Here is a handy little program that doesn’t even require installation and can give you more information about your system than you know what to do with. It is freeware for Personal Use, so this won’t be particularly helpful as an IT program, but it could certainly be of help when you are working on your parent’s or friend’s computer and need to get the low down on EVERYTHING that there is to know about the system.

I particularly like the ability to dump all the info to an easy to read html file for later dissection. Not only does this program give you information about your hardware and software installed, but it also can show you all the passwords stored on your system and the open ports your system has (only those saved by certain programs, like Firefox, IE, IE6, MSN Messenger, etc.).

System Information for Windows — Everything you want to know about your PC. [http://www.gtopala.com/]

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I found this tool the other day while reading a post on Lifehack.org titled Top 20 Free Applications to Increase your Productivity. Top ## lists seem to be all the rage these days, but you probably won’t see a lot of them here at It’s Not The Network because there are just too many lists out there already. Instead, I will try to highlight a few really great applications for you and tip you off to those, so you don’t have to dig through each and every Top list to make the determination for yourself about what is good and what is fluff (although the ones at Lifehack are usually pretty good).

Anyway, back to the tool: ReplacEm is a great tool for Windows that allows you to find and replace text in multiple files simultaneously. While this might not seem like a big deal to some, once you realize you need it, you will be really glad to know about it. The first thing I did it was to replace the old Google Analytics tracker code in about 50 different files on another website that I help manage. This was something that I’ve been meaning to do for a while, but I just never got around to looking up the proper syntax to use sed to replace the right string on the FreeBSD server the files live on (and of course for testing and debugging the replacement over and over again until I refined my syntax to the point where it actually worked for replacing a multi-line string). Instead I simply copied the files to my Windows machine, used ReplacEm, verified that the change was what I wanted, and copied them back. What was going to take me around 30 minutes took about 5, once I had the right tool. Later this month I’ll do a short tutorial on how to use this tool, but I wanted to start spreading the word now, cause this one can be a real time saver.

ReplacEM [Custom Fit Software via Lifehack]

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Ok folks, sorry for the lack of new posts over the last week, it has been a bit crazy for me and keeping up with everything has been a bit difficult. I promise over the next couple of weeks you are going to be amazed with the plethora of stuff I’ve got for you. To get started, here is a useful little tool for running Linux or UNIX programs in Mac OS. Yes, I know we’ve been a bit Apple centric around here lately, but don’t worry, I’m getting my Windows on too and for there will be plenty of tips and useful stuff for those of you that just gotta have some of that Microsoft lovin’.

This one comes via that amazingly useful site, Lifehacker, and gives you step-by-step instructions for installing Fink and Fink Commander. Fink is basically a ports collection based on Debian’s dpkg and APT, and a package management system to handle installation and uninstallation, etc.. Fink Commander is a nice GUI to help out. I’ve known about Fink for along time, and even tried to install and use it when I first got my MacBook Pro, but it was a royal pain and I quickly gave up. These instructions make it easy and clear, and really make the process simple.

How to Install Linux Applications in OSX [Simplehelp.net via Lifehacker]

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