Diary of a Network Geek

Two free utilities to help tame Windows 10.

Y’all know I love free stuff and share it with you often here, especially on Friday. Actually, I pretty much exclusively post and share anything at all on Fridays, but, still, you get my point. In any case, virtually all consumer laptops and desktops are sold with Windows 10 now, but most of us are still trying to get all the settings and configurations locked down the way we like. Or maybe that’s just the professional geeks like me. Either way, with the goal of taming Windows 10 just a little bit more, I have two utilities from the same company to share with you this week. Both are free for home (ie. non-commercial) users.
First there’s O&O ShutUp10, which lets you get tighter control over what parts of Windows 10 communicates with Microsoft and advertisers. You don’t even need to install it. Just download it and run it. It will give you suggestions and hints on locking down location services and privacy settings so that you aren’t leaking information you don’t want to share.
The other is O&O AppBuster which lets you remove the automatically installed apps that Microsoft includes with Windows 10, whether you want them or not. It also lets you remove the hidden apps that seem like they’re part of the operating system but really aren’t. So, for instance, if you wanted to get rid of all the XBOX 360 cruft on your Windows 10 laptop, since you don’t play games but are writing the great American novel, this app would let you do that. Also, just like the last one, it’s free and doesn’t need to be installed to run and do its magic.

So, not quite as exciting as free games or stories, but maybe more useful.
Enjoy!

This post originally appeared on Use Your Words!

I am not a designer.

This may be painfully evident from the look and feel of this website, which, I did not code myself.  It is a WordPress-based website which, at best, I have “themed” myself, but with lots of help from code “borrowed” via Google and other sources.  In fact, there are so many code sources it would be hard to link to them all or list them all or thank them all.  It’s the way of the web, I’m…
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I don’t know about you, but I love free stuff.

I do a lot of stuff on the web every day.  Yeah, I know you can’t tell that from how neglected this blog is these days, especially compared to the old days when I was posting pretty much every day, but, trust me, I’m always buzzing around the web doing something.  Sometimes, it’s building websites like this one.  Not very pretty, but pretty functional and sometimes, not even sites for me.  When I build a site, I generally leave it to the owners to come up with the actual content and just help them get the framework setup, including all the legalese that seems to be pretty much de rigueur these days.
Well, now, thanks to PriorityDigital.com, I think I have a slightly better solution.  They have a page of free utilities that include a Privacy Policy Builder, a Disclaimer Builder and a Non-Disclosure Agreement Maker, among others.  So now, you, or I, can go to these utilities and fill in a few relevant details and quickly get a fairly generic, but still useful, privacy policy, general website disclaimer or non-disclosure agreement without having to pay a lawyer!  Granted, they are pretty generic, but, still, for most of us, they’ll handily take care of our needs.

So, okay, yeah, kind of lame for a Friday, but, still it might give you a little something extra for your side project this weekend.
Enjoy!