5 Old-School Apps Running on Windows 7 - Part II

PINs

Another app that stood the test of time and continues to do its job regardless of the Windows operating system it runs on is PINs. Mirek Wojtowicz is again responsible for it. The application is designed to offer you secure storage of sensitive data such as passwords, accounts, addresses, PIN numbers, etc.

PINs is free of charge and has been discontinued on March 19th 2003 and stopped at version 4.50.0.86. Just like in the previous case, it was designed to work on “any 32-bit Windows (including XP)” and continues to run with no problems on Vista as well as on Windows 7 with the same determination as ever.

What's special about it is that despite its age it continues to offer great protection for the stored data (448-bit Blowfish encryption), secure wipe methods (DoD 3 pass, DoD 7 pass and Gutmann 35 pass), and a password generator that creates countersigns of up to 56 characters. These are three features seldom encountered together in most of the applications of the sort today.



Of course, the interface has nothing to do with the latest Microsoft operating system shell and it really shows the age of the software. On the other hand, the program is designed for securing the data it stores and options such as automatic lock of the opened database after a user-set time (in minutes) are more important than the aspect.

Also, for ease of use there is the option of copying the username and password directly from the list view. There is no automatic filling, but even so, PINs can still lend you a hand. And if you take into consideration that it can also be run from a portable device and the fact that you can set it to save an additional archival copy to a location of your own as well as make BAK copies from the last saved data files, then you can say that PINs has almost all angles covered.



For an old-school application that has been tested on all graphic Microsoft operating systems PINs still does a better job than some programs of a newer generation.

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