December 1997's Featured Freeware

This month's featured freeware is T. Teranishi's Tera Term Pro. Say that three times fast ;-)! This is (IMHO) the best freeware terminal emulator available. New features in version 2.2 include (I got this from the web page):

Installer/uninstaller 
32-bit versions of TTPMACRO.EXE and KEYCODE.EXE 
Russian mode 
'[Edit] Copy table,' '[Setup] Load key map' and '[Window]' commands 
Status line of the VT terminal 
Pass-through printing 
ANSI full color 
New command-line options (/I, /L=, /LA=, /M= and /V) 
Port number just after a host name in the command line (such as 'myhost.mydomain 23') 
New read-only options in the Tera Term setup file 
New items in the keyboard setup file 
Macro execution by pressing a user defined key 
New command-line options of TTPMACRO (/I and /V) 
New macro commands 

What this list doesn't tell you is that Tera Term is ultimately one of the most configurable telnet clients available, period. There isn't a feature you can not configure. It also doesn't tell you that it supports - this is from the help file. Yes, there's a help file!

Serial port connections.
TCP/IP (telnet) connections.
VT100 emulation, and selected VT200/300 emulation.
TEK4010 emulation.
File transfer protocols (Kermit, XMODEM, ZMODEM, B-PLUS and Quick-VAN).
Scripts using the 'Tera Term Language.'
Japanese and Russian character sets.

If that isn't enough, just remember that it's free.

I really like the VT100 slash ANSI emulation of EasyTerm, but there is no scroll buffer and no scripting, though it does have features that serve these functions. It's also not very fast, which is an important consideration for me since I don't have a T-1 connection anymore, and there are problems running it under Windows 95, which is, at the moment, my primary operating system (longest uptime, unfortunately, hasn't been more than 40 hours, and no more than 6 when I'm actually using it). SimpTerm is nice and fast with very good emulation and has more features than EasyTerm, but it has a less 'intuitive' user interface and a few bugs, as is also the case with Console Telnet, but this is not unexpected since both of these are in beta. PowerTerm is definitely the best, but I don't have $150.00 for a telnet client when a free one may meet my needs and don't like waiting ten seconds for it to load, though this is by far the fastest and best terminal emulator I know of once it does get started.

I was at first hesitant to download Tera Term, because it has an installation routine - I like having total control over my installations. But I did it anyway because SimpTerm, EasyTerm, and Console Telnet just didn't do it, I can't afford PowerTerm, and the college I attended made exclusive use of it on their Windows boxes so it must be good, eh? I was, fortunately, able to do a manual installation by painfully expanding each and every file listed in the INF file. But in the end it was well worth it. It sort of bothers me though that after the manual install, I was able to back up all the program files into a RAR archive that was twice as small as the original ZIP with the installation files - this is also one of the reasons I like programs that don't have installation routines - they take less time to download.

Note to software authors: do you really need to have an installation routine? Oh, and if you program in VB, please offer a download that doesn't include the runtimes - I don't like downloading 2 MB's when I can be downloading 200 KB's.

It's also available for Windows 3.1, which is good, because I'm considering downgrading from Windows 95 (or is it upgrading?). I wish I could use only NT 4.0 and Linux (actually I'm still trying to decide between Red Hat Linux 5.0 and FreeBSD), but the printer I just bought (actually it was my sister who bought it) only works with Windows 3.1 and 95.

Well, back to Tera Term Pro. What I like about it is the ANSI color, the speed both at startup and during emulation, the keyboard mapping facilities, the scroll buffer, the ability to be the default telnet client for my browser, and, most of all, the fact that you can configure it all. If you're looking for a freeware telnet client, don't look any further than Tera Term Pro. It will most likely meet all your needs in a terminal emulator, but if you want something you can really get into, I suggest Console Telnet for that pure terminal experience (full screen mode is really cool), or if you need a fuller commercial product, I suggest PowerTerm. If you need something even better, then get Linux, the terminal emulator to end all terminal emulators. SimpTerm and EasyTerm aren't bad either, and they're free.

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