IT Pro Tuesday #150
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Welcome back to IT Pro Tuesday!
This week, we're asking for your favorite tools we can share with the community... those that help you do your job better and more easily. Please reply or leave a comment with your suggestions, and we'll be featuring them in the coming weeks.
As always, we’re updating the full, searchable list on our website here. Enjoy.
But on with this week's tools...! Here are the most-interesting items that have come across our desks, laptops and phones this week. Hornetsecurity has no known affiliation with any of these unless we explicitly state otherwise.
A Free Tool
Fast Software Audit offers you a quick, easy way to gather details on the installed software and Windows product keys/IDs from remote computers. Enter the computer name you want to scan, or specify multiple computers by importing a list of names from a CSV file. Results can be viewed on screen or exported to CSV for use elsewhere.
A Documentation Resource
A Proper Server Naming Scheme is a terrific blog post that explains a well-thought-out approach to hardware naming for small- to medium-sized businesses. These best practices are designed to help you avoid common problems as the list of devices grows and changes over time. Thanks for this one go to techforallseasons.
Another Free Tool
Homebrew is known as "The Missing Package Manager for macOS (or Linux)." It's designed to easily install all the useful items your original OS installer didn’t bother to include. Our appreciation for the suggestion goes to My-RFC1918-Dont-Lie.
Training Resource
A Practical Guide to (Correctly) Troubleshooting with Traceroute is a rather lengthy slide deck from Richard Steenbergen's presentation on how to make the best use of the traceroute tool in troubleshooting network connections. Walks you through the hows, whys and how tos of this highly useful tool. According to the recommendation from sletonrot, there's "some good info here."
One More Free Tool
Micro is a highly customizable, intuitive terminal-based text editor that's easy to install. Supports over 75 languages; 16, 256 and truecolor themes; and Sublime-style multiple cursors. jftuga explains, "It is very similar to Nano. It is a single-file, stand-alone executable that has mouse support, macro record/playback and syntax highlighting. It also has a Windows binary available for download (as well as Linux and MacOS)."
P.S. Bonus Free Tools
Total Commander, a simple file-manager replacement, has been around forever because it is genuinely useful and works well. While the popular Windows version is offered as shareware, the mobile version (Android, Windows Phone, PocketPC/WinCE)—which can be quite helpful in certain situations—is absolutely free.
inSSIDer is a simple tool to show how your WiFi network is configured as well as how other WiFi networks in the area are affecting yours. Also offers suggestions to improve speed and security. Can be a nice tool to suggest when users ask for help with problems on their home network. Kindly suggested by 1_1x1_1.
Have a fantastic week and as usual, let us know any comments.