Around the same, Jim Knopf (also known as Jim Button), a programmer in Washington state, wrote a program that was initially a mailing label program, EASY-FILE and marketed as "user supported software". He also decided to give the software away and ask for a donation. Button renamed the program to PC-FILE. He did very well with the product mainly because he continued to add features.

In 1983, Bob Wallace, came out with a word-processing program, PC-Write that he sold as "shareware".

Other smaller programs appeared and they were distributed as either "freeware" or "user supported software." Unfortunately, they could not legally use the term freeware since that was a trademarked term. The term user-supported software was too cumbersome. A magazine contest to name the marketing method selected shareware as the favored name. Bob Wallace, the first nown user of the term, said it was okay for anyone to use the name.

There is controversy over who originated the shareware concept, Fluegelman or Button. For this reason, they are listed as co-creators.

Because there are so many variants of how the shareware creators collect their registration fees, there are additional names that the shareware is known by. These names are useful for categorizing purposes and they will be used in the reviews.

Freeware

Free shareware that, the author does not require the user to pay any fee. Often the free version has restrictions like only being free for personal use, commercial use requires a registration fee.

Initially (and probably legally), this was a trademarked term synonymous with (and requiring a fee).

Note that this is not necessarily public domain software, the author still owns the rights. The author has just given permission for free use.

Trialware

Shareware that works perfectly and completely during an evaluation period (either a number of days or a number of uses) and then stops working until a keycode is entered. This keycode is obtained when the product is registered (and a fee paid).

Guiltware

A piece of shareware that complains that the author is suffering because you have not registered after the trial period ended.

Careware

Shareware that requires that some or all of the registration fee goes to charity. This is also refered to as charityware.

Nagware

Shareware that pops up reminder screens when the program is started or ended. It normally requires the user to click a button or certain keystroke before continuing.

Postcardware

Shareware that borders on freeware, in that the author requests only that satisfied users send a postcard of their home town or something. (This practice, silly as it might seem, serves to remind users that they are otherwise getting something for nothing, and may also be psychologically related to real estate "sales" in which $1 changes hands just to keep the transaction from being a gift.)

Crippleware

Shareware that allows full usage of some features but requires registration to enable other functions, crippling the program. Some crippleware may restrict necessary functions like save or print. Other software is still extremely useful even without the registration, only advanced features are crippled.

Payware

The shareware industry wanted to give another name for the traditional commercial software. They came up with the term payware.

Adware

A relatively new form of freeware that appears to be free. Advertisers pay to have advertising banners show up while the user is using the product. The ad software periodically checks on the Internet for new advertisements. Many adware software is also spyware.

Spyware

This freeware tracks your activity and reports back via the Internet so that you can be targeted for specific e-mail advertising. The biggest objection to this is that users are not told that the spying is taking place.

"I've got to tell you that when I go out to a software store and look at $200-$400 for a piece of software, it makes me cringe a little bit. What I'm going to show you tonight is stuff that I've been using for years, and interestingly enough for this meeting I downloaded some of the newest versions and I was very pleased to see that there are features in the software that I had not seen yet, so I will be showing some of that off tonight."

Windows Commander
Review by Frank Leonard and Tom Anderson

Back in the days of DOS, many of you may recall a program named XTree. How many of you used XTree? QDOS? I found QDOS and XTree to be too complicated. I'm kind of lazy, and I went to Norton Commander, which was the alternative at the time. This program uses the exact same keystrokes as Norton Commander, the old Norton Commander DOS program. It even looks a lot like it.

When you first bring up the screen, you can size it, of course, however you want. There are a ton of configurations in here, and options. I won't go through them. This would make even the propeller heads squirm a little bit. There is more stuff in here; you could spend a career configuring this. Straight out of the box it works just fine.

You can see that the icons for all my drives, including network drives and removable drives, are at the top of each window.

You see that all of the folders or directories are off on each side. You get two panels right away, and you can tab between them using your keyboard, or you can use your mouse. And I generally use my keyboard commands for most everything here.

This program goes way beyond a file manager. Check this out. This is a full FTP client. I'm not connected to the internet right now, but you can create a new connection. When you get connected on the internet, you have on one side of the screen your Internet connection, and on the other side you have got your hard drive.

How easy it would be to get the file off of your system on to your Web site. Let me tell you a little secret. You heard it here first. You may know that when you go out to McAfee, or some of the anti-virus websites, when you download the new .dat files, very often you have to fill out a form. They want your name and your address and your grandmother's shoe size, and a lot of information. What you may not know is that if you FTP to their Web site you can download the file right away. You do not have to fill out a thing. That is true of McAfee, it is true of Trend, it is true of Solomon, and more I can not even think of offhand. For example, McAfee would just be ftp.mcafee.com.

Here is something else we have with the newest version. If you have a Laplink cable, or a parallel port cable, or a serial cable, you can connect the ports on two machines, and I've already set this up so we can do this. You can use this program to transfer data over the parallel port. There is one downside to it. The downside is that when you connect your cable, you have to reboot the machine. The machine has to be off when you connect the cable.

I'm going to call this machine the server. And that is the desktop that is up here. I'm going to connect my machine. I'm going to come over to this machine. And I'm going to call up the client, and, BOINK, look at this. This drive over here on the right, that is Tom's machine. There is his a: drive, his c: drive, and his d: drive. I'm going to go over to the c:. This is all his drive over here. If I wanted to copy stuff from my system to his, I can just highlight some files and do an F5 to copy, and bingo, we are transferring data at parallel port speed.

Question: Can you synchronize directories?

The answer is yes. All of the little things you wanted to do with Windows Explorer, or other file managers, that you just could never seem to be able to do, or you could never figure out, Windows Commander makes really easy.

I'm going to get to another option that I use a lot. Windows Commander allows you to search multiple drives for a single set of string, or group of strings.

I recently went to a three-week school where I had to transfer a certain set of files to my disks every night to take home. So I went to Windows Commander and I set up a custom copy; I said what I want here, and notice how it keeps the history. I want *.dat, *.dia, and *.ix. I can search the entire hard drive for that set of strings, or I can search multiple hard drives.

After the program finds the file that you are looking for, the neat feature here is that you can pump everything it found to what is called a list box. And now that I've got all of these files in varying directories over on the left, I can now select them, I can copy them all to someplace, can delete them all in a stroke, I can move them all in a keystroke.

If you use archived files like zip files, cab files, arj files, or any others-Windows Commander treats them like a directory: open the file and you can see the files inside. You can read them, edit them, execute them.

Question: Will it move MP3 files to a CD writer?

Yes, it will. And the program works in Windows 95, 98, ME, 2000, NT 3.51 and 4.0. You can also compress files, and even span disks with zip or arj files. And it has every feature of Windows Explorer along with all the extra features I've shown you.

You can customize the button bar and put any programs there that you want. And at the bottom of the window is a command line, where you can type in commands just like you would at a DOS prompt.

Windows Commander (32-bit or 16-bit) v4.51
$28 registration, lifetime free upgrades
C. Ghisler & Co.
Size: 1.25MB
Requirements: Windows 9x, NT, or 2000

ClipMate
Review by Frank Leonard

How many of you are familiar with the Windows clipboard? Clipboard is a portion of memory used to hold things for copying. You can highlight something and press Ctrl-C and it is copied to the clipboard. Then you can go to another program, like Word, and press Ctrl-V and what you copied will be pasted into the new program.

It's a very simple cut-and-paste tool, that's all. But each time you copy something, it wipes out what you saved before. That's where ClipMate comes in.

ClipMate sits in the background, as an icon on the taskbar. It is a little booklet that looks like the clipboard, the Windows clipboard, but it is enhanced with a little yellow frame around it. If you right click on it, you can shut it down and exit out completely.

The program has a ton of configuration settings, but you probably want to start using it as is, right out of the box.

You can size your thumbnails, you can change your hotkeys. One of the things I think is cute about it is that, every time you do something different with it, it gives a different sound. So when I send things to the clipboard, if it didn't get there I know because the sound is different.

Another nice feature is the ability to clean up text. Maybe you've gotten an e-mail with all those angle brackets showing a quote, and it gets pretty messy when it's been forwarded several times. You just copy it to the clipboard and then you open the edit menu.

As you can see, you can remove particular characters from each line, you can format paragraphs by removing line breaks, you can change case, and you can redo quote marks.

You can also save everything you copied to the clipboard, of course. You can view things in a window that looks like Explorer, and down the left is the list of folders (or collections) you've created. Lots of folks like to keep their URLs there, what they've collected, so they can explore them later.

You can copy a series of things to the clipboard and glue them together, then after you glue them, you can dump them into a file or a collection.

Question: Can you use it in PowerPoint?

You can use this in any program that allows using Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V, the clipboard keys. You can save graphics and data.

The Windows clipboard is limited to memory, but ClipMate spools to the hard drive when it runs out of memory, so the only limit is how much hard drive space you have available.

ClipMate(32-bit) 5.2.06
$20 registration, $25 with manual and disk
Thornsoft Development, Inc.
Size: 1.29MB
Requirements: Windows 9x, NT, or 2000

TreeSize
Review by Frank Leonard

Here's a little freebie for Windows Explorer. Did you ever want to know how much space your directory took up and whether you could fit it on a floppy?

If you install a little freebie program called TreeSize, it will look at any directory, or group of directories you ask it to, and it will size them, and it will sort them by size. So I could sort my directories here by name, and I could sort them by size. Now, it is still looking at the hard drive, and when it gets done here, it is going to paint a little picture. My program's file directory is the largest, and next is Windows, and right on down, and I could break those open, maybe I want to look at what is in the Programs file directory and see which of these is largest. Cute, quick, free little program. It also works within Windows Commander. The guy wants a postcard if you like it.

TreeSize1.51
Free
Jam Software
Size: 271KB
Requirements: Windows 9x, NT, or 2000

PrintFolder
Review by Frank Leonard

The next program I like is PrintFolder. I will take whole directories and send them to clients, or put them on a CD, and I'd like a quick way of printing a directory.

You can not print a directory very well in Windows. But if I right click on this directory and go to PrintFolder, it brings up a configurable little screen. I can tell it that I want the time and the date, any subfolders in there, you can dictate what font, and you can print any of this to a printer, and I have it set at about a point 6 font, so it comes out rather small. But it gives me a quick, very easy way to print a directory. You can't do that in Windows as a rule. And No Nonsense Freeware, you might go out and check that Web site out; they have got some other cute little pieces of freebie and shareware software out there.

PrintFolder 1.1a
Free
No Nonsense Software
Size: 473KB

WinZip
Review by Ken Hopkins

It is odd that we have been using zip files for so many years and yet Microsoft does not include a zip utility in any version of Windows. Zip is a highly compressed file format originally developed by the late Phil Katz. It is used frequently for distributing files on the Internet because it reduces the download time and keeps many files together in one file instead of having to load a bunch of individual files.

Originally, zip files were created with the PKZIP utilities that were DOS programs. Shortly after Windows 3.0 was released, the first version of WinZip appeared. The first version was little more than a shell around the PKZIP programs. Subsequent versions became standalone versions. Over the years there have been a lot of features added, making WinZip my preferred zip utility program.

WinZip supports the most common compression formats including zip, tar, gzip, Uuencode, Xxencode, BinHex, and MIME. It also lets you add on processing for old formats arj, lzh, and arc.

WinZip offers two interfaces, WinZip Classic and WinZip Wizard. The Classic interface resembles Windows Explorer and is my preferred interface. The Wizard steps you through the operation one step at a time.

You can open a zip file by double clicking on the file in Windows Explorer (or the desktop), by dragging the file on to the WinZip title bar, or through a traditional open dialog box.

If the zip file contains setup or install files, you will get an Install button on the button bar. Pressing this will unzip the file to a temporary directory and launch the installer. When you are finished installing, you press a button on a dialog and the temporary files get cleaned up. This makes installing programs from zip files quick and easy.

If there is no installer file in the zip file, you will get a checkout button. This unzips to a temporary directory and brings up a My Computer style window with the contents. You can then work with the files. When you exit the archive or exit Windows, you will be asked if you want to keep the files that were extracted. If you say no, it will clean up the temporary directory.

Creating or adding to zip files is just as easy. I find drag and drop to be my favorite way of adding files. It behaves very similar to Windows Explorer. Be aware that you can zip entire directories and have them unzipped into new directories following the desired structure.

WinZip also adds functions to the Windows Explorer context menu (the one that appears when you right click while pointing to a file. This gives you three additional menu items. One adds the selected files to the currently open zip file (or creates a brand new one). The second menu item will create a new zip file, named the same as the current directory and put the files in it. The third creates the files and attaches it to a new e-mail message.

If that is too hard, use the wizard. It walks you through the steps. The first time you run the wizard it will find all of zip files on your system.

Just select the type of operation you want to perform. For this demonstration unzip was selected.

Then the file gets selected from the list. You do not have to look hard to find the desired zip file.

When the unzip is complete, you are told the status.

Just like the classic version, zip with install files will install and other will go to a check out directory.

WinZip is classified as nagware (bordering on guiltware). If you do not register, it will pop up a box reminding you that you are evaluating the software and should register. After the 30-day evaluation period ends, it will tell you how long it as been since you installed it and how many zip files you have processed. It will continue to work completely even if you do not register for years.

In all my attempts to try new zip utility programs, I have never found one better.

WinZip (32-bit) v8.0
$29 registration
WinZip Computing, Inc.
Size: 1.20MB
Requirements: Windows 9x, NT, or 2000

SnagIt
Review by Ken Hopkins

Another big hole in Windows is print screen. When you press the print screen button, you want it to print. All Windows does it put it on the clipboard. And who can remember what the shift, control, and alt keys do the copy to the clipboard? SnagIt fills that void and does more amazing things.

There are two interfaces, a wizard interface and a menu based interface (like Windows Explorer). Once you get used to the feature, you probably use the menu interface. We will start with the wizard to explain the features.

Select the input. Choose from the entire screen, a particular windows, or any arbitrary region of the screen.

Now you select where to output the screen image. Choose from printer, a file, or a directory of files (tey call it a catalog).

You can set the hotkey that is used to do a screen capture. You can change from the default Ctrl-Shift-P to a more logical PrtScrn.

Something they added recently is the preview window. This let's you see what you captured in case you want to make sure it is okay. If you are trying to capture rapidly, you do not want to preview.

Those features alone make it worth using. But it does not end there. Screen prints even work with DOS windows. SnagIt has many more cool features.

SnagIt can convert most text blocks on the Windows desktop to machine-readable text. As a programmer, this has been useful to me.

You can capture all of a window that has a scroll bar. This is great for capturing web pages and stuff from combo boxes. You can have it captured as graphics or text.

SnagIt lets you capture sequences with the option to add a voiceover during capture. If you are going to do anything serious, you probably want to use TechSmith's companion product Camtasia.

Finally, a companion application, SnagIt Studio, lets you add captions, arrows, and even thought bubbles to captured images.

I have always used a registered version of SnagIt so I do not know what class of shareware it is. You will want to register it, too.

SnagIt (32-bit) v5.1
$39.95 registration
TechSmith Corporation
Size: 2.91MB
Requirements: Windows 95, 98, or NT

FTP Explorer
Review by Ken Hopkins

FTP Explorer is an FTP client that looks and feels just like the Windows 95 Explorer. Setup of multiple FTP connects could not be easier. Once connected to the site, you are presented with directory trees just as with Explorer, complete with appropriate icons. Following paths is much simpler than with a lot of FTP clients. You can import connection information from WS_FTP, with other formats to follow. A byte-count indicator provides download feedback. FTP Explorer can be run in the background. A good setup routine will have you up and running in no time. FTP Explorer is free for home and educational use. See readme.txt for other registration information. This release contains a number of bug fixes as well as some performance tuning.

FTP Explorer v1.00.01
Free
Alan Chavis
Size: 661KB
Requirements: TCP/IP stack and Windows 95

X-Setup
Review by Ken Hopkins

Instead of hacking through the Registry and .ini files like a common geek, go first class with X-Setup. This well-done freebie is one of the best "tweaking" programs we've ever reviewed. Use your choice of two modes to easily change hundreds of hidden settings -- not only for Windows 95, 98, NT, 2000, and Me, but for a multitude of popular programs and games. Plug-in mode provides an Explorer-like hierarchical display so that you can navigate to the settings you want to change. In Wizard mode, just pick a topic of interest from the Wizards menu; X-Setup runs the appropriate wizard to help you change the settings in a step-by-step process. You can even change the colors of the "Blue Screen of Death." Plus, because software and hardware change so quickly, X-Setup can be updated with new plug-ins to keep up with technology.

X-Setup v5.7
Free
Xteq Systems
Size: 2.76MB
Requirements: Windows 9x, NT, 2000, or Me

ZoneAlarm
Review by Ken Hopkins

ZoneAlarm is an easy-to-use Internet security utility that sets up a personal firewall that's particularly well suited to DSL and cable modem users. Computers with such an always-on connection have a permanent IP address, making them especially vulnerable to information theft and other attacks. ZoneAlarm lets you select one of three security levels to separately apply to local and Internet traffic. In addition, you can designate which programs on your computer are allowed to access the Internet. Anytime an event occurs that ZoneAlarm blocks, you're notified with a pop-up window that details the offense and asks how to respond to future occurrences. The program also provides integrated protection against VB script email attachments. Its system-tray icon even provides a handy menu that enables you to disable all Internet activity with a mouse click. You can also set this "lock up" to activate automatically after a selected period of inactivity or whenever your screen saver activates. Detailed logging of all activity is maintained. The program is free for personal use; other customers must pay $19.95 per seat.

ZoneAlarm v2.1.25
Free
Zone Labs Inc.
Size: 1.58MB

OptOut
Review by Ken Hopkins

OptOut is written in assembly language so it is very fast and very small. It's designed to stop working after several months under the theory that it obsoletes quickly. Right now, OptOut is free. Eventually Steve will come out with a commercial version that will do a lot more. He is talking about a program that will mask your identity while you browse the web.

OptOut is a highly effective freeware tool for removing adware, both files and Registry entries thereof, from your Windows 9x computer. Many adware-supported products don't remove the adware itself with the supported program(s) uninstaller. Thus, the adware continues to operate and report back over the user's Internet connection, perhaps without the user's knowledge. OptOut returns a modicum of control to the user. It quickly informs its user whether adware is detected within their system, then optionally removes it for the user. The adware can be left in place, particularly if the sponsored software is still in use, but its location and methods have been properly identified. Currently, OptOut detects and removes Aureate/Radiate but may soon be enhanced to include Conducent/Timesink and Comet Cursor. It's a time-expiring freeware product that may run as long a four months. And because it was developed in assembly language, it needs no installation and is only 32Kb in size. Related news, discussion groups, current downloads, and more are available on the author's Website.

OptOut
Free
Gibson Research Corporation
Size: 31.5KB
Requirements: Windows 95 or Windows 98

Ad-aware
Review by Ken Hopkins

While Steve Gibson was first to recognize the impact of adware and spyware, he has been too busy on other projects to keep it up to date. Someone else stepped forward to fill in the gaps with Ad-aware. Steve Gibson recommends using both programs.

Ad-aware scans your memory, boot drive, and your Registry for references to ad-related servers from Aureate, Conducent/TimeSink, and CometCursor. These are the three most prominent names in the adware business. Software makers buy the adware technology from those three companies.

If it finds anything, it tells you. On my system, it found a cookie used to track my activity. I do not know where the cookie came from. I just did a lot of random Web browsing and occasional checking until Ad-aware found something. (It probably would have been easier to install Gozilla, a spyware program).

You can select which problems you wish to get rid of. You may want to continue using a program even if it is spyware.

Ad-aware is fast even with large hard drives. I recommend scanning weekly on the computer that you use to access the Internet. Even if you are not downloading adware, you may pick up a cookie.

Ad-aware is freeware but you want to check for updates periodically. They are watching for new spy programs all the time and will update the program when they find one. At this point, I recommend running both Ad-aware and OptOut.

Ad-aware v3.61
Free
LavaSoft
Size: 221KB
Requirements: Windows 95 or Windows 98

Add/Remove Pro 2.04
Review by Tom Anderson

We've all experienced the problem of deleting a program by deleting all the files associated with it, and then discovering it's still on the Add/Remove Programs list in Windows. This free program will delete those entries for you.

It also will run the official uninstall programs for other programs you'd like to delete, and make sure they get all the traces.

Add/Remove Pro 2.04
Free
Super Win Software
Size: 252KB
Requirements: Windows

IrfanView
Review by Tom Anderson

IrfanView is the best freeware graphics viewer, bar none. Don't take my word for it, ask the members of the Freeware newsgroup on Usenet, who voted it the honor.

IrfanView has a preview mode, shown above, which shows a thumbnail as you go through the images in a directory. It also shows a picture in its native size, or will expand to full-screen, if desired.

When you install IrfanView, you can have it handle all screen images, sound files, movie files, cursor files-just about every non-text file you can think of.

Better still-at least for me-is how easy it is to re-assign files to IrfanView after some new program you've installed has grabbed control of them. It's very annoying for me to click on a JPG file in Explorer or Windows Commander and find it being displayed by some strange photo editor that got installed with another program I bought.

All I have to do is start up IrfanView, click on Options/Properties and Extensions, and check the files you want IrfanView to handle. It's done!

Did I mention it's free? I love this program!

IrfanView 3.05
Free
Irfan Skiljan
Size: 572KB
Requirements: Windows 9x or NT

FreeMem Standard 4.1
Review by Tom Anderson

One problem we all share as Windows users is that memory (RAM, not hard drive) gets filled up and we find our systems slowing down. FreeMem Standard is the freeware version of a terrific tool to free up memory on the fly. It installs into the system tray, and when you need it-either at your request, or on its own-it frees up whatever amount of memory you specify by swapping to disk.

The standard version is free, the professional version requires registration.

FreeMem Standard 4.1
Free
3b Software
Size: 449KB
Requirements: Windows 9x, NT

Cookie Pal 1.5e
Review by Nancy Linsley

For over three years now, I've been using a great little program that does only one thing: allows you to control and manage cookies on your system. It does this job very, very well. I consider it the wisest $15 computer investment I've made.

As most everyone probably knows by now, there are good things and bad things to be said about Internet cookies. On the one hand, they can be great at keeping you from having to re-enter password and user name data for web boards and other sites that require such membership information, but on the other hand, do we really want any website that chooses writing files to our hard drives or gathering any information at all about us just because we happen to visit their page? Or worse, tracking our movements after we leave their site, or tracking where we came from to get there, as if it's any of their business?

Cookie Pal gives you choices about whether or not to accept an individual cookie, whether to accept all future cookies from that site, or whether to refuse all future cookies from that site. You can adjust these different "filters" if you change your mind about a site's cookies, and can also check all the cookies on your system and delete any you no longer want there, all on the fly.

If you use both Netscape and Internet Explorer on your system, Cookie Pal will work with both browsers. However, I don't know whether declining all cookies when using one browser will also decline them later when using the other browser. Those of you using both browsers will have to check and see.

Cookie Pal runs as a small "cookie face" icon in the system tray. When the browser is open, the cookie will be smiling, and it has a surprised look when it accepts or rejects a cookie. Right-clicking the icon opens the program to adjust your preferences, check on cookies, etc.

As you browse the Internet and a site attempts to set a cookie, Cookie Pal will display an Alert like this one. As you can see from the taskbar picture, the cookie face in the system tray is wearing its surprised look.

You can accept or reject this one cookie, or all cookies from this server. I generally click NO first, to reject this one cookie. If it loads okay, I click NEVER for the next cookie. If necessary (for example, at some shopping sites), you can uncheck the NEVER choice in the filters screen.

The Filters tab shows you a list of all servers from whom you've chosen to accept or reject all cookies. I check the Accept list once in a while to be sure that family members haven't accidentally chosen to accept all cookies from some ad server or other site I find objectionable. I can then delete them from the list.

This tab shows a list of all cookies present on your system. When you first install Cookie Pal, you can use this screen to delete the ones you don't want. I also go through this list from time to time and delete those cookies (probably accepted by family members) that I don't want on my system-it is best to delete cookies when the browser is not running, as sometimes they're in memory and aren't really deleted.

Grayed-out cookies are unique to Internet Explorer use, and have to do with whether the page that the cookie refers to is still present in your cache or not. This is apparently not an issue if you use Netscape.

During your current online session, the Cookie Pal Sessions tab lets you see how many cookies have been accepted and rejected. During this four-minute session to make screenshots for this demo, Cookie Pal accepted or rejected 23 cookies! If I'd stayed at the given sites for a longer period of time, there would have been many more rejected cookies. This information will clear after the browser is closed. After you've been using the program for a while and have clicked on lots of NEVER's, you'll be amazed, if you check this Sessions tab, at the bombardment of cookies you've been subjected to-cookies whose only purpose may have been to track your movements on the Internet.

There are more features to the program that I don't use. I don't consider myself a privacy nut. I realize that my name, and a lot about me, undoubtedly exists in databases everywhere, especially since I have a Social Security number, a driver's license, a job, and use a few credit cards!

However, I do try to maintain some degree of control over the amount of information people are able to gather about me, and don't give out unnecessary personal information to vendors or others who don't need to have it. I therefore like the idea that a small program like Cookie Pal gives me a greater degree of control of my privacy on the Internet, and highly recommend it to SPCUG members.

Cookie Pal
Registration: $15
Kookaburra Software
Size: 291KB
Requirements: Netscape Navigator, Internet Explorer or Opera