App Discovery: Patch My PC Home Updater, keep your apps updated easily!

I've touted many times before the 3 simple cyberhygiene rules of Brian Krebs, one of which is keep apps updated. But some apps update themselves (but you have to run them), some have external updaters, some relies on Windows update... 

Now, there is Patch My PC's Home Updater. That's right, there's an app that will scan your home PC, find the apps, and update them for you, with minimal headaches. 

While this doesn't replace ALL updaters, this will do about 80% of the updates. Just run it periodically (say, once a week)... Start it up, and just hit "update" and walk away. Come back in half an hour, and it should be done. 

How easy is that? 

You can also use this to FIND new apps to install by browsing the library of apps they scan for. These scan for mostly free alternatives to famous apps, and thus, you may discover apps that does what you pay monthly or yearly for. 

And of course, it will UNinstall apps you no longer want to use, which is another one of Kreb's cyberhygiene rules. 

So give it a try. 

For the few apps this won't update, there's another app I will recommend... in the next post. 

App Discovery: EaseUS Todo Backup 2024

The free PC backup utility space used to be dominated by Macrium Reflect. Unfortunately, it is a bit TOO good, that most people just use the free version and not enough people pay. In 2024, Macrium phased out the free version. This lead to a hunt for a replacement. And I've found that EaseUS Todo Backup 2024 seems to fit the needs of most. 

Photo by Jandira Sonnendeck on Unsplash

EaseUS is a well-known PC utilities provider using the freemium model in the US, and offers a full range of PC utilities centered around data storage, such as partition manager, data recovery, backup and restore, disk cloning, and so on. Today we will concentrate on their Backup solution, Todo Backup Free. 

Do keep in mind that in order to "encourage" you to upgrade to Todo Backup Home, the free version's throughput is limited to 100 MB/s or so. So expect a typical backup job of 1TB to take about 2-3 hours, which means this should be scheduled for overnight. 

With that limitation in mind, this is a full-featured backup which allows full backup, incremental backup, full disk backup, partition backup, even individual files and folders backup. 

The upgrade pricing is a bit weird, as multiple options are offered: yearly plan, one-time (no upgrade), or perpetual upgrade. At this time, the yearly plan is $40, the one-time fee is $60, and perpetual upgrade license is $80. All of this is for one computer only. However, please do NOT buy from the website. Download the free version and try it first. 

If you hit upgrade from the app, the price is only $30 per year, instead of $40 on the website, and lifetime upgrade price is $59, not $80. But anyway, PCWorld has a discount code: PCWORLD25 for 25% off the $30 yearly price. 

EaseUS does offer bundle savings, but you need to check their website for details. 

Personally question the utility of cloud backup, unless you have a very wide pipe broadband (cable or fiber). I think you can do better with a local RAID setup, but that's just my opinion. You should check PCWorld's Cloud Backup survey (May 2024) for their opinions. 

But you do need a backup. Please go download the free solution and make one now. Your hardware can go down. You could be hit by malware such as ransomware. And so on. Better be safe than sorry. 

App Discovery: Obsidian may be the best Evernote alternative, with MUCH MUCH MORE POWER through community plug-ins

Obsidian and rings among rocks, via Unsplash

Obsidian started out simple: a way to link and hierarchically organize a bunch Markdown (.md) files which themselves can contain links to other Markdown files, photos, videos, URLs, and much more. However, with a bit of tweaking, it became a full notetaking and note organizing app. And with additional of graph view, it became a visual tool as well, that lead many thinkers calling it "building your second brain". 

And it's free. 

There are two features that the company charge for, such as Obsidian Sync, and Obsidian Publish, but as a personal user, you don't need those features. Sync lets you clone your entire "vault" of Markdown notes and replicate it to other devices such as those of your collaboration team mates with full Git integration, while Publish turns, with a few tweaks, your vault into a public Wiki or Knowledge base, that you can edit on the fly. Personal uesrs don't need these. These are really for companies, which can also purchase at the cost of $50 per year per user, commercial license to receive priority support. But remember, personal use is free, forever. 

And it accepts "Community Plug-ins", developed by the Obsidian community that turns Obsidian into a Kanban board, adds omni-search across entire vault, enhances editing capabilities, quick citing of Wikipedia, and much much more. 

There is a way to migrate data from Evernote to Obsidian, but it's not a quick process, as you need to re-tag and re-arrange almost everything. But once you do, you'll find yourself wondering why you waited so long to do it. 

App Discovery: Camo -- why not use your smartphone as your PC webcam?

PCs generally do not come with a webcam, though laptops do. Yet the ones come with laptop are... tiny and non-upgradable. Sure, you can BUY a webcam... but why do that when there's usually at least two perfectly great cameras... in your smartphone, that's usually MUCH better than any webcam? You don't know how? Let me introduce you to Camo. 

Basically, you download Camo.Studio on the PC side, and the Camo app on the smartphone side (yes, Android and iOS compatible). Start the pairing mode, scan the QR code with the Camo app (make sure both are on the same Wifi) and voila, your smartphone cam and microphone can be used on the PC as if it's a webcam input. And you can tune it with your Camo.Studio before using it as a video feed for anything else... Zoom, Google Meet, Youtube Live, and so on. 

Your smartphone's camera are usually much more capable than any webcam. On my OG Google Pixel 6 (Pixel 8 is already out, you know) even the FRONT camera is 8 MP. Most webcams are barely capable of 1080p, unless you pay for the premium ones. Why would you? 

Best of all... All this is FREE! Both Camo.Studio and the companion app are free! Yes, they do sell a premium subscription if you want HIGHER resolution feed, more tuning power, more profiles, presets, frames, presets, but that's not my job to explain EVERYTHING to you. 

It's FREE. Just download it and TRY it yourself! How you mount it... I leave up to you.