IT Pro Tuesday #219
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Welcome back to IT Pro Tuesday!
We’re looking for your favorite tips and 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 list on our website here. Enjoy.
Free Tool
DiffMerge is a multi-platform tool for visually comparing and merging files. Its graphical merge screenshot highlights the differences between files, and allows automatic merging and full edit control over the resulting file. The folder comparison shows which files are missing in one of the folders as well as which files among matched pairs is different. Kindly suggested by whyiseverynameinuse.
A Tutorial
MS-900 - Microsoft 365 Fundamentals is a terrific 4-hour video course intended for those who are new to working with MS365 or the Cloud as well as those who will be taking the MS-900 exam. Our thanks for this one goes to FederalExam9034.
Another Free Tool
SaRA is a Microsoft troubleshooting tool for Office, O365 Outlook and Windows. Runs tests to diagnose the issue and suggest the best solution. tremens tells us, "SARA is a great little tool, stupid UI, but I've had it fix all kinds of problems for me as far as activation, installation, etc. issues with 365. Even very bizarre problems, I'll give it a shot - I once had a client that couldn't print specified page ranges in Word. Tried everything with print drivers, firmware, uninstall and reinstall Office, rolling it back to prior versions, etc. Out of desperation, I ran the SARA tool on it, and poof, problem solved, heh."
One More Free Tool
O&O ShutUp10++ gives you precise control over the comfort functions in Windows 10 and 11, so you can reduce the occasions where your data is passed along unnecessarily. The simple GUI lets you tell the system when to protect your privacy by deactivating unwanted functions. sjrupp appreciates it, "so I don't have to deal with my local GP."
Humor
SurgicalStr1ke shares a harmless prank to help a colleague understand why it's a bad idea to leave their computer screen unlocked: "[S]creenshot of the desktop, set as wallpaper, hide icons. I did this in college in 2003 and it still gives me a small chuckle now." And greenwood93 suggests, "Fake windows updates are fun, a user who left their laptop open got to something like 600% one day; don't think they got much work done but at least their workstation was a lot more secure going forward - https://fakeupdate.net/"
P.S. Bonus Free Tools
ktail is designed to tail Kubernetes logs, with some nice convenience features. Detects pods and containers as they pass and tails multiple pods and containers at the same time, based on names and labels. Tails all containers by default, and will keep retrying endlessly to recover from failures. Our appreciation for this recommendation goes to azman0101.
tshark is a CLI protocol analyzer for live capture and analysis of network traffic that offers the opportunity of working in the same interface as your scripts and programs. This powerful network troubleshooting tool is actually the CLI component of Wireshark, and it’s considered a favorite of michaelpaoli.
Have a fantastic week and as usual, let us know any comments.