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Welcome to the Pioneer Picks Page

Our "Pioneer Picks" are a select few products and/or services that we not only use, but also highly recommend. In fact, we believe these to be some of THE best products to enhance a PC(sorry, we don't use MACs, so can't make suggestions for them) and/or your life in organizing and streamlining certain necessary operations. Most of these are definitely the "Best of Breed" for their offering! Below you will find links to some of our very favorite software, as well as a brief description of each. AND, one of the best parts of each of these is that they are FREE! So, you can just download the software, or signup for the services and you'll most likely find your computing has taken a giant leap forward!

We will continue to look out for GREAT, and hopefully free, software that meets our "Best of Breed" designation, and keep them posted here in our Pioneer Picks section! We mostly just like things that are plain and simple, as well as practical and functional. With programs of such bloated size these days, it is also nice to see that some of the most functional software can still be fit on a 1.44 floppy! If you have any suggestion for great programs(preferably freeware), do let us know, and we'll see if they're worthy of being a Best of Breed "Pioneer Pick". We also have other computing tips and suggestions that you can find on our "main" computing page in the "mouse" directory! We hope that some of these links and suggestions will be of valuable use to others, and that is why we make them! And, without further ado...here is some really GREAT stuff to check out!

NetCaptor is an absolutely incredible piece of software! It is actually a web browser, but is an add-on to MSIE4 and better. What is so great about this software is that you can open an almost unlimited amount of web pages at the SAME time! And, all without opening a new application. Thus, instead of using your "back" button too much on your browser, you can open links in "new windows". Believe us....this is a SUPER feature that we have not found as well done in ANY other browser so far. NetCaptor 5 is the recent release of the software, and gets two paws up from us for sure. Formerly known as "SimulBrowse", NetCaptor has not only a new name, but also many new features, including a "CaptorBar" where you can navigate via your Favorites and History folders with great ease....seems better than IEs use of those as well! You will also find "CaptorGroups". CaptorGroups are "groups" of web pages that you can "save" as a group and then reopen them with one click later on! Thus, you could save a dozen pages that you have open(at the same time!!!), and then be able to reopen them daily, weekly, or just whenever you feel like it. This is a VERY handy feature if you do ANY regular browsing of particular sights! For instance, you could have ALL four of our main chapters open, save them as a CaptorGroup, and a week from now by just clicking on the Group you saved them as under the CaptorGroups menu button, you'll open ALL four pages right back up! Darn handy if we can reiterate it. NetCaptor also features a PopUp Captor for disabling some of those annoying popup windows that are so prevalent on some "freebie" webspace servers....you can customize this features as well as most others in the program. We could go on and on about NetCaptor, but simply put, it is leaps and bounds better than ANY browser we've tried so far. Mostly, once you've used the "multiple windows" format(which you move back and forth to via "tabs", and is so easy a gorilla could do it!) you will have a hard time accepting anything less! NetCaptor is "advertiser supported" in its free version, but even the ads in the upper right corner are not overbearing, nor annoying, just there. An "ad-free" version of NetCaptor is available as well for about $20, and we believe this browser is well worth supporting. Download of NC is under 1 MB(though you will need to have MSIE 4 or 5 installed on your system also), and once you install it, you'll find a whole new way of browsing the web! Check it out further at the NetCaptor pages, and give it a shot! It's well worth it.

TreePad is one of our most used and favorite programs by far. AND, not only is it free, it is also a small download....WELL under 1 MB in size! This is one of the handiest little information managers you can get. We've checked out LOTS of these types of programs, and you could pay(a lot more) and get a lot less, but TreePad has a simple and superb format! It is more or less a "tree" format of storing information. You can have a nearly unlimited amount of "nodes" of information as well as "subnodes", and you can continue "nesting" nodes within nodes and so on to nearly limitless bounds as well. You can store contact information, small bits of text, passwords, email addresses, and most anything that is text in this program. It has some export and file manipulation abilities as well to make it even more flexible. We have used this program for countless purposes! If you do ANY researching on the net, or want to just save a small bit of info(like this description) that you find on the net, or need to save the text of an email message(or a whole slew of 'em), you can setup a node for each of these, and then a subnode for EACH article within. We've used this for keeping track of planning, ideas, entries, etc. for our Eskie Contests, information for this entire site design, and numerous other purposes. Instead of using a larger text or word processing program, we've found TreePad to be superlative to those for smaller bits of information and especially when you need to keep certain information in a "freeform" database. You'll probably find LOTS of uses for TreePad. As mentioned, it's free, it's small(you can back up program AND some good sized "treebases" all on ONE floppy disk!!!), and we highly recommend it! Give it a try today!

LinkMenu is a "start menu" or program launcher organizer. If you find yourself constantly "worming" your way through the Start Menu of Windows, and wondered if there's a better way, well....there IS! If you have MSIE4 or better downloaded, and are familiar with the "quick launch" buttons on the task bar, you'll have a better idea how this works. With the "quick launch" buttons, you have the small icons as single click starts to your favorite programs as far across the bar as you can stand. Unfortunately, though handy, the buttons are not organized, and are limited as to how much space they take up(or you clutter your screen more). We knew there HAD to be a better way, and when we found LinkMenu, we had found it! LinkMenu is fairly new, formerly known as TOPmenu, and it can reside as a solid bar, or a "hidden" bar, much like the Taskbar of Windows. You setup "categories" and within those categories you can have numerous individual buttons to ALL your favorite programs, files, folder, and even URLs. AT MOST, you are 2 clicks away from starting ANY program or file you have setup in LinkMenu! Plus, you can put all your Internet, Office, Graphics, or other programs into groups so you can access them quickly and easily. Organized and efficient(though "startup" is a little slow), this program, once started, is so handy, you'll almost completely abandon the Start Menu in favor of this brilliant method of launching programs. You can also be 1 or 2 clicks away from accessing your system, individual drives, control panel, dial up connection, etc. Our setup right now is such that we have our "desktop shortcuts" hidden, so none are displayed. Plus, we have the taskbar at the TOP of the screen, but also on "autohide" so it only shows up when our cursor is swung up that way; we have LinkMenu on the left of the screen as an "autohide" bar, so it also is only visible when we swing the cursor over that way. What this comes down to is simple....when no programs are running, we've got our WHOLE screen with just our Eskie Wallpaper on it! Talk about cool! AND, when a program needs to be accessed, it's only 1 or 2 clicks away in our LinkMenu categories. No more Start Menu "worming" and an absolutely efficient setup. LinkMenu can also be set as a "startup" program(highly recommended), so it is accessible on your system at EACH startup. LinkMenu is free. There are lots of attempts at making a better "program launcher", but we have found LinkMenu to be nearly ideal....the BEST of its breed for sure!

We have MORE Pioneer Picks on the next page, so don't miss them.....click here to go to our next group of great software and more for your computer!

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