Tag Archives: review

Mozilla Thunderbird

An email client that’s open source and works on Windows. A great alternative to Microsoft Office.

I’ve been using Thunderbird for a few years now and it’s been improving and getting better since I first tried it out. The latest big upgrade has made some drastic visual improvements, making it a lot more visually stylish without making it look too clunky.

The biggest issue I have with it is the lack of an option to choose the column to show the “From” address being the reply-to address or at least some ability to see when you select on the email, the best method would be some checks to make sure it matches, making sure the sender is not spoofed, for example a lot of scam and phishing emails do this. Modern email clients should not have a simple feature like this missing.

On a personal preference, I’d like the client to be able to have the ability to switch profiles more easily or allow profiles to float in tabs.

How to fix emails suddenly displaying in code

You probably will never see this issue occur for you, but if like me you like to achieve quickly, sometimes while it’s indexing and the Windows anti-virus in the background may decide to scan the file and cause an error. Simple solution can be found in the link below.

Software Review: MyPhoneExplorer

Let me introduce you to MyPhoneExplorer, a piece of software that allows you to smoothly transfer files between your computer or laptop and Android device(s). Perfect for someone looking for a more user friendly, less time consuming and powerful way to sync, backup and move files to and from your phone.

The software allows you to connect via WiFi, Bluetooth or your USB connection. There’s even extra features like screen mirroring (being able to see your phone on your computer, useful for projecting things to your screen). A powerful contacts management, backing up your SMS messages.

How does it work?

Once you install MyPhoneExplorer on your phone then the client software on your computer, the application asks you to set a PIN, this will later be used to match and allow your computer to gain access to your phone, so not anybody can use this with your phone, even when on the same network, a nice security feature.

You can go through your phone directories just as if you were going through your folders on your computer. Transfer files to or from your computer, delete things you don’t need on your phone, rename, etc.

You can set up synchronization jobs so a certain folder such as your pictures folder can be copied to your computer straight away, with one click once you connect.

Is it free?

In 2015, the developer decided to remove ads, it’s 2017 now as I write this and there is still no ads. The application is free, the only thing the developer has done is ask for a donation if you want to as you close the program on your computer – completely understandable and respectful, I think people should donate too so his hardwork is paid off and actually one of the reasons why I write this review, because he’s done a good job and does it for free.

Link to MyPhoneExplorer on Google Play.

Link to the website to download the software or more.

qBittorrent (v3.1.9)

I’ve started using qBittorrent to replace μTorrent, due to their pestering ads that really shouldn’t be there to begin with, but what makes it mostly annoying and worse is the fact that even though you can turn it off, it keeps turning on again after every update. It’s not even a simple process of turning it off in the options, but having to search for the correct command lines to actually disable them all properly.

I wasn’t sure if I’d find a good replacement, because what made uTorrent so popular simply because it was miles ahead of the other bittorrent clients. This post is to say; indeed I’ve found a good enough replacement that does the job and maybe even better.

qBittorrent is cross-platform, available on Linux, Mac OS X, Windows, OS/2, FreeBSD. It’s free and under the GPLv2+ license. This means that the software is not indirectly or directly supporting an operating system and you’re free to download the source code and change it the way you prefer or if need be, adapt it to your needs. This encourages development, but else why is this important? Well if a lot more software, including games considered this, we would have the option to change our operating systems depending on our needs too.. Just like the same way I’m not happy with uTorrent, I can choose to change my OS if it’s also acting up..

Anyway, qBittorrent has all the features you would expect from uTorrent and personally, I’ve customized it the way I like it, which is turning off all the extras as much as possible and clearly seeing what’s downloading, what’s finished.

qbittorrent

As you can see, I’ve removed the top bar, side bar to make it look like a basic downloader, which is how I like it. Here’s what the wiki says:

It aims to have a small foot-print, to be powerful, intuitive and visually attractive going beyond the current functions widely provided by other applications. qBittorrent is an attempt to provide a μTorrent equivalent that is open-source and multi-platform adding a streaming-like function to let users download-and-play video files.

Here’s what it looks running on Windows, default settings compared to what I’ve done above:

qbittorrent
Source from softonic.com

Here’s what it looks running on Ubuntu:

qbittorrent
Source from wikipedia.org

So if you’re looking for a replacement, this my suggestion.