PC User Software
What about all the old PC User apps?
Now that PC User magazine is no more, I now have a mountain of apps, benchmarks and operating systems from the old magazine gathering dust.
At this stage, I’m looking into the possibility of putting everything online, for fear of it rusting and rotting away on my hard drive.
There are a few hurdles to jump through first to get everything up to scratch but I’ll keep you up-to-date when I’ve figured out what I’m going to do.
New apps?
I’m working on a few new apps at the moment that haven’t been released anywhere else:
* RockPod 6 – an update to the last version that appeared in PC User magazine
* UserOS HomeServer 13 – a Linux-based home server operating system
Will give more details when and where these will be released.
In the meantime, feel free to browse through and grab the tools below.
Flash BootMaker
One thing Windows can’t do on its own is make flash drives bootable. Flash BootMaker formats your flash drive (SD card, USB flash drive, whatever) into one of three file systems – FAT16, FAT32 or NTFS – and uses the SysLinux command line tool to make it bootable.
Use this if you want to set up a flash drive to boot a ROM, firmware or operating system.
It’s pretty simple to use – just select the drive, the file system and press the Go button. You need to have a flash drive plugged in before your launch the app, otherwise it will remind you to do that.
Works on Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7 systems, 32 or 64-bit
Operating System: Windows 2000, XP, Vista and Windows 7, 32-bit or 64-bit.
Version: Build 24
Date: 31 January, 2011
Download Boot FlashMaker – No warranty implied or given. No guarantee of service. Use at your own risk.
ISOTorch 1.0
If you’re looking to try out the new Ubuntu 10.04 Beta, you’ll need to burn to CD and you can do that with ISOTorch. ISOTorch allows you to burn ISO images to CD or DVD so that you get a useable disc that, in the case of Linux distros, you can boot up from and install on your PC.
ISOTorch is freeware and uses the open-source CDRtools package. Source code is included in the download file but is not necessary to install in order to make ISOTorch work.
Simply choose your ISO image file to burn, select your CD/DVD drive, load in a blank disc of appropriate size and press the Burn Disc button. ISOTorch takes care of the rest.
ISOTorch works on Windows 2000, XP, Vista and Windows 7 computers, either 32-bit or 64-bit versions.
Operating System: Windows 2000, XP, Vista and Windows 7, 32-bit or 64-bit.
Version: 1.0.6
Date: 24 March, 2010
Download ISOTorch – No warranty implied or given. No guarantee of service. Use at your own risk.
Dear Darren,
Over the past few weeks I have been reading many of the issues of PC user, looking for software. I came across User OS Home Server and thought that would be a great idea to centralise all the Digital Content in my house. Then i discovered UserOS Ultra. I then realised there is a lot of different software that comes under the user OS banner. I was wondering if you could give me a short run down of what each one does along with the name and most recent version number. That would be much appreciated. Love reading your reviews.
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Darren Yates Reply:
September 13th, 2009 at 8:29 am
UserOS Ultra 7.10 – compact OS (470MB) – light, lean, fast
UserOS Extreme 8.04 – best of everything (1.3GB) – do-everything OS
UserOS Home Server 8.04 – network storage (700MB)
UserOS Netbook 8.10 Beta – genreal-purpose OS aimed at netbooks (700MB)
UserOS Extreme 9.04 – best of everything v2 (1000MB)
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