Although we love it when you buy software from the HardDrive Shop, there are a host of on-line tools that enable one to accomplish just about anything. Many web based tools and utilities are free. They are an especially good fit when used in conjunction with your already locally (on your computer) installed applications (programs); for instance: multiple antivirus applications will usually have conflicts with one another, but a web based antivirus scanner can usually scan your system even with your installed antivirus application still running. It’s a great way to verify that your locally installed application is catching and protecting you against malware.

Like Open Source applications, web based tools and utilities have grown in availability, scope, and capacity exponentially in the last five years. Usually a programmer or software company makes a web based tool available to consumers to either promote their commercially available software, their website in general, or to study what consumers like or dislike about the application. In any case, the consumer benefits by being able to forgo purchasing an application to accomplish a task and disk space (hard dive consumption) is saved since very little or no data needs to be written to the local system (your computer). The majority of work is done on the remote system or server (the provider’s computers). All programming and program data resides remotely on the provider’s server.

Some examples of web based applications you may already be familiar with are E-mail clients such as Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo Mail. These applications can supplement or take the place of your locally installed e-mail client like Outlook, Eudora, or Lotus. Part of the beauty of using a web based e-mail client is that should your system crash, your messages, contacts, and appointments are not lost; they are still alive and well on the web based server on which they reside.

Other types of web based applications readily available and widely used are Google’s Document Writer (Microsoft now also offers a free document writer) which allows you to read and write word documents without having to purchase and install Microsoft Word. CoolText allows one to design and save Logo’s and Word Art. There are a plethora (finally got to use that word) of Malware scanners which search for and inoculate against viruses, Trojans, worms and the like. There are even web based applications that do a complete security analysis of your systems looking for and reporting unsecured ports that enable your computer to be accessed through the internet.

The tools and utilities that we offer or link to here at the HardDrive Shop are those that feel useful and safe. We have used and continue to use the tools and utilities ourselves and feel comfortable recommending them to you and our support clients.

Cheers!

 

Navigation Note: We will use the following abbreviations on the navigation bar to to indicate the type of tool or utility that the link represents: