Area two will do the same for backup software. It will list installed backup software and inform the user about the state that the installations are in. Area three which is probably the most interesting one to many Windows users will check various critical software programs and compare their version with the one in the F-Secure database. Health Check in this step checks programs like Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, the Adobe Flash plugin, Mozilla’s Firefox or Sun’s Java runtime.

The information in the solution tab obviously depend on the results of the system scan. A solve button will be displayed if problems have been found in one of the areas that have been investigated by the program. The solutions do fall a bit short, at least in the security tab as the program suggests to use F-Secure products to solve the problem.

It is only natural that a company wants to promote their products. The web application would however be useful to more users if they would have added some choice to the diagnosis. The new beta version of F-Secure Health Check 2 has ditched Microsoft’s ActiveX technology for Java. This means that it is now compatible with a wider range of Internet browsers. The developers list Internet Explorer and Firefox only but it has been successfully tested with Google Chrome as well which increases the chance that other web browsers that support Java will run the application fine as well.

Users who want to give F-Secure Health Check 2 Beta a try can go to the F-Secure website to run it from there.

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To solve this problem, I usually standardize the volume of all my audio files. To do this, I use a little program called MP3Gain. But if you do not want to add to the endless list of software installed on your computer, you can opt for getting the job done with a browser-based application. One such tool is Vloud.

Vloud allows you to upload any mp3 or wav file to the site and change its volume according to your preferences. Using the site is easy. Select the desired volume you want your file to have from the options light, loud, louder, and loudest. Then, upload the original file and wait for the changes to take place. Once the file is ready, you can listen to it online or download it to your hard drive.

The site is not without its limitations. One of them is that the uploaded file can be a maximum of 10MB. This is not a problem if you’re uploading individual songs but won’t work if you want to use a concert recording for example. Another thing I didn’t like was that the volume settings were too vague. A ‘loud’ setting does not really tell me how my file is going to sound after conversion. So I’d have to keep trying different settings till I found one I liked.

Overall though, Vloud is quite useful especially for people who do not want to be burdened with things like bitrates, decibels, and frequencies. Plus, for those who only require to change file volume once in a while, using an application like Vloud makes more sense.

What do you think of Vloud? Is it worthwhile using a web app on your audio files? What other similar tools do you know of? Let me know in the comments.

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