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Worthwhile Windows programs you can download: LeechFTP, Where Is It, Microsoft Media Player and CapsLockOff
  technofile
Al Fasoldt's reviews and commentaries, continuously available online since 1983

4 great new freeware and shareware programs


July 5, 1998

By Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 1998, The Syracuse Newspapers

   "You're like a kid in a candy store," a friend told me the other day. As indeed I am! Who could savor the wealth of software available for downloading on the Internet without feeling giddy?
   Especially when you can find software such as the five Windows 95 and 98 programs I'm telling you about this week:
   
  • LeechFTP, an amazingly flexible ftp transfer program that uses the multithreading capabilities in Windows and can download many files simultaneously. Cost: Free. Web site: http://lem.stud.fh-heilbronn.de/~debis/leechftp/.
       LeechFTP was written by Jan Debis of Germany. It handles multiple file transfers in threads -- separate operations that occur at the same time -- using up to 16 threads. (You can run LeechFTP more than once, thereby multiplying the number of simultaneous downloads.)
       Unlike Web browsers, LeechFTP can download an entire folder full of files with one click of the mouse. To do an upload, you can drag files or folders into the window showing the remote computer's files, and you can also transfer files by http (hypertext transfer protocol), the method used by Web browsers when they're not using ftp.
       If you don't want LeechFTP to use up all your connection speed while you're downloading, you can turn on a "speed limit" for one or more transfers. You can also set a transfer-speed limit as the default for all connections it makes. This feature can help a lot if you are grabbing many files while running your browser and handling mail.
       
  • Where Is It?, by Robert Galle, is a disk cataloger without serious competition. If you have a lot of CD-ROMs, Zip disks or important floppy disks, this program is for you. Cost: $37. Web site: http://members.tripod.com/~WhereIsIt/.
       Where Is It? Creates searchable catalogs of everything on disks of any kind. I use it to catalog my commercial and homebrew CD-ROMs. It works intuitively, and is able to list the contents of archives, including Windows CAB files. I tried nearly a dozen catalogers. This is the best.
       
  • Microsoft Media Player, version 5, which now plays RealAudio and RealVideo in addition to all other sound and movie formats. Cost: Free. Web site: http://microsoft.com/ntserver/netshow/download/nsie4_x86.asp.
       The new media player takes advantage of all the latest Windows audio-video techniques. It plays NetShow sound and video as well as RealAudio and RealVideo, along with the other file types (AVI, MPG, WAV and so on). A surprise: It also plays MPEG Layer 3 audio files.
       
  • CapsLockOff, a simple program that disables the Caps Lock key. (Hitting Caps Lock by mistake, which is easy to do, causes you TO TYPE LIKE THIS.) Cost: Free. Web site: http://www.rdrop.com/~daveb/.
       CapsLockOff was written by David Bleckmann. This program makes it easy to disable Caps Lock and does not require any DOS files or statements in your autoexec.bat.