halt

Online gambling is an increasing problem among internet users and particularly those that gamble regularly offline. The ease of access that the internet provides to gambling makes it simply just too tempting for some. There are some basic measures you can take to reduce the risk that you will become addicted but you can also use Halt! to help you get over it.

Halt! allows you to specifically target those pop-ups to gambling sites that often draw people in. It lets you create your own list of sites that you want to block and specifies categories with your own blocking rules. So for example, you can start by adding a category such as "$$$", add a description such as "High Risk Gambling" and set the blocking rule for this category to 'Always' and a date when this rule should expire. This is extremely useful as many pop-up blockers fail to be effective at blocking gambling ads after a few attempts because they manage to circumvent them by other means.

However be warned - Halt! was written to help people with an addiction to internet gambling so it's designed to be difficult to disable or uninstall. A password (entered during installation) is required to stop or uninstall this program and if you forget it, it's very hard to remove.

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I'm a big fan of poker but, like most games I play, I'm not very good at it. Unfortunately, unlike other pursuits, if you're not very good at poker then you probably won't be very good at paying the mortgage at the end of the month. Recently I've managed to halt my losing streak thanks to three simple computer programs.

One thing I usually have the most trouble with is working out if my hand is actually worth pursuing or if I should just fold straight away. Since installing Poker Indicator I've wised up a bit, however. This crafty app attaches itself to your online Texas Hold'em table, automatically looks at your cards, and calculates your odds of winning. It can even read your opponents' playing styles before you join the game, so you have an idea of the kind of sharks you'll be swimming with.

While I'm away from the pressure of an online game I find Draw Odds Poker Calculator to be a handy way of learning moves and honing my skills. You can simulate and memorize gaming situations, together with the associated odds, to help you make the right decisions during a real game. The program is suitable for the most used variations of draw poker - those using a 52-card deck with no wild cards, with up to five cards allowed to discard.

Those of you who are yearning for an easier ride may want to try WinHoldEm, which is an online Texas Hold'em poker bot. What this basically means is that it will play the online tables instead of you, reading the cards that have been dealt and the moves that have been made. The bot's intelligence is really determined by you though, as it needs to be programmed by the user, so it will only be as good as you though. Mind you that's not to stop you getting a poker expert to help you train it. Now there's an idea.

Is your PC running slow? Are some of your programs taking longer and longer to open? Does your hard drive sound like it's going to grind to a halt any minute? Chances are that you need to defragment your hard drive. Windows comes bundled with it's own defrag tool but if you've ever used it, you'll know that it's painfully slow and lacks any kind of useful advanced features. Here's my top ten:

• AMS FAST Defrag - Includes various other tools to speed-up your PC

• Auslogics Disk Defrag - Automatically shut-down your PC when the defrag is done

• Power Defragmenter GUI - Utilizes a special PowerMode defrag method

• SpeeDefrag - Shuts down your PC and defrags with minimum running processes

• JkDefrag - Defrags external devices such as floppies and USB sticks

• PageDefrag - Shows how fragmented your paging files and Registry files are

• VoptXP - Schedule defrags at specific times and dates

• UltraDefrag - Open source defragger with 4 different defrag types

• mst Defrag - Very comprehensive defragger packed with advanced features

• IObit SmartDefrag - Defrags in the background whilst you use your PC