain user-interface and spontaneous design all for free. However, when I first run the application, it takes over 24 hours to delete those private files but reasonably this depends on the deleting method used and the amount of deleted files.

If you want to permanently delete sensitive data stored in your computer system, then, Eraser is a must-have security deletion tool in maintaining your PC system.

Improve Firefox Speed and Response Time

PChijack — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 06:32:31 +0000

If you are a big fan of Firefox you must have heard that Firefox was the best browser until recently, At present Google chrome has taken over it, and main reason for that was speed of Google chrome and security features offered by Chrome. But recently Firefox has released many version within a short period of time, most of these upgrades were not only bug fixes but speed improvement and Security enhancements. In A earlier post we shown you How to Speed up Firefox Startup, here we will show how to increase response time while loading pages.

Firefox About Config warning

If you still like Firefox and worried about speed of the browser the good news is that you can further tweak the browser for speed. here we will discuss some of the special hidden tweaks, which are not available to other normal users. These tweak will not only increase the speed of Firefox overall but also improve page load time for Firefox latest version.

Firefox has a hidden advanced menu which can be activated by typing about:config in address bar. Once you type this command, it presents you a nice little humorous warning with heading “This might void your warranty”, Click on the button “I’ll be careful, I promise!” and you are in. Now once you click that button you will see thousands of option with default values. Had you ever though that this nice Firefox browser will have so many options ?

Anyway we will change some of the selected option to speed up Firefox further. Here is the list of options which we are going to change.

1. Send Multiple requests to a server

Firefox About Config - Network http Options

This option is defined by value network.http.pipelining, by default it is set to False, once you set it to true, it will start sending multiple simultaneous request to web server while loading the page. It improves page load time for your website. simply double click on it and it will toggle from False to True

2. Increase Number of Request to Server

Second option to look for is network.http.pipelining.maxrequests. This defines number of request to be sent, by default the value is set to 4, you can increase it to 8 or 10 depending upon your Line speed.

3. Disable prefetching of Contents

Look for option network.prefetch-next , this is usually set to True by default. Double click it and toggle it to false. This will now stop loading content of WebPages which you have not visited yet. Prefetching start loading other pages of same site which are not yet visited by you but likely to be visited.

4. Stops image placeholders display

look out for option browser.display.show_image_placeholders and set it to false. This option defines how images are displayed while they are not fully downloaded. In Google chrome you will see that the images or placeholder of image is not displayed until they are fully downloaded. However it loads all text so that you can read through the content if any. This increase page load time and you can read through the page while image is being downloaded in background.

These option should increase your page load time in Firefox by a big margin. You will be able to see a big difference after setting these options and I am sure you will love your favorite browser even more like I do.

TabSense – Chrome Extension for Easy Tab Management

PChijack — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 07:38:47 +0000

If you are a heavy user of internet, you must be using tab feature of Our favorite browser Google chrome. If yes, then you must be opening a lot of tabs, sometime number of tabs increase is so much that managing them become difficult.

Google chrome or any other browser offers very limited space to manage multiple tabs. You can see only a fixed number of tabs without scrolling, once that number is reached, tab list is spanned to next page. With multi page tab list it becomes extremely difficult to switch between 2 tabs, specially if they are listed on different pages or if you using more than one browser window along with many tabs.

TabSense - Easy Tab management for Google Chrome

To overcome such difficult situation you must use Google chrome Extension TabSense. This extension create a view of all open tab in all instance of Chrome in a single browser window. Using this tab you can categorize each window with different name and drag and drop tabs between windows.

It adds a button on your Address bar, once you click on this button, it will open a new tab which will display list of all open tab across multiple instance of Google chrome. Not only that, each tab will also have their favicon and page name displayed in the list so that you can easily recognize the webpage.

This Google chrome extension is Opensource and inspired by Firefox extension Tab Candy. In tab sense it is also possible to close entire Google chrome instance from Tabsense window and it also saves information about all of the tab opened at the time of closing, this makes possible to reopen all of the tabs later. This feature is very useful if you running low of system resources and want to free some by closing some of the active tabs.

PCHijack » Application

WatchDog 9.3 – Parental Time Control Software

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