Just in case you wonder if there is a way to log in without typing your password. Yes – there is. Either you buy a Lenovo with fingerprint scanner (that does not work very well from what I have heard) – or you can finally use that webcam you bought for something useful: Install Luxand Blink! and log in using your face.

Here is the link: http://www.luxand.com/blink/

Synergy (the original) and Synergy+ (the error-correcting fork) is in essential the same application, so in the below Synergy and Synergy+ mostly refers to the same product. If in doubt, assume I am talking about Synergy+.

The Synergy application is an ingenious piece of work that make it easy to swap between different computers, as long as the involved PCs have their own monitor. From one keyboard and one mouse you can control an entire range of PCs – spanning operating systems and networks. There are packages available for Linux, (BSD), Mac OS-X and Windows.

When setting up for the first time, dedicate one PC to be the “server” and install the rest as “clients”. The “server” is typically the one PC with mouse and keyboard connected. On this PC you must describe your environment, either by hand-editing your synergy.sgc or by (on Windows and some flavours of Linux) using a graphical tool. Note that you must configure both the way in and the way out of a computer. If you have computers A, B and C and they are ordered in that order on your desk, you must both say that A is left of B and B is right of A for the mouse to return to your original screen.

As the configuration language is in a well-thought-through structure, you can among other things decide if screensavers should be turned on simultaneously on all computers or not. You can also map keys if needed.

For a syntax highlighter for the Notepad++ highlighter, go here.

So, is it possible, you ask, to install a Windows PC with only free software? Yes, it is. If you really want to live dangerously, start off with installing ReactOS. But since this operating system is highly unstable and in an early alpha release, I will for the remainder of this article forget I even mentioned it.

First, you need a decent package for writing your letters. The one package shining like no other is of course OpenOffice.org (OOo) supplied with a writer, spreadsheet, presentation module, database, drawing and a module for editing formulas. The OOo looks and feels a bit like Office 2000, and some configuration items are a bit hard to get to, but the package is what you need and way more. There is actually no reason to buy Office at all, when this one goes for – free.

Then, you might need to have a program for manipulating images. Gimp is a fully fledged picture editor. It has a wide variety of functions, converters and filters – and supports layered drawing. It is so advanced that creating art or retouching a photograph is well within its capabilities.

As of picture viwers and/or simple editors, there are many really good freeware alternatives out there. Try them out and find one that suits your needs. Google Picasa, for instance, can transfer images from your camera and also index all images on your hard drive. XnView can be used as a view-only application, but also good at converting from one format to another, cropping and so on. XnView has the most complete set of converters I have seen. You can also check out IrfanView Graphic Viewer or FastStone Viewer. The latter is one out of four in a family of related products of which one is shareware.

You need a web browser and an email program. Check out Firefox and Thunderbird. Two extremely versatile pieces of software that you can configure to do everything for you except do your laundry. There are other browsers out there, but there is a reason these two gems now gain momentum and eats up market shares from Microsoft.

To burn your files to CD, try out CDBurnerXP. It works just like any other burner software out there and can also burn ready made ISO images.

A fine piece of software that did more than I expected. I downloaded it and expected to be disappointed, actually, as every diskspace reporting tool so far have been slow, rigid and marginally useful. This one, however, hover above the rest and turned out to be just what I have been wanting.

When you start the program, you get a menu that actually will expand itself as of search #2 and forward. Initially, you can “only” Start a new scan or Open a previously saved scan. As of #2 run, your previous scan is added to teh list, meaning that you do not have to reconstruct the default scans you do. Good!

After scanning a file system, you get a window split in two, just like a standard Windows Explorer – except that the right hand side consists of a five-tabbed display defaulting to the pie-charted Size tab. The chart contains the names of the directories and their percent wise sizes. The left-hand part of the window contains the same directories listed as a normal tree. So – if you now have found your directory that takes up space, the next natural step is to find out what in that directory takes up space. Here’s neat trick #2: Just click on the pie corresponding to the directory – or select from the left hand side list. Easy!

Not impressed yet? Here are four more reasons: From the top menu you can choose between five different views of the current scan: The first one, I wrote about abov. The second one gives you a “Top 100″ list of the biggest files. It even adjusts itself downwards to “Top 50″ if it does not have that many files. Then we have the “Size Dist” which displays a size distribution graph, bar style. Next tab – “Modified” – also yields a bar style graph, but this one shows the files as of last time you modified them. The last type shows a pie chart of the most used file types.

One final note from me: The software requires you have Java installed, as this is developed in Java.

Always in need of securing and having an easy way of sharing my data, I purchased a D-Link DNS-313 unit. Below is a short review of my experiences so far.

Together with the 313 I purchased a Seagate 500GB SATA disk, as D-Link only sell you the box you need to create a network disk, but does not include any disks. Opening the 313 is extremely easy, just slide the front cover up a few millimeters and it is open. Locate the connector inside the 313 and adjust the disk accordingly before sliding it in carefully. Press the disk until it locks. Should lock without any trouble. If you need to eject the disk, there is a handle at the back of the unit.

After connecting everything, I inserted the drivers disk in one of my PCs and followed the on-screen instructions. When the installation program asks for it, turn on the unit. The drivers installed without a hitch and then the 313 formatted the inserted drive. What file system it uses? ext2… Yes, DNS-313 is a Linux device. You adjust some basic settings, like if you wish fixed or DHCP-issued IP addresses and give the device a name, for easy access via your network. You also issue a drive letter to it if you use Windows.

When the DNS-313 is up and running, it is time to log in to it – yes, log in. Open your favourite browser and type in the name you gave it. A login screen appears. Log in to it – default user name and password is on a note underneath the 313. A fairly extensive configuration screen appears. I am not going to go in detail, but be sure you configure the ftp client! That one is really, really something you want to have.

Included on the disk is a backup program. I have not tested it, but I presume it works as expected. One of the things you can configure via the interface is another “backup” feature: Copying of files at regular intervals. Not tested, but seems to be worth investigating.

The bottom line is that when configured properly, you here have a rather cheap, but extremely useful. In my opinion – value for money!