Why do I say this, because rather ironically that very same day I’d also published my own free Facebook guide, “The Facebook Privacy Guide“.  I’ll let you decide which one you prefer but I’ll give you the run down on my own eBook.  It’s completely FREE and a 36 page essential guide to everything you need to know to protect your online privacy from unscrupulous people, current and future employers, advertisers and malware writers.

I’ve included a great many Quick Tips throughout the book and it’s all in glorious full colour with large text and screenshots throughout.  I’ve used the same accessible and non-technical language I was praised for with my Microsoft Press book “Troubleshooting Windows 7 Inside Out” to make the book useful to people of all ages from children and teenagers to adults and the elderly.

It’s a complete and essential guide to keeping yourself, your personal information and your photos and videos safe from prying eyes and those who would use it for unwarranted purposes.

There’s more than just that though, I’ve included details on how to spot and keep yourself safe from Facebook spam and malware, and also how to create safe and secure usernames and passwords, not just for Facebook, but for every website you visit.

Facebook currently has around 750 million users worldwide and has been heavily criticised in recent years for very lax privacy, including one change that automatically made every user’s private information visible to search engines.  This was one of many privacy problems with the world’s most popular social networking site that caused a public outcry, and the company had to quickly change the settings again for all users.

You can see some images from the eBook below and if you find it useful I do ask that you please pass the link on to your friends and family.  You can download The Facebook Privacy Guide from our sister site Windows7News.com.

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]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2011/08/22/download-ghacks-editors-free-facebook-privacy-guide-ebook/feed/ 4 http://www.ghacks.net/2011/08/04/microsoft-release-onenote-for-iphone-free-for-a-limited-time/ http://www.ghacks.net/2011/08/04/microsoft-release-onenote-for-iphone-free-for-a-limited-time/#comments Thu, 04 Aug 2011 07:34:25 +0000 Mike Halsey MVP http://www.ghacks.net/?p=48614 Microsoft have now released their popular note-taking app, OneNote for Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch.  The program, which is part of their Office suite is popular with people wanting to make notes in meetings of who want to jot down thoughts on the go.

While built-into the company’s own Windows Phone operating system, iOS is the next smartphone operating system to get this great piece of software and for a limited time it’s completely free.

The app isn’t just about storing notes on your mobile, just as with OneNote on Windows Phone it will upload your notes to Microsoft’s cloud storage service SkyDrive (you’ll need a Windows Live ID) so that you can share your notes with your PC and open notes created on the desktop when on the move.  Microsoft say of the new product.  OneNote users will also be able to view and edit their notes in the OneNote cloud app, that can be accessed through Microsoft’s Office Live service, or SkyDrive.

Microsoft OneNote Mobile is an easy-to-use note-taking application for capturing all of your ideas and to-dos on the go, brought to you by Microsoft Office.  With OneNote Mobile, create searchable notes with text, pictures, bullets, and checkboxes. Then keep your notes in sync using free Windows Live SkyDrive cloud storage to access, edit and manage them from virtually anywhere, from your PC or almost any web browser.

OneNote was first introduced in Office 2003 but wasn’t really popularly used until touch screen computers became commonplace.  Now with Office 2010 running on many tablet PCs, it’s considered a stable of the Office system.  The extension of the software into the iPhone will only help professionals who need access to notes, and the ability to create notes on the move that they can then use and work with on their PC.

What is curious about this however is the release of OneNote for the iPhone at a time when the program itself still isn’t part of the Office 2011 suite for the Mac.  Microsoft have not commented on this but it would most likely be down to the current lack of touchscreen support in Mac OS.  Now that Apple are addressing this we can expect to see the next generation iMacs and MacBooks coming with touch screens.  Thus the next version of Office Mac, due sometime around 2013, should include OneNote.

With this omission it remains to be seen how useful people will consider OneNote on the iPhone.  Many iPhone users, probably most in fact, still use a PC and this will help uptake.  The lack of OneNote support on the Mac could damage the apps chances of picking up serious traction on Apple’s smartphone platform though.

There is also no word currently on a version of OneNote for the iPad or for Google’s Android operating system.  We can be reasonably certain that the former is already in development.  The future of OneNote, and indeed other Microsoft Office services, on Android is less certain however.  Microsoft haven’t made any announcement as regards this and could decide to avoid Android development altogether.

On the flipside, Microsoft have a long history of developing Office products for the Mac, and so this was only to be expected.  Microsoft have also announced that they will be bringing their new Lync communications platform to the iPhone later this year.

The app needs iOS 4.2 or higher to run and can be downloaded from the iTunes store.  There is no word yet on how long Microsoft will be making OneNote for the iPhone free to download, though it will probably be for 30 days or less.  If you are interested in trying OneNote on your iPhone or iPod Touch I wouldn’t leave it too long before you add it to your download basket.

Today, LapLink have announced their new PC Lock software.  This takes the task of encrypting your files and data to the next logical level and adds some interesting features.

According to research conducted by Ponemon Institute, Gartner and Intel, over 1,700 laptops are stolen every day and someone’s identity is stolen every 2 seconds. Files on a PC that are not encrypted are at constant danger of theft, increasing the user’s risk of identity theft, privacy invasion and significant financial loss.

It uses “a sophisticated EKE ‘Encrypted Key Encryption’ approach with military-grade 256-bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)” to secure your data but in addition to the software on your PC which encrypts and decrypts files on the fly, there’s a cloud management console too.

With this unique console, users can modify preferences, change settings, reset passwords, lock the data on a missing or stolen PC and remotely delete sensitive data. The Web Management Console is accessible from any web-enabled device, including smartphones, allowing management from virtually anywhere, even if the user is on the go; no need to rely on live customer support as with other products.

This is a very interesting approach meaning that you still have control of your data, and can securely erase it, if you lose your laptop or if your PC is stolen.  You will also be able to rest safe in the knowledge that the thief won’t have had access to the data in the interim because the files aren’t unlocked by your Windows log-in.

Files and folders on a PC remain protected even if the PC is lost or stolen. Users can trigger a remote wipe of their encrypted data from the Web Management Console, preventing access of stolen files. Even if the thief pulls the hard drive from the PC and never accesses the Internet, the data remains encrypted and inaccessible. PC Lock is also compatible with other security software, so it can provide an extra layer of protection and complement existing safeguards a user may already have in place or add in the future.

The main encryption software is run from a wizard which takes you through the process of encrypting your files and configuring the PC’s data.  The encryption takes place in the background and you won’t notice any degradation in performance on a standard home or business PC, as you shouldn’t these days.

Then for those of you in business, maybe a small business where you need to protect sensitive customer and user data how about these cherries on the cake?

Behavior Monitoring
PC Lock automatically takes steps to protect your encrypted data when it senses an unauthorized user. If someone repeatedly fails to login, PC Lock detects successive failures and will automatically take steps to protect encrypted data. These steps include destroying essential elements of the decryption key rendering access to the data impossible.

Protects against “Cold Boot Attacks”
The “Cold Boot” phenomenon occurs because other encryption software leaves encryption keys in RAM even when a PC is password protected by a screen saver, sleeping or hibernating. PC Lock deletes keys and overwrites them with random data during transitions to other power states ensuring they cannot be recovered in a cold boot situation.

Protects against Hackers
The PC Lock password is separate and different than the Windows password. So, even if a hacker is able to login to your Windows user account, they will also have to know your PC Lock password to unlock your data, which if they fail at guessing a set number of times (determined by the user in the Web Management Console) then PC Lock will trigger the key deletion to protect your data.

I like this approach as I’ve always been uneasy about EFS having lost data to it about 10 years ago.  The thought of having encryption that’s tied to your Windows log-in on a specific computer is a bit dangerous so I’ll certainly be giving LapLink PC Lock a try.  The additional peace of mind of having the web console with remote wipe access is an extra bonus.

LapLink has been around for decades now and made it’s name with hardware crossover serial cables that allowed you to easily transfer files from one computer to another (this was in the days before modern networks).  Now to celebrate the company’s 28th anniversary they’re giving away PC Lock completely free for 24 hours (Monday 16th May 2011).  After that it will be available at a discounted rate of $14.95 for a period before returning to the full retail price of $29.99.

If you value your data and keep personal files on your home or work PC or on your laptop or tablet then you should grab PC Lock while its free, you can get it here at www.laplink.com/pclock.  We all keep personal files on our computers and the thought of being able to log into a cloud management console on my smartphone and remotely wipe a device makes this not just a bargain, but potentially the software we must all have on our computers.

UPDATE : In the first day of it’s release as a free eBook, the Windows 7 Power Users Guide has received more than half a million hits!

The book contains 16 chapters and is a guide on how to get the very best out of Windows 7 from installation to configuration and advanced operations. It includes step-by-step guides, screenshots and diagrams on every page, quick tips throughout the book and is presented in full colour.

From the author of Troubleshooting Windows 7 Inside Out from Microsoft Press… A book for people who use Windows 7 at home or at work and know it can do more for them, but who don’t know how. The Windows 7 Power Users Guide contains helpful how-to’s, full colour pictures and quick tips to guide you through everything from using the Start Menu and Taskbar to backing up your documents and identifying and fixing problems

You can download the book from my online book store or directly from my website here. 

You can now catch up with more of my writing and events (including competitions and giveaways) at my new Facebook Group.

PDF is the most popular format for digital archiving in the world. Normally PDF files are created by virtual printer; however it is not easy to create PDF documents from multiple scanned images. JPG To PDF Converter is a windows application that quickly converts multiple images into a single PDF document without virtual printing.

JPG to PDF Converter supports the majority of modern graphic formats, including GIF, BMP, TIF, PNG, JPG, ICO and PSD. Users can control the compression ratio of PDF files for optimal quality/size balance and specify such PDF file properties as title, creation date, subject and keywords.

Many people like to scan in documents such as official personal or business paperwork and household bills.  It’s annoying for people having to store these documents as JPG or other image files.

It’s main features include…

Convert PDF to Word
Convert PDF to Word with all text and Graphical data.
Convert PDF to RTF
Convert PDF to Rich Text Files. You can edit all text and graphic by Windows Wordpad.
Convert PDF to TXT
Convert PDF to plain text files. You can edit text by Notepad.
Convert PDF to Images
Convert PDF to BMP, JPG, GIF or TIF files.
Convert PDF to HTML
Convert PDF to HTML files and automatically generate the Index file.
Convert PDF to SWF
Convert PDF to Shockwave Flash Animation files which can be published on websites.
Page Selection
Convert all the pages, or partial pages of PDF file.
Easy to use software
Add a PDF File -> Select the Output File Format -> Click on Start Converting button, then just have a cup of coffee :)

This software is normally $29.95 but is completely free until February 5th 2011.  You can download your copy here where you will also find a product code.  The best thing about all this is that it’s just a simple download and there’s no need to register with the website and give away all your marketing details.

So for free software, this utility to make your PDF files editable again is an absolute must have!  You can download your free copy here.

Wondershare Time Freeze is a virtualization solution much like Returnil, Sandboxie or Comodo Time Machine. The software is usually offered for $39 but free for a limited time. Users can request a free license for Time Freeze by entering their name and email in the form on the official website.

Time Freeze uses an interesting system. It is possible to enter protected mode and get rid of all changes afterwards by rebooting the system or to leave the protected mode and apply the changed data to the original system. That’s interesting for users who regularly test new programs and applications. Instead of testing them in protected more, rebooting and installing them again if they want to use them they simply can install them in protected mode and leave that mode to keep the software installed. There is obviously a danger to that as well if the user cannot assess the situation correctly.

Wondershare Time Freeze offers both a system protection and folder protection.

System Protection
Simply reboot to restore system to original state. Keep the actual system in a constant state, prevent computer from getting slower and slower with time.
Real-time system protection prevents malicious threats being made and doing harm to your computer.
Clean up computer history: Traces of surfing the internet and computer operation will disappear after reboot (You have the flexibility to save changes of virtual system to the actual system).
Safely play around with computer: Test software and game installations safely on virtual system.

Folder Protection
Mode 1: Prohibit others to access protected folders, let alone opening files in them.
Mode 2: Prohibit changing files in protected folders.
Safe from virus: Protect your files from being infected by viruses or Trojans.
Privacy guard: Protect your privacy effectively.

Users who want to give it a try should check out the demo video below.

The feature to apply changes made in the virtual environment to the real system makes the software interesting.

Wondershare Time Freeze is only compatible with 32-bit editions of the Windows operating system. (via Caschy)

Naturally both commands have gui front ends (gnome-system-monitor does both), but what do you do when you have a headless server? Or what about when you are logging in remotely and you can’t tunnel X? In those instances you will want to be able to get this information via the command line. And Linux has the tools for you.

Free

The free command displays the amount of free and used physical and swap memory on your system. Free has a limited number of switches to use which makes the command even simpler to use. The switches are:

-b Displays the output in bytes

-k Displays the output in kilobytes (this is the default action)

-t Adds a line at the bottom which contains the totals

-m Displays the output in megabytes

And that’s it.

When you run free the output will look like:

total ? ? ? used ? ?? free ?? shared ? buffers? cached
Mem: ? ? ? ??? 884 ? ?? ? 862??????? 22???????? 0?????? 289 ? ? 127
-/+ buffers/cache: ? ? ?? 445 ? ? ? 439
Swap: ? ????? 3992 ? ? ? ?? 0 ? ?? 3992


So you can see the total (in megabytes) memory being 884 and the free being 22. Depending upon your setup and what you have running you might think free is wrong. One thing you have to keep in mind is the buffers and cached memory are actually still available so in the above example the total used memory does include both the buffer and the cached memory. So often there is more memory available for application use than you would think. This gets very confusing because the used memory listing includes memory used by the kernel that may or may not be used for various modules (such as networking, sound, etc). There is another issue confusing memory usage. Since a vast number of Linux applications share libraries (like libc) those libraries could already be in memory when you launch an application. Huh? Let’s try a simple explanation.

You have Application A and Application B that both use Library 1. Application A reports it uses 25 MB of memory to run and Application uses 25 MB of memory to run. But Library 1 takes up 5 MB of memory to run. If Application A is already running that means Library 1 is already running so you can subtract the Library memory from the total of Application B.

So you can see how complex memory usage is for Linux. Which is why you want to also check out the command top.

Top

The top command diplays running Linux tasks. The information it offers is:

• PID – Process ID
• USER – The user who ran the command
• NI – The nice level of the process
• VIRT – Virtual memory the process is using
• RES – Resident (non virtual) size of memory
• SHR – The amount of shared memory a task is using
• S – Process status
• %CPU – The percentage of the CPU the process uses
• %MEM – The percentage of memory the process uses

So you can see there is plenty of information to be had from top. The point is, between the two applications you can summize the amount of memory being used at any given time.

Gnome System Monitor

GNOME System Monitor

As I said earlier, there are gui tools for this tasks. One of those tasks is gnome-system-monitor. It gives you every bit of information you need, and does so in a much more easy to use/read format. When you open up this tool you will see, after a bit of poking around, it gets its information with a little help from both free and top. Take a look at this application to see just how well the information is used and displayed.

The image to the left highlights the resource listing tab of gnome-system-monitor.

Final Thoughts

It’s pretty easy to see how complex monitoring memory can be with Linux. Fortunately there are plenty of tools to aid in you in this task. Although it’s not always easy to get a cut and dry snapshot of what memory you have available, you can get good idea of where your memory is.

Expensive software like Illustrator appears to make editing vectors simply unaffordable. Fortunately, this is untrue! Inkscape is a free, open-source and cross-platform vector editor. Whilst it will no doubt lack behind Illustrator in certain aspects, in my opinion it suffices the requirements of any non-professional graphic designer. Inkscape, for example, cannot utilise gradient meshes or have multiple strokes, or fills, for one object. Yet, it has much better support for the SVG format (utilised by Wikipedia) and beats Illustrator on several minor usability issues (Inkscape, for example, allows anchor points to be edited with a keyboard). Key features, such as the ability to trace bitmaps, are also included.

Inkscape’s interface, like that of most graphics programs, is quite complex but I find myself being able to adopt to its much quicker than I adapted from PSP to Photoshop.

There are a few issues with Inkscape. The version for OS X requires X11 to be upgraded and several work-arounds to be implemented prior to it functioning and the upgrade to OS X 10.5.2 prevented Inkscape from working without further updates to X11. It appears to function much better under Linux and Windows.

Inkscape serves the needs of any home user and is such a substantial saving, of both disk space (being about 100MB big) and money, it can make Illustrator nearly useless for such customers. Its support for SVGs is also useful, as Firefox can open some SVGs meaning the recipient of a file Inkscape produces often does not need Inkscape to view the file as a vector.

Wildfire Games are independent game developers who have been around for nearly a decade now. Their sole completed project has been a mod for Age of Empires II called “Rome at War” which successful enough to be featured on the cover discs of several PC Gaming magazines back in 2001.

This success led them to begin work on a whole new project… a real strategy game created from scratch. A dedicated team of around 40 international programmers, designers and researchers have been working fairly consistently to create what may be the first freely available real time strategy game which can be compared to commercial titles.

The project is called 0AD and will be released in two parts. Don’t expect to see it any time soon, however development is consistent and progressing. What has been achieved so far is a credit to the team and their talent considering the limited resources.

Here are some screenshots.

A few months ago I contacted Jason Bishop, the Project Leader behind 0AD and asked him a few questions about the project:

I think the most obvious thing everyone wants to know, is exactly what is the current state of 0AD. Is it in a playable state?

It is playable, though we are still working to include a few remaining features. We are working towards Alpha, at which point we have decided that the game is at a state that it could be tested in a closed invitation format.

What period of time are we looking at before we see a beta, or even an alpha release of the game?

We have two new programs that we are initiating this summer that will effect this answer. Depending on the level of success, we should be able to answer this question better for you by fall. At this point WFG is not prepared to commit to a release date for Beta.

Wildfire Games started in 2001 sometime, has it been hard maintaining focus, progress and a schedule over the years?

Very difficult. During such a great period of time with a voluntary staff you see new faces come and old faces go. The baton must be passed and it needs to be done as seamlessly as possible. The old hands on the project are no longer high school and college students and their time and schedule has been changed since they first started due to jobs, and higher education.

Freecycle is the website for the Freecycle Network, which is made up of 4,342 groups with 4,921,000 members across the globe. The purpose of this network is that if you have something to give, there’s someone out there who wants it. The catch is that it has to be given for free.

How do you join? You start by finding a Freecycle group that’s close to your home. Then, you can join and post about whatever it is you want to give away. If you find an item you like and would want, you simply mail the owner and tell him you’re interested. It’s first come first serve so be quick.

So, is Freecycle worth it? I’d say yes. There’s plenty of things to be found in these groups and the idea itself is quite philanthropic. It’s not perfect though. There are no guarantees about the merchandise you get. Plus, you usually have to make your own arrangements to pick up the item.

I’m a member at my local Freecycle group and I’ve scored a good deal or two. In one case, I met up with the owner close to my house to collect my item. Overall, I’d say give this network a try. After all, you never know what you might find.

What is your opinion on Freecycle? Are you a member of this group? Do you think this idea is worth exploring? What other similar sites have you come across? Do let me know.

They have some pretty useful stuff, all of them are “micro programs” designed for one specific use. They have a great text replacement utility for example, called Texter, which replaces abbreviated text, with the full one. You can use it to substitute “gH” with gHacks for example, or “sig” with your full signature.

Swept away is another good idea, it minimizes windows after a specified time when they loose focus. This means that if you have Photoshop always open (like I do), but only use it every hour or so, it will minimize itself. This is great for me, since it removes clutter from my desktop and enables me to actually work.

The post also points you to their great Greasmonkey compilation Firefox extensions like Better Gmail, Better Flickr and Better Youtube, all of which give you added functionality for these web applications. Better Gmail allows you integrate Google Reader for example, or change macros, and other cool features.

Overall, Lifehacker has produced some highly specialized, but quite usable and helpful applications. They are all free to use, so go nuts.

With the advent of online radio, a whole host of recording software has emerged too. You can find both free and paid programs depending on personal choice and if you are willing to pay for it. However, one major drawback with a lot of these options is that you cannot schedule recordings with them. This means that if you are not at your computer while a show is playing, you will not be able to listen to it later. This is especially important if you enjoy listening to concert recordings.

If you are on Windows, there is a way to overcome this disadvantage. Minezone posted a very detailed account of how to schedule recordings in online radio using a bunch of free tools. His main preferences are wget and Mplayer.

The instructions are pretty easy to follow. At first glance, the command line options might give you Windows users a fright but you get used to it soon enough. Besides, most of the hard stuff can be copied and pasted directly. Another plus is that the recording can be done in the background. In addition, you can schedule multiple recordings for the same time.

I don’t know how many of y’all will use this on a regular basis. I think it’s a good idea to keep this in mind. After all, you never know when you might need it.

I have to admit that these steps appear a bit complicated. If you know of any other program that does the same job, drop me a line.

Doodlekit is a website builder/maintainer. The reason I like it so much is that it really does give you a lot of tools. It doesn’t just throw a template at you, allow you to upload pics and walk off and job well done. The free version will give you full W3C compliance (valid HTML and CSS), interchangeable templates, statistics, photo albums, sub-page management, blogs, searches and CSS override features, for budding web designers.

It also does this in style, cute graphics and a friendly tone will at least cheer you up. They provide a wealth of info, even before you sign up, and although I haven’t gone as far as trying the paid service, they seem like a friendly bunch of people over there, trying to give you the best service they can. If you want the paid version, they give you a lot of extras.

Prices range from $15 to $50 a month and features are domain registration, more subpages allowed (up to unlimited), search engine optimization, form builders, email forwarding, adsense tools, user registration, shopping carts, erc.

In my opinion some of these features while great, can also be found in the web hosting package. My own website is registered through Bluehost, and they have email forwarding, user registration, shopping carts, adsense tools, and a lot, lot more. If you want to compare Doodlekit packages, take a look at their comparison page.

I would say this application is only suited well for anyone wanting a simple website, or a one click quick solution, but it isn’t geared toward pro businesses, or even just simple professional pages, ones that need a lot of flexibility. If you find the features useful though, I’m sure you will be happy with this (finally) quality website builder.

As we all know, Google Calendar has the option to send free SMS reminders of tasks. Now all you need is to set up a calendar for your significant other using your own phone as a reminder, and one for yourself, with his/her phone number. Set the default reminder to SMS, for 5 minutes before the event takes place

Now if you want to send her an SMS, just create an event, and write the text as the “What” text. Set the event about 10 minutes ahead to be safe, and save. Sadly only 60 characters will be shown in the SMS, but this is still enough for a quick message. You can create events 1 minute apart and have 3 events span a single SMS if you want. You will have a “reminder” sent to your partner, quickly and for free!

It should also be noted that there is a difference in quality. Human readers are of course capable of narrating the story in a higher quality than a computer reader can ever achieve. The following websites offer high quality Audiobooks that can be downloaded for free to your computer. I try to list some of the most remarkable books from those sites next to the link to give you an impression about the content that they offer:

Thought Audio – good collection of mostly classic novels such as Metamorphosis from Kafka and Thus Spoke Zarathustra from Nietzsche.
Free Classic Audiobooks – offers Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll and Treasure Island by Stevenson.
Pink Geek Audio – If you like Sherlock Holmes you have come to the right place. Has a large concentration of Sherlock Holmes books.
Simply Audiobooks – The Waste Land by Eliot and The Art of War by Sun Tzu. Just some books but good quality.
Podiobooks – Podiobooks are serialized Audiobooks that are offered in Podcast format. You won’t find classic books here but only books from unknown authors.
Voices in the Dark – Large collection of Audiobooks from authors such as H.G. Wells and Edgar Allen Poe.

Do you know more sources for free Audiobooks that are read by humans ? Let me know, always looking for more.

Echoes is freeware of course and has a size of about 8 megabytes packed. You can run it from any location. Once started you move your spaceship with the mouse and use the ASDW keys to point the gun in one of the four directions available. The first waves of asteroids are no problem and some leave power ups behind that replenish shields and add guns to the spaceship.

Echoes is probably not as addictive as Mono – nothing beats Mono, you know – but it comes pretty close. It has nice visuals, a good smooth gameplay and action that changes and gets faster with every asteroid that gets destroyed. Take a look, you will enjoy it.

The site itself is pretty resource intensive and takes some time to load, even on my broadband connection. I suggest to turn of the music once you are there unless you really like the atmospheric sounds that play in the background.

I would advise to begin by downloading the excellent user manual which should answer most questions about installing and configuring guest systems using Virtualbox. It takes some time to read through the 108 pages of the manual but it is well worth it to understand the functionality.

Just download the 10 megabyte file from the VirtualBox website or as a torrent and install the software. Installation is really easy in Windows (just a double-click) but a little bit more complicated in Linux. Check the user manual for a detailed instruction for Linux.

I do not want to explain a detailed instruction to setup a new guest system because the user manual explains everything in such great detail that it does not feel necessary at all. You basically create a new virtual machine and assign a name, ram and hard drive space to it and select a source for the installation of the guest system. The source can be from hard drive or cd for instance, just make sure you have the source at hand.

Your first task in the new world was to create some flourishing towns that would produce goods that you could sell in Europe. Many people left Europe at this time and this is also reflected in the game. You can load the ships with craftsmen, convicts or priests and use them in the new world. All colonialists were able to gain experience which had the result that they would for instance produce more goods for you.

It was possible to live peacefully with the Indians trying to convert them to your faith in the process which would add some Indian converts to your people. Indians on the other hand had treasures and it was another tactic to fight with them to gain access to those treasures.

It was essential to conquer areas that would supply your colony with the needed resources. The only other way to get those resources would be to pay a lot of money in Europe for them. You had the chance to recruit a famous celebrity from time to time who would add some special features like faster ships or better production to your colony.

Looks and plays great already, requires Java.