Tips & Tricks

40+ great open source apps & games to trick out your new Windows install by Lee Mathews May 18th 2009 at 3:00PM

This weekend I finished setting up a fresh triple-boot install on my MSI laptop. With my operating systems ready to go, the time had come to start reinstalling applications. While it wasn't a conscious decision, I noticed that the majority of my apps were Open Source - so I decided to keep the ball rolling. Even if you haven't just gone through a reformat, these are great applications and well worth installing. If you have, then hopefully this list will provide you with a solid base of programs to get you started with your fresh, new Windows install! Web Browsers: Chromium, Firefox They excel at different things, so I install both browsers by default. Chromium is great for allpurpose surfing, while I use Firefox and my favorite extensions to tackle my daily web-based work. Office: OpenOffice.Org, Sumatra, PDFCreator For lightweight PDF reading and creation from any Windows app, Sumatra and PDFCreator are solid options. OpenOffice.Org, well, it's the name to beat in open source suites. Media: Songbird, VLC, Handbrake, DVD Flick I've been using VLC for ages, and it does everything I need as my video player of choice. Audio duties I leave up to Songbird, which has matured into a fantastic application over the past two years. I use Handbrake to, uh, rip my non-encrypted, personal DVDs. DVD Flick lets me burn said rips back onto a disc.

File Transfer: Free Download Manager, Cabos, eMule FDM is a very underrated torrent app, and it has plenty of other download-boosting abilities as well. I chose it over Vuze because I need FDM's extras (partial zips, Flash downloading, Rapidshare integration) more than Vuze's additional media-handling chops. Cabos trims Limewire down to the bare minimum for the occasional one-off Gnutella download. As for eMule, I use it to find things that I can't find elsewhere. Imaging: ZScreen, Inkscape, Gimphoto/GimPad, Flickr Uploadr If you're comfortable with Photoshop but looking for a free alternative, go with Gimphoto instead of Gimp – the interface is very Adobe-esque. For vector image jobs, Inkscape can't be beat. ZScreen handles my screen captures and Flickr Uploadr, well, it does what it says. Burning and Backup: Infrarecorder, WinCDEmu, Bonkey, and DirSyncPro These three apps make short work of mounting disc image files, burning just about anything, syncing folders, and keeping a current copy of your files in a safe location.

Messaging and Social Networking: Pidgin and Spaz Don't sic Mr. Stallman on me – I know Spaz is built on Adobe Air, but the client itself is open. As for multi-protocol messaging apps, Pidgin is a tough bird to beat. Maintenance and Utilities: 7zip, Belvedere, Ultra Defrag, Disk Cleaner, TrueCrypt Lifehacker's Belvedere is a great way to organize your files and folders with minimal effort. Ultra Defrag and Disk Cleaner (and a handful of helpful plugins) keep your hard drive clutter free and performing its best. 7zip waits in your context menu to extract files from (or cram files into) archives of all kinds. For encrypting files, folders, or entire volumes, Truecrypt is fast and reliable. Desktop Enhancements: RocketDock, Launchy, Virtual Dimension You don't really need both RocketDock and Launchy. If you prefer eye candy, go with Rocket Dock. If you're a keyboard magician, go with Launchy. I run Virtual Dimension because my forays into Linux have me hooked on the benefits of virtual desktops.

Games: AssaultCube, Enigma, FreeCiv, LexJongg, LinCity, Neverball, Nexuiz, PokerTH, TORCS, Tremulous, WinSudoku, Wormux, Zombies. Using your computer shouldn't be all work, all the time. Kick back and relax or give you brain a casual workout with these great games. LexJongg puts a slightly technogeek spin on traditional mahjong. FPS fans should check out AssaultCube, Nexuiz, and Tremulous. FreeCiv and LinCity offer OSS takes on two classic PC simulations. TORCS is a solid 3d racing sim which will hopefully soon include online action. Wormux and Zombies are fun turn-based strategy games. WinSudoku and PokerTH - I'll assume you know what those are all about. There you go - plenty of great OSS to load on your own freshly reinstalled system (or a friend's)! If I missed one of your favorite apps or games, share it in the comments!

Four apps that will/might keep your wife from killing you by Lee Mathews Oct 29th 2008 at 9:00AM

...when her computer crashes. Jason's writeup of PMS Buddy inspired me to write a sort of Public Service Announcement. Since I'm sure a lot of our loyal readers are "the friend that knows about computers," I thought I'd share some programs that I should've used long before my wife's hard drive took a dirt nap. Prepping a close one's computer for a catastrophic event is kind of like stockpiling supplies for a fallout shelter. When the proverbial bomb drops, you'll be safe - as long as you've got the right provisions. 1. GMail. I took the liberty of setting up what I think is a phenomenally crafty stealth email backup. Step one: enable IMAP and copy all the old messages to GMail. Step two: set up GMail to automatically check our ISP's crappy POP server. Step Three: set Outlook Express to access GMail via POP and leave the original copy on the server. Step four: twiddle thumbs. All emails are now stored in the cloud where a hard drive is a lot less likely to take a steaming hot bath in coffee. I've chosen to use POP instead of IMAP because of the odd problem we've had with our GMail for Domains access. Phone calls from home that start "Why is it telling me the server can't be contacted?" aren't good for my health.

2. Cobian Backup. I've used Cobian for a while now. Well, that's not totally accurate. It was installed, and I had a job created to back files up to my trusty old XBox's FTP server, but it kept failing and I never bothered to correct the problem. Since I took ten minutes to fix the issue, it's been working great. I've currently got it saving archives to an external SATA drive as well as the XBox. Cobian is set to grab the bulk of the important stuff: My Documents, Music, Application Data, Local Settings, Desktop, and the like. It's set to run nightly, and shadow copy support means it'll back up even if certain apps (like Firefox, OE, and Photoshop) are left running.

3. GBridge. Ok, this might not work for everyone, but I work for a smallish family business and I'm "the computer guy." That means I get to build my own workstation and hand-pick the parts in it. The RAID mirror makes an ideal location for offsite storage of encrypted data, and GBridge is a handy way to get it there. Its Hamachi-like VPN and autosync make maintaining a spare set of fonts, Photoshop brushes, and other things I usually forget so easy it almost hurts (actually forgetting these causes a great deal more hurt). As a bonus, GBridge also gives me zero-config VNC access to troubleshoot other problems I've caused on my wife's laptop from the safety of my office.

4. XXClone. XXClone is a very easy-to-use app for cloning a system drive while still in Windows. It's been faster than Macrium Reflect for me, and Macrium's free version doesn't support incremental backups. After the initial copy, synching the new changes is obviously a lot quicker than re-cloning the entire drive.

One downside is that you can't get rid of the confirmation dialog in the free version - which puts the kibosh on scheduling with command line switches. Cloning a drive on a schedule is definitely the best way to cover your butt, and it may be worth paying for in your case. For me it's the initial clone with all the vital apps that matters. If I remember to do a few incrementals here and there, GREAT. If not, well, it's the data that's most important and I think I've got that covered. I won't guarantee that running these four programs will allow you to escape totally unscathed, but if they prevent one angry phone call to your workplace then I've done my job.

24 Great Open Source Apps for Admins & Technicians by Lee Mathews Oct 1st 2008 at 9:00AM

I'm always on the lookout for apps that can ease my workload or free up some room in my budget, and open source applications are an excellent way for me to accomplish both. If you're in the same boat as me, hopefully you're already utilizing some open source options. If not, I've put together this list of two dozen great applications that I can depend on to keep things running smoothly on my office LAN and customer systems as well. Some of these you'll recognize, but I hope that there are some that are new to you as well. 1. PING - I may be beating a dead horse here with my love of PING, but it's just a great

piece of open source. Drive imaging with network and spanning support, password blanking, it's just an excellent app. 2. NTRegEdit - The Windows Registry editor hasn't seen many changes over the years.

NTRegEdit offers some great additional features like recursive export, color coding, improved searching, and quick edit window below the values list.

3. Safarp - A portable alternative to appwiz.cpl (add/remove programs), it provides a few

extra useful features - like silent uninstalls and repairs of Windows Installer-based apps. It also opens in a flash, unlike the clunky appwiz. 4. WPKG - Maintaining software installs on computers in a small business environment can

be a little frustrating sometimes. WPKG gives you push/pull installs and it can run as a service, so silent installs run transparently with no user ineteraction. 1. ClamWin - Open source antivirus that does damn near everything the "big boys" do:

automatic updates, scheduled scans, email scanning. There's no realtime shield, but coupling it with the next app in the list lets ClamWin do that, too. 2. Winpooch - Originally designed to detect activity from trojans and other spyware,

Winpooch monitors program activity on your system and gives you greater control over them (like preventing an .exe from connecting to the net or writing to a system folder). 3. Vispa 4. Xpy - These two offer fast ways to tweak XP or Vista by turning off unwanted services

and features. 5. WCD - Its stands for Wherever Change Directory, and it's a real timesaver for anyone

that works with the Windows command prompt. All it needs is part of a directory name to change to it (wcd username to get to a user's home folder). 6. Angry IP Scanner - If I'm asked to inventory a location, I usually start with Angry IP. It

quickly builds a list of all live hosts on a network and makes it easy to locate the addresses for devices like Wireless APs, print servers, and the like. 7. Startup Manager - MSconfig's startup control pane doesn't have a lot of functionality.

Startup Manager is an excellent replacement, and it's available in a portable version as well. 8. JKDefrag - Anything that automates system maintenance is worth a look, in my opinion.

JKDefrag's screensaver installer puts your users' idle desktops to work for you, defragmenting whenever the .SCR kicks in. 9. WinDirStat - Need to locate spacehogs on a user's hard drive? Fire up WinDirStat and let

it go to work and it'll build a detailed (if not visually distracting) report of where drive space is being allocated. 10. DeltaCopy - A fast incremental backup tool based on rsync. It supports scheduled

backups and email notifications, and syncs client machines to virtual directories on a central server. I back up our point of sale history with this app - because a full copy of 1.2gb doesn't make sense when only a few hundred kilobytes have changed in the last business day. Both the client and server apps are included in the 6.3mb download.

11. EchoVNC 12. InstantVNC - Run these two together and you've got a free (albeit visibly slower) version

of TeamViewer. Make sure you (or your client) enters a password when launching InstantVNC, or anyone viewing the list of clients with Echo could, theoretically, take control of the machine. 13. Putty - A fantastic portable SSH and telnet client. What else can you say about Putty? 14. InfraRecorder - I don't necessarily want burning software installed on all my client

desktops, but I need it from time to time to do a quick backup. Since InfraRecorder is portable, I can run it from my flash drive or a network share. 15. 7-Zip - I know 7-Zip doesn't have the prettiest GUI, but I rarely use it from anywhere but

the context menu. It works like a champ and handles all the archive types I deal with on a daily basis. 16. FreeOTFE - If you have any sensitive data on your network, you may want to have a look

at Free On The Fly Encryption. It sports an easy-to-use interface that allows the creation of virtual encrypted drives. There's also a PDA version available to protect mobile data. 17. QLiner Hotkeys - I love my hotkeys, and I miss them when I'm working on someone

else's system. QLiner is portable, so I can just fire it up on an unfamiliar rig and access them without missing a beat. Add in the Zip tool to archive files with a single keypress. 18. HealthMonitor - Keep tabs on your servers (or workstations) and get email or SMS alerts

when trouble's afoot. It'll monitor everything from ram and drive space to services and event logs. 19. Memtest - The tool I rely on to troubleshoot RAM issues. I've never run a Memtest and

had it miss a faulty module. If the test does't launch or if the screen goes red, I know it's found the problem. 20. DBAN - Darik's Boot and Nuke is a nice tool to keep handy if you donate old hardware.

It's available as a floppy, USB, or CD image, and will locate and securely wipe the contents of just about any hard drive. It's even certified by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Got another open source gem that helps you do the work of a dozen admins (or at least saves you some headaches)? Sound off!

7 Multi-Site Torrent Search Tools For the Swarthy Downloader by Lee Mathews Sep 19th 2008 at 9:30AM

So, it's torrent booty ye be after? Well, matey, I'll be happy to share a list of me favorite places to find forbidden treasures. Millions of torrents, thousands of places to look for them...What's a wayfarin' buccaneer to do? Why, search a whole pile of places at the same time, of course. After all, you're more likely to find gold with seven maps to the same pot than you are with just one. Enough of the played-out pirate jargon already, on to the sites! Simultaneous Searching NowTorrents. Searches up to twelve sites at once. I like the file type tabs and health indicator, and they offer a Firefox and IE compatible search plugin. uSniff. I wrote about uSniff before, and I use it quite often. I don't really search a lot of different sites, usually just Pirate Bay and IsoHunt, and they're both supported (along with six others). The interface is clean and responds quickly - the search box throws some people off, though. I don't understand why, it's giant, orange, and says "search" on it. They also have a search plugin for IE and Firefox. ScrapeTorrent. Offers a nice preference page and searches nine sites at once. Piratebay, IsoHunt, Mininova, and Demonoid are included, and they're my go-to sites anyways. I approve! Speckly. I hate the way it displays results: gobs and gobs of text, Google style, and all on one page. There aren't any sorting options, though you can at least view by file type. Torrentz. Technically it searches multiple sites, but you'll get a general results page first. Clicking one of the results will take you to a listing of all the individual torrents. I find it an annoying

process, and don't use Torrentz as a result. Manual Multi-Site Searching (Radio buttons and whatnot) Torrent Pond / ActiveDots. 22 search options for you to search one at a time. I suppose it beats visiting all the sites individually. Way back when, this was my multi-site search of choice. Torrent Finder. Ok, this one is just ridiculous. Do you really want to spend your time searching 156 torrent sites? There's what, a half dozen or so that are really, really good? I'm not a fan of this behemoth, but it scores some points for being exhaustive. You know where to find them, now fire up your favorite client and start downloading some torrents!

16 (or so) apps I'm thankful for by Lee Mathews Nov 27th 2008 at 11:00AM

It's Thanksgiving day for those of you in the United States, time to reflect upon the things for which you're truly thankful. While I'm sure there are many more noble things to list, this is Downloadsquad, after all, and what would be more fitting than a list of programs I appreciate? 16. Cabos. I rarely use a Gnutella client any more. When there is the odd song stuck in my head that necessitates a one-off download, Cabos is what I use. It's got a clean, simple interface, and it works - and that's really all I'm after. 15. Flash Player. Damn you, Adobe. Now that v10 has taken care of some of the CPU and memory issues, it's hard to begrudge Flash. There are just way, way too many addictive little games and excellent web applications that have been built using it. 14. FastCopy. My boss also runs a DJ business, and transferring his multi-hundred gig library

from drive to drive was starting to drive me insane. After stupidly giving Windows a crack at the job once, I quickly hunted down a better tool for the job. FastCopy with the buffer cranked up made (relatively) short work of the task. 13. Find and Run Robot. It's not quite a flashy as the more popular Launchy, but it's much lighter on resources and gets the job done just as well. There are also tons of great extensions for it. For those who swear by the power of the keyboard, FARR is a must have. 12. MalwareBytes Anti-malware. My favorite weapon against infested customer computers. If it were fully portable it'd be even better, but since I can install and update it safe mode I'm not too concerned. MalwareBytes scans quickly and does an amazing job at finding and uprooting all kinds of fiendish software. 11. VirtualBox. In my continuing quest to find one Linux distro that I can finally stick with, VirtualBox is my right-hand app. Now that I've got some decent hardware to virtualize on, I was able to ditch my frankenlaptop and give it a well-deserved rest. I can't even guess how many times I formatted the poor devil's hard drive. 10. LastPass. I admit it. I was guilty of at least one of my "five ways to surf like a complete moron." I used the same password on just about every site. In my defense, it was very strong. Now, however, I leave the grunt work up to LastPass. I've got one memorable but insanely difficult master password and let it remember my sites for me. It's got a form filler now, too. Who doesn't want to avoid repetitive typing? 9. ImgBurn. I only started using ImgBurn after seeing it pop up repeatedly in comments on some of my posts. You guys were right - it's a great burning app, and it's doing a fantastic job at backing up my WII games. Being out one $60 disc with no copy is enough for me, thanks. 8. Skype. When my wife and I were having serious withdrawals while being away from our son for the first time, Skype came to the rescue. Thanks to its excellent video conferencing we were able to hear our son tell us that he didn't miss us at all face to face - and follow it up by telling us to talk to grandma because he was all done. 7. Chrome. Though I only use it occasionally, I really appreciate its existence. Because of Chrome and the competition over browser share, we're more likely than ever to see great developments in all our favorite web browsing applications. 6. Photoshop. I really want to love the Gimp, but it still frustrates me from time to time. For example, why does my image not redraw when I crop it? Why is working with type such a pain sometimes? Photoshop is still the grand master of image editing kung fu, and it keeps getting better - CS4 even runs in native mode on my Vista x64 install. 5. OpenOffice.org. The big reason I love OpenOffice: it helps me combat retail customers who beg for a pirated copy of Microsoft Office. It looks and acts enough like the original that I've yet to hear a complaint back. Except, of course, that their workplace computer doesn't know what to do with OOO's native formats. Sigh. Maybe someday.

4. Free antivirus. Thank you, Grisoft, Aliwil, Avira, Comodo, Clam, et al. With so many great, free options available to home users, I'm always surprised to see a system come in with no protection at all. It's even harder to imagine people that get suckered into paying $90 for rogue apps like SuperWin Antivirus Zapper Gold 2009 Pro Edition Plus. 3. Your DVD backup solution. It's my stinking movie, and I should be able to have a security blanket in case the disc gets damaged. Also, thanks for including all those trailers and disabling the menu button on the DVD I bought. I use Handbrake and DVD43 to get the job done, but there are plenty of other good options out there. 2. Your torrent client. I'm still using uTorrent, and I'll probably never switch. It's tiny and works well, and I've never used another client that was appreciably speedier. Regardless of which client you use, .torrent files provide countless hours of fun and excitement for us all - legal or otherwise! 1. Firefox. Hands down the most used application on my computer. Firefox is a great browser, and the development community keeps pumping out great extensions for us to install. Michael Arrington once called Google Chrome a "Windows killer," but surely Firefox (and its thousands of platform independent XPI addons) is a more likely executioner. Feel free to chime in with the apps you'd put on your list - everyone at Downloadsquad appreciates your suggestions!

40+ awesome free Windows apps you can download in 2 seconds by Lee Mathews Jun 7th 2009 at 6:00PM Depending on your internet connection you might be able to download a lot more (or a lot less) than 1Mb in two seconds - but calling this a post about apps under a meg just isn't quite as much fun! No, you don't really need to pay too much attention to an application's hard drive footprint any more. After all, when you can buy a 1.5Tb drive for less than $150US, what difference does a few megs here or there make? On the other hand, it's amazing to see what some developers are able to accomplish with a very small amount of code. There are a ton of great, free applications that have been created in less than 1Mb - I didn't fully realize just how many until I started putting this list together. This is by no means a complete list, so if your favorite got overlooked make sure to share it in the comments!

Desktop/Shell Enhancements Launchy (408Kb) - Hotkeys FTW! Launchy does more than hotkeys, of course, but even if you add a bucketload of plugins it's still under 1Mb. Open++ (114Kb) - Helps you tweak your context menu six ways from Sunday. Pair it with another app like NirCmd for a nice one-two punch. ViGlance (198Kb) - Want Windows 7's iconized taskbar in XP or Vista? ViGlance pulls it off in just under 200Kb. It also swaps the start button for the orb (on XP, of course) and does program grouping and pop-up window lists. VirtuaWin (385Kb) - Most Linux distributions enable multiple virtual desktops by default. Windows doesn't support them out of the box - so you'll need an app like VirtuaWin. It's a good way to keep your workspace organized. XNeat (797Kb) - No need to bother with separate apps to shuffle your taskbar icons, roll up windows, or add transparency. XNeat does it all in a single, tiny package. Also allows you to hide windows, minimize to tray, create keyboard shortcuts, and a whole lot more. Encryption DiskCryptor (740Kb) - One thing TrueCrypt can do that OmZiff can't is encrypt volumes. DiskCryptor can do it, too, and it's well under the 1Mb mark LockNote (320Kb) - If the only thing you really want to encrypt are some private thoughts and notes, Steganos' GPL LockNote is a good choice.

OmZiff (408Kb) - Protecting sensitive data with encryption is never a bad idea. While OmZiff doesn't have the massive featureset of TrueCrypt, it's one-tenth the size and provides all the essential functions and includes a file shredder and password generator. File Tools 7-Zip (919Kb) - Sure, 7-zip's main application window is ugly, but who uses it? All the archiving and extracting power you need is just a right-click away. Everything (334Kb) - A great desktop search tool, Everything indexes your drive contents quicky and supports find-as-you-type. There's a portable version available as well, and it's even smaller. FastCopy (194Kb) - Both FastCopy and TeraCopy are great, free apps that make copying and moving large amounts of data easier. For me, FastCopy wins because it's free for commercial use, Open Source, and about one quarter the size of TeraCopy.

Fling (230Kb) - Those cheap hard drives make an excellent place to back up and archive your files. Fling not only handles drive-to-drive sync, but it also plays well with FTP servers and USB flash drives. It's one of my favorite discoveries this year. QDir (439Kb) - If you can get used to the multi-pane crazines, QDir is an awesome tool for manually managing your files and folders. Space Sniffer (863Kb) - CCleaner does a great job of removing crap from your system, but sometimes you need to dig a little deeper. Space Sniffer helps you locate unwanted space hogs graphically. Suction (180Kb) - One great way to keep mess to a minimum on your system is to consolidate similar directories - that's exactly what Suction does. It's portable, too! WinCD Emu (783Kb) - Daemon Tools and Virtual CloneDrive are more well-known programs for mounting ISO images as virtual optical drives in Windows, but WinCD Emu provides almost

the same functionality in a smaller package. It handles ISO, IMG, CUE, BIN, and RAW files. Internet and Networking

Ammyy Admin (548Kb) - While it lacks TeamViewer's speed and bonus features, Ammyy still provides firewall-friendly remote control. There are no ports to open, and if trust is an issue you can run your own Ammyy router (85Kb) instead of using theirs. GMail Notifier Plus (985Kb) - With kicked-up support for Windows 7's jumplists, this is a useful, sexy helper app for anyone with a GMail account. Hamachi (989Kb) - Even though it's about 50% bigger than it used to be, Hamachi is still pretty dang small - and very useful. Its zero-config VPN makes remote access to your systems a breeze.

HydraIRC (949Kb) - The installer pushes HydraIRC over 1MB, but the portable version squeaks in under the wire. Features a tabbed interface, skin support, DCC chat and transfers, channel

monitoring, and loads more. iFTP (838Kb) - I love the second line from the developer's site: " I originally wrote i.Ftp to be the first freeware graphical client for BeOS, but someone beat me to it by a few days and well nobody notices who comes 2nd." That might be true, but he still put together a very capable FTP client with SFTP support. NewsSifter (262Kb) - An intelligent RSS feed reader that analyzes new items based on content and sorts them into categories that you create. Putty (444Kb) - Classic SSH/terminal client. 'Nuf said. uTorrent (270Kb) - I've been using uTorrent as long as I've been downloading torrent files. It's got all the features I need in a client (and more) and it's well under the 1Mb mark even if you add the WebUI zip file. Sure, there are other options, but uTorrent takes it easy on my system resources and just gets the job done.

Wakoopa (309Kb) - A fun (and informative) social app, Wakoopa tracks your application usage and lets you see what programs other users are running. It's a great way to discover apps you may not have tried before. Multimedia Evil Player (537Kb) - A lightweight, minimal audio player, Evil Player support all the major formats and streams Icecast and Shoutcast (which can be recorded as well). Fotografix (370Kb) - This little gem has generated quite a bit of buzz since I first wrote it up. It's an excellent lightweight Photoshop alternative, with features like layers, masks, filters, scripts, and editable type. If the developer's site is down, grab the file from Rapidspread.

Greenshot (160Kb) - An open source screen capture tool, Greenshot supports full screen, window, and selection captures, saving to multiple image formats, and annotations. Both a portable version and installer (404Kb) are available. iDump (197Kb) - Need a free, portable app to backup the contents of an iPod? iDump is a good tool for the job, and it downloads in a flash - even on dial-up. NCH Express Burn (390Kb) - ImgBurn is my default Windows burning application, but Express Burn sports a lot of the same features and packs them into a much smaller package. VideoCacheView (65Kb) - It's hard to pick a single NirSoft app to list, because so many of Nir's utilities are under 1Mb and they're all handy. This one scours your browsers' cache files for FLVs and SWFs and allows you to save them for offline viewing. Office and Productivity ArsClip (986Kb) - A better clipboard manager with tons of configuration options and features. It's packaged as a zip and totally portable.

CintaNotes (365Kb) - drop it on your Flash drive, and CintaNotes provides an excellent way to collect snippets, links, and any other text data. It supports tagging and search-as-you-type. Converber (253Kb) - Its unit-conversion super powers are tought to beat. You might not use Converber often, but it's small enough to keep around just in case. KA TypeIn (920Kb) - A fantastic little app that lets you easily create and reuse text snippets. You can get advanced with it as well since it supports variables. Also does autocompletion. List² (32kb) - You certainly don't need Excel to create very basic spreadsheet-style lists. This app is more than capable, and it takes up about as much space on your drive as the first page of Excel's help file. TinyPDF (586Kb) - Just north of half a meg, and able to create good quality PDFs from any application via file > print. No longer freeware, but you can grab the last free installer from Freeware Files. TinySpell (590kb) - Not all our favorite apps include a spellchecker. TinySpell fills the gaps and boasts a 110,00 word dictionary. WinWorkBar (593Kb) - A productivity-boosting calendar and todo list / GTD application rolled into a sidebar (that can be set to autohide). Utilities and Maintenance

CCleaner (979Kb) - One of the best file and registry cleanup tools around, and the portable version still still weighs in under 1Mb. FileHippo Update Checker (154Kb) - FileHippo is a great place to download popular free applications. It's not cluttered with deceptive ads and the site is well-organized. The Updater is a smart way to keep your installers up-to-date. HijackThis (793Kb) - A must-have for malware cleanup. I don't recommend HJT to casual users, but if you're a DIY-er with a good idea what should and shouldn't be in your registry, it belongs in your toolkit. Magical Jellybean Keyfinder (367Kb) - Before you reformat your system it's a good idea to back up the product keys for your installed programs. Jellybean is a free, Open Source app that quickly digs up your keys and saves them to a TXT or CSV file. NirCmd (86Kb) - I tried, but deep down I knew I couldn't get through this list without a second NirSoft app. NirCmd packs a ton of command-line Kung Fu in a single download.

Process Lasso (544Kb) - Gives you better control over the processes running on your system. If you're typically using loads of applications at once, Process Lasso can help keep your system running smoothly. Tweak things manually, or let ProBalance do the work for you. UltraDefrag (374Kb) - A good defrag tool helps keep your hard drive running like clockwork. Under half a meg and open source, UltraDefrag even comes in 64-bit flavors and there's a micro

build (as if 374Kb wasn't small enough already). Unlocker (252Kb) - I hate trying to delete a file only to have Windows notify me that I can't because the file is in use. Unlocker provides a simple remedy to that problem.

4 portable app suites to power up your USB flash drive by Lee Mathews Jun 22nd 2009 at 10:00AM Portable applications suites are a great way to get your hands on a ton of useful software with minimal fuss. Got a new flash drive, or maybe an old one you don't know what to do with? Throw one of these suites on it and you've got an instant software Swiss Army Knife. PortableApps.com - John T. Haller's project is the most well-known suite on the 'net. It includes Firefox, OpenOffice (or AbiWord in the light version), Pidgin, Thunderbird, Sunbird, Sumatra PDF, KeePass, and more. Haller is very good for keeping the core up-todate - you'll usually see new versions of the Mozilla apps the same day they're released. LiberKey - The Ultimate version will take up half a gig on your drive, and it's packed with useful programs, including technician favorites like CPU-Z, RegShot, Revo Uninstaller, Unlocker. There are also loads of multimedia, networking, and internet apps. The 180Mb basic version is a lot like PortableApps with the addition of Piriform's tools (CCleaner, Defraggler, Recuva). They've got a handy comparison chart posted as well. One omission worth noting: OpenOffice. Lupo PenSuite - In addition to a giant list of portable applications, Lupo also includes links to popular web-based apps like Flickr, G.ho.st, PixIr, RTM, Virustotal, and Zoho. Though, if you're using a portable browser you likely have all your favorite web apps bookmarked there anyway. If you don't need the full 300Mb, there's also a lite (90Mb) version which is like the PortableApps core with several technician's tools bolted on. As noted by LOC in the comments: "The Lupo PenSuite does have a page with links to many other portable or slim install browsers such as Chrome and Opera etc. (Also, CrazyBrowser and other lesser known browsers)" - Thanks! WinPenPack - WinPenPack offers five different versions. There's the mammoth 2Gb Ultimate version (not every portable Windows application ever, but close enough), 370Mb essentials, and packs tailored for students, gamers, and web developers. I was a little surprised to see that only one of these (Lupo Full) includes a browser other than

Firefox (it includes Opera as well). For Chrome on the go, you can download Carsten Knoblauch's portable version or SRWare Iron portable.

5 great program downloaders and updaters for Windows by Lee Mathews May 27th 2009 at 11:00AM

One big ease-of-use advantage Linux distributions have over Windows is the process of installing and updating applications - thanks to repositories and software like Debian's apt-get. Running Windows doesn't mean that you can't easily maintain your app installs. With a few helpful (and free) downloaders you can add that missing functionliaty to your system, too! Here are five that I find particularly helpful - share your favorites in the comments! Anti-Malware Toolkit (pictured above) - If you download malware fighting apps frequently, you need AMT. Nearly 40 programs are supported, including must-haves like MalwareBytes, CCleaner, Autoruns, Unlocker, Rootkit Revealer, and more. AMT also supports command line arguments for easy batch scripting and scheduling.

FileHippo Update Checker - FileHippo is one of the best places out there to download software. The site is well organized, and they do a good job of only listing quality apps. Their update checker makes it easy to keep your core free applications up to date. It's also available as a portable application.

GetIt - Wondering why AppSnap, AppUpdater, and Win-Get aren't listed? It's because GetIt rolls all three into a single interface, is able to download over 400 applications, and integrates nicely with FARR. Don't worry about installing the supporting cast ahead of time, GetIt will grab them for you on the first launch. GetIt is also portable now, though you'll need to install the regular version first then create the portable file yourself.

Chrome Nightly Updater - If you prefer to rock a cutting-edge (and unstable) browser, nightly builds are the way to go. CNU makes short work of keeping your Chromium install hot-off-thecompiler fresh.

Ketarin - Are you the hands-on type? Ketarin is the downloader for you - think of it as a kickedup frontend for wget. Since developers can frequently change folders and filenames (hello, version strings!) Ketarin can be a bit of work to maintain. It's not all DIY, though, as Ketarin also supports FileHippo program IDs - which never change. User Suggestions

Radar Sync - Want to keep both your applications and drivers updated? Check out RadarSync. The free (ad supported) version has all the functionality you need, and upgrading to the pro version will get you scheduled scanning and downloading. You can also choose to backup your software as an online pack with Packzoola. It's a nice safety net in case something goes horribly wrong with Windows and you have to re-download.

Update Notifier - Launch the EXE and you can choose to install Notifier or run it portably. It supports a broader range of apps than FileHippo. The download procedure is a little cumbersome, however. You'll be sent to the Notifier web site to manually click through (and read AdSense ads).

Forty-Three of The Best Free Windows Enhancements That You Should Know About Submitted by Samer on June 23, 2009 – 8:52 am58 Comments

There is an impressive range of excellent freeware Windows enhancements and tweaks. This posting will present forty three excellent additions to Windows that you will like. When I first thought of this post, I more or less knew what programs I wanted to list here. The common theme that brought these together was that they were all really cool Windows “enhancements”: i.e. apps that tweak or change the way we work with files, folders, applications, or the system environment itself (or, apps that brings functionality to the Windows environment that could or should have been a builtin option in Windows

).

Two more things to say before presenting the list itself; the first is that this list might not include some well known titles because in some cases I shied away from Windows enhancement apps that try to do many things at once in favor of simpler, more straightforward ones. The second is to be aware that many of these have overlapping functions and hotkeys that you wouldn’t

necessarily want installed on the same system at the same time (you also dont want to overburden your PC, so install selectively). Note: this post took a long time to write, so please Stumble or Digg! Here’s the list: 1- Fences: do you ever wish that there was some way to organize your icons into general, clearly-labeled areas on your desktop that you could move or organize without needing to deal with each icon individually? If so, you’re in luck, as this is exactly what Fences does. You can create floating areas on your desktop, label them, and ove icons of any type into them; you can then re-arrange these by moving entire units around, etc. Fences will do two more things for you (1) it will preserve/save icon locations on your screen, and (2) it will allow you to double click an empty area on the desktop to hide all icons. Note that Fences is still in beta and seems to exhibit some bugs on some machines. It works fine on my XP (with XP’s Dr. Watson debugger disabled). 2- QTTabbar: ever imagined using explorer windows in a Firefox style tabbed interface? This is essentially what this (terrific) freeware does, but it also manages to deliver a range of nice functions, including the ability to browse contents of folders without clicking into them (see screenshot), the option to bookmark groups of open tabs, a searchbox for filtering files, image previews on mouse-hover, as well as a slew of others. QTTabbar is extendible through a handful of plugins that provide extra functionality, including a “folder memo” plugin to add notes to folders. 3- Filebox Extender: this one adds new buttons on the title bar next to the minimize, maximize, and close buttons that provide favorite folders and recent folders access anywhere (including file open/save dialogs). Other functions: a “stay on top” pushpin button, and a window roll-up button that hides all but the title bar of a window. There are many apps that are designed to access favorite folders and files, but this one is one of the most original and innovative. 4- Desktop Media: this may be familiar to you if you’ve worked with Liunx. Desktop Media is a free program that creates automatic shortcuts on the desktop whenever you plug in a USB drive, CD, or other media. The shortcuts will automatically disappear when the media is ejected. This program also provides an interesting option whereby hardlink rather than shortcuts can be (optionally) created on NTFS drives (see “Link Shell Extension” below for more on hardlinks). 5- Sizer: allows you to you right click on the “maximize”button on the title bar in order to quickly change the size and/or placement of the active Window using a selection of pre-set profiles. You can add your own user-defined sizes and placements.

While this function hardly sounds revolutionary, I will tell you that once you start using this one you will wonder how you managed without it. Sizer will prove to be very useful and is in fact one of my first installs on a new machine. 6- Folder Menu: this is a terrific little free app that displays favorite folders anywhere on Middle mouse click or using a hotkey. It can even invoke favorite folders in Windows and MS Office open/save dialogs. This is a new Autohotkey-based program that deserves to be more well known; since installing it it’s become one of my favorites, and I am betting that you will like it as well. 7- Folder Size: ever noticed that Windows’ detail folder view does not display sizes for folders? Well guess what, this free Windows extension adds a column to Windows’ “detailed” view that displays folder sizes. Check out my review for how to get this set up. The latest information as I write this is that a new version 2.5 is about to be released, so watch out for that. 8- WinSplit Revolution: a freeware program that brings instant, versatile docking and resizing of windows to the sides of the and/or corners of the screen. But what is really nice is that the program allows you to control the placement of your windows by using hotkeys, by using a “virtual numpad” control that is prompted by clicking on the app’s icon in the system tray, or by so-called “drag’n go”, which involves moving your window around the screen while pressing Ctrl+Alt (whereupon it will display visual previews of the resize area as you move your window around - see screenshot). For another interesting program that offers a similar function check out PowerResizer, which is also excellent. 9- Q-Dir: is a free dual-pane file manager that is simply terrific. It offers a slew of nice functions, including bookmarking favorite folders, a search box for filtering files and folders, the ability to save configurations of open panes and folders, and a whole host of other nifty options. What is quite innovative about Q-Dir are the nifty buttons on the toolbar that let the user access multiple configurations of file panes, quickly and easily. I personally use Q-Dir as a replacement for Windows explorer, such that clicking on a folder in Windows will open it using Q-Dir; In that sense it is the ultimate Windows enhancement. (See my original review of the program for instructions on how to do this, find favorite feature #6). 10- Taskbar shuffle: this freeware Windows extension gives you the ability to reorder the tabs in your taskbar (on the bottom of your desktop) by dragging them at will. Very cool! 11- Standalone Stack: this freeware allows you to create folder shortcuts that, when clicked, open up as Mac-style hovering icon stacks. It supports two styles of icons “grid” and “fan”. The

screenshot here depicts a grid-style such shortcut that I strategically placed in the “Quick Launch” area. 12- TaskSwitchXP: this is a freeware Alt+Tab replacement. It’s my favorite because it is straightforward and simply scrolls across the different open apps and windows while (reliably) displaying a screenshot of the selected app. It strength is function rather than form, and I like the fact that it bucks the 3D vista-style and the Mac Expose trends (but if you must have these, check out WinFlip, Shock Aero, and DExpose2). 13- Link Shell Extension: is a freeware app that allows you to right click on files and folders and create instant (and effortless) hardlinked clones, with the single stipulation that your hard drive should be NTFS formatted. A clone is NOT a copy. A little known piece of information is that a file in Windows XP and Vista can be in two places at once (as long as the hard drive is NTFS formatted and not FAT). Suppose that you keep videos of “The Sopranos” in their “Sopranos” folder, but that you had set up a “Favorite TV shows” folder where you wanted to keep a list of some of the TV-show episodes you like the most. If your hard drive is NTFS formatted, you can keep a clone of that video in that folder that does not occupy extra space on your hard drive (rather than create a duplicate copy. 14- Launchy: this is a freeware launcher for apps and files where, instead of clicking on shortcuts or icons of the programs or files you want to open, you type in the name of the program you are seeking in a search box and select it from a list of results (the program will refine the list of selections as-you-type, which is a very nice effect). By default this program will monitor (index) the execs and shortcuts in your start menu but can be configured to look anywhere for any file type you want. Lastly I will say that once you start using this I guarantee you will not want to use your computer without it. Some good Launchy alternatives (also free): Find and Run Robot, Key Launch and Keybreeze. 15- Freesnap: ever wanted to snap just one or two edges of your window that you’re working with right to the side of the screen? Freesnap is a freeware that lets you do just that (see screenshot). It will also let you use hotkeys to quickly send your window to any of the 4 corners of the screen (or the center), and perform a number of window-resizing operations. 16- Everything: this one is a free desktop file search program that works ONLY on NTFS formatted drives. The reason: it relies on the Master File Table of the NTFS volume to build its index of files, rather than constantly scanning and scouring the hard drive. What this means is that Everything will always be up to date with all file changes that occur on your hard drive.

The reason this one is included in this post is that more than any other program it has changed the way I work with Windows (with the possible exception of Launchy, above). I now find myself constantly right-clicking “Search Everything” on folders in order to locate the files that I am working with. Being able to right click on my computer in order to find a file or files anywhere on my drives is an extremely powerful thing to be able to do. 17- 3RVX: this freeware allows you to control your system’s volume (up/down/mute) through hotkeys. Its not the most feature-packed utility of its kind (Volumouse might have that distinction), but it just may be the most pleasant to use, looks really pretty (emulates the MacOSX volume bezel, but is skinnable and comes with many other cool skins). This is another one of those apps I have to have installed on my machine. 18- OSD Mute: a very simple free app that does a very simple thing: displays a “Mute On” message on your desktop near the system tray when the system volume is muted. While this is not quite revolutionary, it is so useful that I install it on all my machine, and is really an option that should have come built into Windows. 19- Dexpot: this is without a doubt the best, most feature rich and advanced freeware virtual desktop program for Windows. It doesn’t offer some of the eye candy that you might find in some others (animated 3D cube transitions between desktops, for example), but what it lacks in style in makes up for in substance (e.g. rules, hotkeys, icon placements on different desktops). If you are unfamiliar with virtual desktops imagine being able to work on, say, your Office applications in one desktop, then flipping to another that has your browser/webmail, and then flipping to a third that displays, say, your media player. One thing you can do with Dexpot that I have not found anywhere else is to actually designate different icons to different desktops. This alone makes it the undisputed number one virtual desktop app as far as I am concerned. 20- Infotag Magic: a freeware shell extension that tweaks Windows to display informational tooltips when hovering over a range of filetypes, including audio files, text files, shortcuts, and executables (see screenshot). File extension types supported: wp3, wma, ape, and Ogg Vorbis (for audio), txt, ini, log, bat, diz, bak, and que files (for text files), exe, dll, ocx and lnk (for executables/shortcuts). I would have liked to have tooltips support for video files; if that’s something you want it is provided in the latest beta of MediaInfo. 21- AudioShell: a freeware shell extension that allows you to view and edit audio files tags directly in Windows Explorer (for individual files or groups of files). It adds tabs in the audio file’s right-click “properties” dialog that enable you to edit tag information

on the fly. (Including album art, which you can easily import into the Audioshell tab and save it into the audio file itself.) Audioshell will also display your audio file tag information inside tooltips when you mouse-over your audio files, and will add additional audio related columns that can be displayed in Windows explorer’s folder “detail” view (e.g. Title, Album, Artist, etc.) 22- Stick: is an interesting freeware app that places dockable tabs on the sides of your screen that can contain a variety of functions, such as notes, RSS feeds, shortcuts for apps or favorite folders, etc. The nice thing about this one is that the “dockable tab” effect works really well, and its a very interesting innovation on the typical Windows user interface. 23- Xentient Thumbnails: a freeware that automatically changes the icons for image files to appear as little thumbnail previews of the images themselves. This means that the even in icon or tile view each individual image will display a thumbnail for its icon that reflects a preview of the image itself. It also means that your image files will display little thumbnails for their icons even when placed on the desktop (a nifty and rather unusual effect). 24- Thumbview: you might have noticed that some image file types (e.g. JPG, GIF, BMP and a few others). display preview thumbnails in Windows Explorer while others do not . What Thumbview does is provide support for 19 additional image file types such that Explorer is able to provide thumbnail previews for those as well. It also adds tooltips for image files in Explorer such that hovering over an image file displays its type, dimension, bitdepth, and filesize. 25- WinCDemu: a small, free, extension that adds to Windows the ability to mount disk images as virtual drives simply by double clicking on the image files. Supports .ISO, .IMG, .CUE, .BIN and .RAW disk images and an unlimited number of virtual drives. Runs in the background with no user interface, and seamlessly integrates disk image files into Windows. 26- Allsnap: imagine that your windows had a little “magnetic field” around them such that if they came sufficiently close to each other they would simply snap together. This effect, which we have all seen employed by various apps (such as Winamp for example) is exactly what this freeware does. Very cool, and also configurable so that you could set exactly how many pixels around each window this “magnetic field ” should be in effect. There is also, interestingly, a portable version of this app which I just discovered. 27- TeraCopy: this free program integrates itself with Windows to deliver accelerated file copying in many instances as well as the ability to pause and resume copy operations. It comes

especially handy when copying or moving a large number of files such that the entire process will not break down if it encounters, say, a file error. You have the option to set whether to have TeraCopy perform all file copy operations by default (which is what I do), just when invoked by the user, or only when the “Caps Lock” key is on. 28- HOBComment: this free Windows extension adds a context menu entry that allows users to instantly add a comment to files and folders (yes, folders, which normally you wouldn’t be able to add comments to in Windows). I’ve been looking for a long time and this remains my favorite way to add comments to files and folders (despite relatively sophisticated freeware general file tagging apps such as Tag2Find and Taggedfrog. The one conspicuous drawback that afflicts HOBComment though is that it is sometimes unable to add comments to some file types, such as .MSI and MS Office files (forcing me to resort to right clicking properties/summary/comment in Windows to do so). 29- StyleFolder: this freeware adds a simple entry to the Windows context menu that makes it possible to change folder icons. And while there are a handful such apps, I like StyleFolder because it is simple and unassuming; but, more importantly, it saves the icon info within the folder rather than simply pointing to it, which means that folders retain their new, customized icons when they are moved to portable media or across the network, etc. 30- Unlocker: have you ever tried to move, delete, or perform other operations on a file or folder only to be notified that it is locked because it is being used by another process? Enter freeware Unlocker to the rescue. This software can (a) identify the process(es) that are using your files/folders and holding them hostage, and (b) will let you “unlock” these or optionally to kill the offending process so its no longer running. Unlocker installs a convenient entry in the Windows context menu that can be used to right click any file or folder and investigate the processes that might be working with it, if any. 31- Send To Toys: this app will breathe new life into the “send to” entry in Windows’ context menu by making it extremely useful and customizable. There are a number of commands that “Send To Toys” can introduce into the send to menu, including send to clipboard, send to command prompt, send to run, send to trash, and send to quicklaunch. But what makes this program really useful is the ability to add your favorite folders to the send to menu, whereby you can quickly copy or move any item to them (pressing Shift as you use the send to folder command will move your files/items rather than copy them, while pressing ctrl+shift will copy a shortcut). 32- RBTray: minimize any window to the system tray by right-clicking on the “minimize” button. Simple with fairly low resource consumption.

What I like about this one is that is coexists very well with other Windows enhancements (aforementioned Sizer, for example), when some other apps like it do not. 33- Trayconizer: this interesting free app is for those programs that you use that you wished would simply minimize to the system tray every time by default. Trayconizer can create special, modified shortcuts to these apps that, when run, will make these always minimize to the system tray without any further intervention by the user. 34- Flashfolder: this freeware apps makes it easy to access your favorite folders in Windows’ open/save dialog (as well as that of MS Office). What is notable about FlashFolder, aside from it being extremely useful, is that in terms of coolness/form factor alone it scores extremely high points with me (check out the toolbar that add overlays on top of the open/save dialog in the screenshot to the right). Aside from favorite folders, Flashfolder can also quickly access recently used folders and a number of other functions. 35- Folder Guide: this freeware lets you right click to access your favorite folders. Works on the desktop, in Windows’ open/save dialog, as well as the MS Office open/save dialog. There are two ways to add your favorite folders to “Folder Guide”; from the settings, you could browse to the folder of your choice, or simply right click on the folder you want to add and use the “Folder Guide” context menu entry. 36- Shock Bookmark: another freeware app that, similar to Folder Guide above installs your favorite folders in your right click context menu and enables quick access to these on your desktop and in the Windows open/save dialog (but, interestingly, not in the MS Office open/save dialog for this one). Shock Bookmark goes one further in that it lets you access favorite apps as well as favorite files in the context menu in addition to folders. Like Folder Guide, Shock Bookmark allows you to right click on a folder in order to add it to the app’s context menu. However, it also features “copy to” and “move to” functions on right click for quickly moving or copying your files to your bookmarked folders (similar to “Send to Toys” above). 37-Open Target Shell Extension: [XP only]. This extension adds a right click context menu entry to Windows that shows up when you right-click on shortcut files, giving the option to instantly open the target folder where the item actually resides. This saves the user a few steps that would otherwise be required right-clicking properties then “find target” on XP. Vista users do not need this as this functionality is already built into that OS.

38- MenuApp: this tiny free app lets you create shortcuts to folders that, when clicked on, display a browsable, cascading-style menu similar to the Windows Start menu. You can create a shortcut folder any folder(s) you like and place them in all sorts of convenient places, such as the quick launch menu area, on your desktop, or within your favorite launcher app, etc. 39- Visual Subst: this freeware presents an interesting way to access favorite folders by mapping them as virtual drives that you could access from “My Computer”. The idea is that this makes it easier to access these using on or two clicks from open/save dialogs or by navigating from anywhere all the way back to the root drive. 40- Visual Task Tips: [XP only] a lightweight freeware utility that brings thumbnail previews to minimized task bar items in Windows XP. Simply hover over a minimized taskbar button to display a preview pop-up (Windows Vista already has this functionality built in). Check out my original Freewaregenius site design template in the screenshot! 41- Explorer BreadCrumbs: [XP only] a free Windows explorer extension that add a “breadcrumbs navigation” toolbar for folders in XP. The breadcrumb navigation method is already built into Windows Vista; it comprises a flat path structure whereby each “node” in the path is interactive and can be navigated at will in order to quickly move back and forth across the folder structure. Note: QT Address Bar is another freeware that delivers the same functionality. 42- VSO Image Resizer: delivers image conversion and resizing as a function within the Windows explorer context menu. What is interesting about VSO Image resizer, aside from the fact that it does a great job, is that it allows for the creation of different size/format/quality profiles that make it easy for the user to right click and quickly perform multiple, different resizing operation while accessing their commonly used settings. Also allows for image processing in batch. 43- XnView Shell Extension: freeware that embeds a number of image-related operations into the Windows context menu, including an interesting image preview inside the right click menu. Other functions include the ability to edit image IPTC metadata and to resize image and/or convert them to other image formats on-the-fly.

Ten lesser known “must have” free Programs, part 1 Submitted by Samer on December 30, 2008 – 7:40 pm28 Comments

A reader sent an email to ask about a list of “ten must-have” free programs that I would recommend that everyone immediately download and install on their computers, and this is one I have come up with. These 10 are to be the first installment (part 1), with additional “must have” freeware program lists to be amended to this one. Check this list out, download and install - these programs are solid gold. When creating this list I kept my focus on general use programs that everyone might need rather than specialized programs that have a smaller audience. I thought about programs that I always will install on all my computers no matter what, but also about lesser know programs that are not the typical freeware lists keep instinctively repeating (e.g. OpenOffice, Audacity, GIMP, Paint.Net, VLC, Firefox, CCleaner, etc.) Want to share your own lesser known top-10 “must have” freeware list? Please do so in the comment section! The list : 1. Everything: lightning-fast free desktop search for files and folders. 2. Digsby: multi-protocol free desktop IM client, email notifier for regular and web mail,

and social networking tracker. 3. Returnil: a free virtualization software that provides an “undo” option for your system. 4. Q-Dir: a multi-pane free file manager that offers a good range of functions and an

excellent user experience. 5. Launchy: free search-box based launcher for your apps and files. 6. The KMPlayer: media and DVD player that is feature rich and will play anything you

throw at it. 7. Threatfire: free, effective antispyware that offers real-time protection and behavior based

(heuristic) detection of malicious software. 8. ArsClip: free, feature rich clipboard manager with hotkey-access from any application.

Can store “permanent” clips for frequently used items. 9. Xobni: free Outlook extension that provides superfast searches in Outlook and threaded

conversations. 10. 3RVX: free hotkey and mouse enabled volume control with cool visual effects.

Descriptions, screenshots and mini-reviews provided below.

1. Everything : this is a free desktop search program for files and folders that provides lightning fast searches and integrates into Windows’ right click context menu. It builds its database of files and folders using the Master File Table of the NTFS volume, which means that it doesn’t need to perform hard drive scans to find your files and folders and in practice produces instantaneous results. The catch: it works on NTFS drives and partitions only. Ever wished for desktop search that was instantaneous, that did not make you wait as it scanned the hard drive on-demand or to build an index? Everything is that program. It integrates into the Windows’ context menu to enable quick searches within any folder. It makes finding any file or folder anywhere on your computer so quick and easy that … it really can change the way you use your computer. This program is so good that if you do not have NTFS-formatted partitions I strongly recommend that you convert to NTFS just to use it. “Everything” is simply amazing freeware; however, note that it does not search for content inside files, and will only find files and folders.

2. Digsby : this is not just a supercool free multi-protocol instant messaging client, it is also a terrific desktop email notifier for POP3, IMAP and Webmail accounts and a desktop tracker for a handful of social networking sites as well. Supports the following IM protocols: AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, Google Talk, Jabber, and Facebook Chat; the following email protocols: IMAP, POP3, Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo Mail, AOL/AIM Mail; the following social networks: Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and LinkedIn accounts. If the social network you are interested in is not on the list don’t fret - it will probably be added sooner or later. This software came out of nowhere to knock my beloved Pidgin IM client off its perch. Imagine having all of your IM accounts, email accounts, and many of the most popular social networks in the same place, with messages being displayed on your desktop whenever there’s any activity in any of these almost in real time. What I like about Digsby, aside from the convenience of having all of my accounts on the desktop in the same place, is the following:

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Easy access to your messages: hover inside the Digsby sidebar over the account you want to check and your inbox will pop-up, cascading-menu style. No need to log into your account.

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Handles multiple webmail accounts from the same provider: it checks my multiple gmail accounts without hitch.

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One-click automatic login into your webmail: just click on the “inbox” link or on a desired message and Digsby will automatically your log into your account in your default browser.

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Real-time desktop notifications: see screenshot above

Note on downloading: I recently realized that the Digsby installer will ask if you want to install an entire host of services/browser toolbars, etc. If you do not want these make sure to decline them (I strongly recommend that you decline).

3. Returnil : this is a free “virtualization” software that when enabled will let you do whatever you want with your computer and provide you with the ability to undo everything on reboot (back to the state of your system at the point Returnil protection was enabled). It locks your primary partition yet will allow you to do everything you normally do on your computer on virtual layer. Any file saved or changed that you want to keep will have to be saved either on another partition or otherwise on a virtual partition that Returnil provides that it can mount for you. Many people ask me how I test so many program without messing up my computer; Returnil is the answer to this question. Once enabled it will let you install (or uninstall) any software on your machine, open or run unknown attachments or surf unknown or unsafe websites and then, on reboot, will return your primary partition exactly to the state it was before you started the virtualization (actually, it will not “return” your partition to its former state, as that state never changes to begin with; after enabling protection, Returnil simply writes all changes onto a virtual layer that is eventually discarded). The only exception where you will not be able to test a piece software is, obviously, when installing requires a reboot, in which case the reboot will merely get you back to the previous state.

4. Q-Dir : is a free file manager / Windows Explorer replacement that is very well designed, offers a host of terrific functions, integrates into the Window context menu, and is portable to boot. Some of the functions that Q-Dir provides: intuitive access to multiple file panes, file and folder filtering, easy access to favorite folders, saving “views” with multiple folders and panels, media previews, etc. Q-Dir is just great, and even if file-manager type programs do not make much sense to you (they didn’t to me either a few months ago) I suggest you give it a try. I am actually using this one as a direct replacement to Windows Explorer (i.e. I double click on a folder in Explorer and it opens with Q-Dir). More info in my original review.

5. Launchy : is a free launcher for apps or files that replaces the traditional icon-based launchers with a search box. The cool Launchy search interface appears on demand when pressing a hotkey (Alt+Space by default) and will offer instant, as-you-type search results. Imagine launching any type you want simply by typing its name in a searchbox. That’s what Launchy does. I’ve said this before: once you start using this program you will wonder how it was that you ever managed without it. Not only does it make launching the app you want super easy but also gives you the sense of being completely on top of things. Plus it looks supercool. Note that Launchy indexes the shortcuts that exists in your start menu. If you want it to look in other places (e.g. a folder where you save all your portable apps) then make sure you add that to the list of places it will index. Also, if you would like to use Launchy to index certain types of files aside from shortcuts and exes (e.g. to access your MP3 collection) make sure to point it not just to the right directory but tell it which file types you would like it to scan as well. This program has spawned a long line of imitators (and may itself have come after a couple of other similar indexing launchers). Some of these have added quite a few bells and whistles to the mix (not to mention skins) but Launchy is still my favorite.

6. The KM Player: a free media player that plays DVDs as well as the overwhelming majority of media files that you will every encounter. It can use its own internal codecs for playback, making it unnecessary to install system-wide codecs, or it can use any external codecs you may have installed as well if need be. The KM Player is feature-rich, such as playback filters (sharpening, denoise, color effects, etc), excellent subtitles support, playing incomplete files, playing zipped files, bookmarking parts of videos, and others. Supported formats: VCD, DVD, AVI, MKV, Ogg, OGM, 3GP, MPEG-1/2/4, WMV, RealMedia, QuickTime and others.

You’ve tried VLC and GOM, now try this one. You won’t be disappointed. Aside from its reliability The KM Player also offers excellent video quality for most media formats. Its new “Album Art” view offers iTunes carousel-style thumbnail browsing of media files/videos (see image to the right).

7. Threatfire : free memory-resident antispyware that offers real time protection, is very effective, and is low on system resource consumption. This program’s strength is its behavior based (heuristic) detection of malicious software, which means that it is not primarily reliant on database updates to provide protection but rather it examines what something does in your system in order to determine whether or not it is malicious. (And also means that it works for both known and unknown threats.) If you are accustomed to (and tired of) programs that keep scanning your computer over and over, Threatfire is a great option. The reason this is so is in the way it operates: less scanning of

vast stretches of hard drive, and more examining what programs are trying to do in real time in order to stop malicious behavior. Threatfire, which is brought to us from the same people behind the terrific “Spyware Doctor” (payware) is very good at what it does: aside from an antivirus program, I use this as my primary line of difence against spyware/malware and it has performed beautifully. If you are looking for fantastic freeware antispyware with real-time protection this is it!

8. ArsClip : is a free, open source clipboard manager that offers a wide range of functions. Accessible as a hotkey-enabled pop-up dialog, ArsClip allows for capturing many more than just a single clipping and pasting these at will. It also lets you store frequentlyused clips permanently Copying-and-pasting is such a terrific invention which we take for granted (until, for example, the makers of the iPhone somehow forget to provide that functionality, but I digress). A clipboard manager such as ArsClip enables you to copy many items from different places and to paste any clip where you need it as necessary, freeing you from Windows’ single-clipboard-item restriction. Here are some of my favorite ArsClip functions:

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Paste text to image: you can convert some tables (clipped from programs like Excel) to images quickly. See image to the right.

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Portable: unzip and use, no need to install.

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Permanent clips: you can make clips permanent (or “sticky”) so you always have access to them.

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Quickly paste a clipping minus the formatting: CTRL+Alt+V by default.

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Captures text, rich text, images, and files: with unicode and HTML support.

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All-keyboard usage: each clipping has an associated keyboard shortcut that is conveniently displayed next to it.

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Other options: keypress emulation, form mode for pasting into multiple fields.

Although this is an absolute must-have program for me, it was hard to choose ArsClip because there are at least two clipboard management programs that are at least just as worthy to be in a top-ten list: Ditto and ClipX. But I’ve used ArsClip for some time and can vouch for it.

9. Xobni : is a free addition to Outlook that will transform and greatly enhance the way you experience the Microsoft product. Built around the idea of organizing data around “people”, it delivers threaded conversations similar to the concept implemented in Gmail. Also provides superfast email search that is well superior to Outlook’s. I had to put this one in this list even though it is only currently available to Outlook users (versions for other email/PIMS clients are reportedly in the works). Bill Gates apparently called this “the next generation of social networking”, which in my opinion is somewhat of an exaggeration.But not too much - compared to the standard Outlook experience Xobni is indeed a revolution. Imagine an Outlook search box that actually works for anything you type into it, imagine search results that come up in an instant, imagine being able to view a history of your “conversasations” with another person all in the same place. You don’t need to imagine any of this if you install Xobni, as that is exactly what it provides.

10. 3RVX : this free program provides volume control through hotkeys/mousewheel combos. More interestingly, 3RVX on-screen provides visual/audio effects that represent volume changes. I am including this program in this list because ever since I installed it to test it I have come to rely on and use it heavily. And although there are a number of similar free programs I like the user experience that 3RVX provides (tranlsation: it is pretty darn cool). Note for volume

tweaking fans: I use 3RVX with another volume-related utility, OSD Mute, which simply displays a “Mute On” message on the desktop if the volume it muted). Note: uninstall any previous versions before installing a new one. At the moment of this writing the developer’s home page seems to be down but they have kindly made the program download links available anyway.

Reinstall Windows and outfit your system with all freeware programs Submitted by Samer on October 29, 2007 – 6:48 am240 Comments

I recently clean installed Windows XP on my laptop, and this meant that I had to re-install all the essential software that I use. It also presented an opportunity to write a posting about how you can outfit your computer with all the essential (and nonessential) software you need using strictly 100% freeware and/or open source titles.This posting could have been titled any of the following: •

How to never use a paid program again (aside from Windows).

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53 essential freeware programs that can take care of the majority of your computing needs.

I am writing this from the perspective of myself clean-installing Windows and re-installing all the software I find to be essential afterwards. This post took a long time to write, please Digg and/or Stumble it ;). Pre-installation: before reformatting my hard drive, I used the following programs:

1. Gparted Live CD: one of the easiest ways to preserve your data when you want to wipe your system clean is to create a secondary partition and move all of your data into it. Gparted Live CD is a fantastic program that can create and manage partitions and hold its own alongside any program of its kind, paid or otherwise.

2. Unstoppable Copier: I used this program to copy any of the data and files on the primary partition (C:) to the secondary partition. Unstoppable copier makes the process of moving large numbers of files easy because you can set it up and leave and be certain that the copying process will not be interrupted by pointless Windows dialogs such as “are you sure you want to move the read only file xxx” or any other possible prompts of this sort.

3. Amic Email Backup: can backup all of my Outlook email to the secondary partition ahead of the drive formatting (it can backup email from numerous programs except Thunderbird; if you use Thunderbird use Mozbackup). For another freeware alternative try EZ Email Backup.

4. DriverMax: I used this one to back up all my current drivers. DriverMax will backup all of your drivers locally and can optionally restore them for you. Although I have my manufacturer’s CD with all of the original drivers (and anyway they are all on the internet), I used DriveMax just in case; if it were the case that I am unable to locate a driver for any device after re-installing XP, I figure I could always go back to the drivers backup that I made with DriverMax and find it.

5. Produkey: used this program to keep a record of all the product keys for the Microsoft products that are on my system, including Windows XP and Office. Made a printout of this info and saved it on the secondary partition for later use. I found that unlike some other similar programs, this one doesn’t make antivirus/antispyware programs act up and react adversely to it.

Installation: re-installed Windows XP on the re-formatted primary partition. Used the CD that came with my laptop to install all the proper drivers without hitch. If you have drivers issues try to find the drivers you need on the internet and, if not 100% successful, use the ones from the DriverMax backup (#4 above). Once Windows was installed I did a Windows update (actually several, since it kept doing partial updates and restarting), then installed the Microsoft .NET framework and the latest Java RTE). Post installation: now the fun begins.

6. PC Decrapifier: if you install Windows from a CD image disk provided with your computer then it is highly likely that it comes pre-loaded with all manner of junk software that the computer maker wants to foist on you. PC Decrapifier will batch-uninstall many of these for you; be careful, however, to check the list so as not to uninstall something you might want something you actually want.

7. DriveImage XML: used this program to create an image of my freshly clean installed hard drive. (A hard drive image is a backup of the drive as-is with everything in it; performing such a backup means that I can quickly revert to my clean install of Windows in the future simply by restoring the image). There’s a number of reasons why I like this program (a) it can split the image file into several files, allowing you to save an image that is larger than 4 gigs onto a hard drive that uses the FAT filesystem rather than NTFS; it features ’Volume Locking’ which contributes towards ensuring that your created images are error free, and it is featured on boot CDs such as BartCD, which means I can boot into it and restore the primary partition.

8. Launchy: everybody needs a good launcher, and Launchy is my favorite. Pressing a hotkey will prompt a dialog to appear whereby you can type in the first few letters of the name of the program that you want in order to launch it. Launchy will index

your start menu and program files folders by default so that it will know all the programs available on your computer (you can define other folders for it to index as well). If you would like alternatives to this one checkout Key Launch and the very powerful Keybreeze.

9. AVG Antivirus: the reason this is the my free antivirus of choice is (a) it is very light on the system’s resources, (b) it does a simply excellent job,and (c) it supports email scan, which is something that I need (and which is why I use AVG rather than the excellent AntiVir). Secondary choice: Antivir. Third choice: Avast.

10. Spyware Terminator: provides very good real-time protection against spyware/malware. For system scans it also integrates the open source ClamAV virus killer, which it also auto updates. Overall this program provides a very good free antispyware solution. Note that it will attempt to install a “Web Security Guard” toolbar in the setup which I typically disable (I do not like toolbars installed in my browser thank you very much).

11. Comodo Firewall: this is not only an excellent free firewall, this program is a PC Magazine Editor’s choice and is possibly the best personal firewall out there, free or paid. According to Matousec.com’s latest firewall ratings, Comodo gets the highest overall firewall score as well as the highest anti-leak protection (these results as of the date of this writing Oct 20, 2007). (Thanks go to reader DevZero for mentioning this in the comments section of my Comodo Firewall review).

12. TweakUI: this powerful Windows tweaking tool from Microsoft is one of the best out there, IMHO. In general I do not like to have any of my data stored in the primary (C:) partition, and I use this program to switch many of Windows’ special folders (i.e. My Documents, My Pictures, My Music, My Favorites, and the Desktop itself) from their default locations to a new location on the secondary partition. Having no data on the primary partition means that I can create images of my hard drive with DriveImage XML (#7 above) and restore them at will at any point without having to worry about lost data. Later I will also change the default data storage locations for all programs that I use so that they are on the secondary partition as well. More interesting tweaks that TweakUI does that I should mention: customizing the placesbar in the windows open/save dialog and increasing the number of folder customizations that Windows would remember.

13. OpenOffice: a world class office productivity suite and Microsoft Office replacement. OpenOffice can read and write MS Office 2003 documents in DOC (Word 2003) ,PPT (Powerpoint 2003) and XLS (Excel 2003) formats, and can also output documents in PDF format. Note that some MS Office documents that employ VBA Macro scripts may not be fully compatible with OpenOffice. (Ok, I have a confession to make: I actually install MS Office 2003 and 2007 both on my machine rather than OpenOffice, because (a) I need to use Outlook for work, (b) because most of my Excel work is done with VBA script, and (c) the licenses are paid for by my work). For the average user and for the purposes of this article, however, OpenOffice would be my free productivity suite of choice.

14. Forcevision Image Viewer: this is a very competent and straightforward free image viewer. Image viewing programs tend to be either (a) simple lightweight programs with few features but get the basic job done, (b) mid-level image viewers that have a good range of image editing options and features, some of which can do image

format conversions (c) larger programs that have a comprehensive set of features and are typically extendible by plugins, and typically include the ability to read/write all manner of image formats including obscure ones. And although I know many people swear by Irfranview and Xnview, which would belong to category (c) in this case, for myself I prefer a mid-level program that I find can handle 99% of my image viewing needs, and Forcevision is the one I use. (Another good alternative: Faststone Image Viewer).

15. JZip: my current compression/zip utility of choice. Based on the 7 Zip open source archiver, JZip Can handle a good number of formats, has excellent compression ratio and speed as well as context menu integration. Other options that are good in this category are TugZip, IZArc, and ALzip (this last one might come as a surprise to some readers, but I actually used the new beta version for a few months and liked it).

16. CDBurnerXP 4: is the free program I use to burn CDs and DVDs; it is a full featured CD/DVD burning program that can burn audio CDs, copy CDs/DVDs, burn/convert ISOs images, and handle a large variety of formats (including Double layer DVDs, Blu-Ray and HD-DVDs). My second program of choice would be InfraRecorder, which provides most of these functions as well.

17. JKDefrag GUI: this is the graphical user interface for JKDefrag a hard disk defragmentation program. There are 3 reasons why you should use this program (a) JKDefrag has recently been tested and found to be the best amongst x different defragmentation programs, free and paid, (b) it provides the option to install itself as a screen saver, which will kick-off the defragmentation process whenever your computer is idle and goes into screensaver mode, and (c) it is fast and delivers excellent performance (see this blog for an interesting comparison of free and commercial defraggers, where JKDefrag was deemed the best freeware defrag program)..

18. Folder Size: this free Windows Explorer extension provides a “Folder Size” column in Windows explorer’s ’Detail’ view that shows the size of both files and folders (Windows shows the size of files but not that of folders). My second choice for a for a free program that does this would be “Aurionix FileUsage“; the latter offers more columns but requires .NET and therefore much more resources than Folder Size does.

19. Pidgin: a fantastic IM client that supports multiple messaging protocols including AIM, MSN, Yahoo!, XMPP, ICQ, IRC, SILC, SIP/SIMPLE, Novell GroupWise, Lotus Sametime, Bonjour, Zephyr, MySpaceIM, Gadu-Gadu, and QQ. It enables you to access all of your instant messaging accounts for the above networks simultaneously in the same client. You can use it to communicate individually with other people or to create chat rooms where multiple people interact simultaneously. Pidgin has been improved continuously and it is my favorite IM client (they finally implemented minimizing to tray which was inexplicably lacking forever). My second choice in this category: Miranda IM, which also has matured greatly, or try Meebo, which performs this function but is a web service that you can use from anywhere rather than a program that you install locally. 20. Google Toolbar: this is the only toolbar that I install. Google Toolbar provides a quick searchbox your browser’s toolbar, but it also provides the ability to fill simple forms, quickly translate pages, and spell check your text that you enter in internet forms. See this posting for a description of how to do that.

21. CCleaner: a fantastic hard drive cleaner that can rid your system of temp files, internet traces such as your surfing history, cookies, logfiles, cached files and other unused files from your computer. Installer comes with Yahoo toolbar included, so be careful to uncheck that during the installation process so it doesn’t install on your computer. Also includes a registry cleaner.

22. Shock Sticker: a really nice desktop ’sticky notes’ program that provides rich text editing and minimizing notes to floating icon (which is why I like it). This is my favortie desktop notes program, although Stickies, another similar program, is also extremely good and has more features.

23. FolderICO: I really like to differentiate my folders with different colors and/or icons. FolderICO installs an entry into the Windows context menu that does this, but it also saves the changed icons within the folders such that the changed icon is preserved if, say, the folder is accessed on a network from another computer from a different operating system (or after a Windows re-install).

24. BeCyIconGrabber: if you work with icons you will love this one. It enables you not just to extract icon resources from files, but to do the opposite (save individual icons into libraries) which most like-programs do not. Very cool.

25. Alpass: an excellent password manager (for Internet Explorer only) that can store, encrypt, and fill in passwords and logins into forms for you. For another excellent program that performs a similar function check out Keepass.

26. Picasa: an excellent program from Google that can help manage your picture libraries as well as share/upload them online. Provides many picture enhancement functions, and is also a very nice viewer to boot.

27. Faststone Capture: a really powerful image capture program that is extremely easy to use and has a built in editor for adding annotations and image manipulations. Unfortunately this program has recently become shareware but you can still download and use

the last freeware version (5.3). Check out Screenshot Captor for another excellent screenshot capture program. If you know another excellent screenshot capture program please mention it in the comments (I’d like to try something new).

28. GOM Media Player: a fantastic player that plays DVDs as well as video formats, including Real Media, Quicktime, DivX, Xvid and FLV. Whats is really nice about this program is that it is self-contained and uses all internal codecs (meaning that in most cases it will not install codecs on your system). If, however, it encounters a video file that it cannot play it will automatically download it for you. I chose this one over my other favorite, VLC media player, because it handles FLV videos better (allows you to jump to the middle of an FLV video, which the current version of VLC does not). It also has a nicer look and feel, IMHO, esp. when playing DVDs. Also check out CodecInstaller, an excellent program that can identify, download, and install the codecs needed to play any media file (regardless of the player you are using)

29. Quintessential Media Player: supports most audio formats. It is simultaneously (a) a very nice player, (b) a competent tag editor, (c) a CD ripper with CDDB database support, and (d) and audio formats converter. Also features an equalizer, visualizations, and skins and is extendable through plugins. One of the nicer abilities is autotagging, which it does through digital thumbprinting and CDDB. (Note: album art is supported through a plugin, or use the cool CD Art Display). Mediamonkey is another excellent program that also provides CD ripping, mp3 tag management, downloading of album art, audio format conversion, visualizations, skins, and equalizer, etc. Mediamonkey is vastly extendible though plugins and has a large community following.

30. MP3Tag: a fantastic MP3 tag/metadata manager that can download album art from Amazon and save it into the audio file itself. I’ve used a number of similar programs but like this one most because of it’s straightforward interface and user experience. Try The Godfather for another free alternative (note that the audio players

mentioned in #29 above also provide MP3 tag management, which might be sufficient for most people’s needs).

31. MusicBrainz Picard: use this program if your audio files have incomplete and or missing tags. Picard uses sophisticated digital fingerprinting to compare audio files to the community-created MusicBrainz database. It employs a different technology than Quintessential Media Player (#29 above) and can in the most cases auto-tag audio files that have no tags whatever.

32. Exact Audio Copy: an audio CD ripper that reads audio CDs “almost perfectly” (i.e. produces very high quality MP3s), connects to CDDB/Freedb to get track information, and supports a handful of audio file formats. Another favorite of mine that does the same thing is BonkEnc. (Note that the audio players mentioned in #29 above also provide competent audio CD ripping). If you are looking for an excellent audio file converter try Any Audio Converter which supports most audio formats as well as FLV and can demux audio from video files.

33. MP3gain: this program can analyze a group of MP3s and determine the average volume for each, and then raise and/or lower the volume of the files in order to “normalize” them (such that volume differences that might occur when one song transitions to another largely disappear). The cool thing is that it does this without re-encoding the files and its intervention is reversible. Another program that has this same function: MP3Trim.

34. Unlocker: this small memory resident program will pop-up whenever you encounter a file that is locked by a process or another program which prevents you from deleting or moving it. Once you install and use this you will start to consider it a must have program. (Also see this related post).

35. Orbit Downloader: is an excellent download manager that has the unique ability to download streaming media (audio and video, as well as flash SWF) from video sharing and other sites. Another excellent download manager: FlashGet.

36. WinSCP: if you need an FTP client WinSCP is an excellent program that supports FTP and SFTP (as well as the legacy SCP), allows for secure transfers, and features dual pane file-manager like functionalities (such as sorting and comparing directories). It also allows for session saving (i.e. a bookmarking functionality), with the option to create entries in the Windows’ send-to menu for uploading files straight from Windows. FileZilla is another competent, free program that is constantly improving and supports FTP, SFTP, and FTPS. If you want a very nice program that integrates FTP support into explorer through the Windows’ right-click context menu check out RightLoad.

37. Local Website Archive: is a program that saves individual webpages locally on your hard drive, including pictures and formatting, and allows for later viewing even if offline. What’s cool about this one is that it saves websites in the original HTML format and therefore allows you to reference the local URL of the saved webpage in your notes program or other applications. Another alternative that I used for a long time until I found Local Website Archive: Evernote.

38. Flashnote: a quick and handy scratch-pad that pops-up when you press a hotkey and disappears back into the background again when you minimize it (or press the hotkey again). You can store multiple notes in it and quickly retrieve them when needed (its not a full-fledged notes program, but nonetheless has become a must install on my machine).

39. Revo Uninstaller: my uninstaller of choice, Revo Uninstaller will uninstall a program and then look for any files and/or registry entries that were left behind by the program’s uninstaller (and does a beautiful job at that). Be carful to look at the entries that it identifies for deletion post-uninstall, as it will sometimes list registry entries and/or files that should not be removed. Revo also provides a slew of other tools such as a startup manager and hard drive cleaner. Another nice uninstaller which I used previously is ZSoft Uninstaller; this one will not uninstall programs as thoroughly as Revo does, but on the other hand will not erroneously remove registry entries or files that should be left alone.

40. BitTyrant: this is the free torrent client that I’ve been using for some time. What it is is a modified version of Azureus that, controversially, picks and chooses peers to allocate bandwidth to such that those who are providing more bandwidth for downloaded files receive more of your own bandwidth (which is why it is sometimes called the ’selfish’ bittorent client). It is claimed that this can result in up to 70% faster downloads, but the reason this is controversial is that peers with lower connection speeds or are not sharing files may be overlooked by this program (read more about it here). Other excellent free torrent clients: uTorrent, Azureus.

41. Starter: a small, no-install program which does a fantastic job managing the programs that start with Windows. (I’ve tried many, and this is the one I like the most). Note that Revo Uninstaller (#39 above) provides a built in startup programs manager as well.

42. Send To Toys: use this program to add any folder to the explorer “send to” menu, which allows you to quickly copy or move any file to your favorite or most used folders.

43. Returnil: a system virtualization program that allows you to surf dangerous sites and/or install and test software or implement any desired changes then restart your system to get it back to the state it was before said changes.

44. SysTrayMeter: a small program that shows your processor usage and free memory in the system tray. Invaluable if you like to keep an eye on your available resources, and very useful in troubleshooting a problematic or slow system.

45. SweepRAM: a tiny, no-install RAM optimizer that frees system RAM by allowing applications all the RAM that they need, but no more (i.e. does not deprive programs from RAM). Use it to free RAM whenever your available memory plummets and/or your system becomes sluggish.

46. VSO Image Resizer: installs an entry in the Windows rightclick context menu that enables image resizing and format conversions on-the-fly. One of the nicer things about this software is the ability to create custom image profiles that you can save in order to access them quickly at any later point. Another program which I also used for a long time: Easy Thumbnails.

47. Photoscape: is an all-in-one image management and manipulation suite that includes an image editor, a screen capture program, image formats conversions, an image viewer, GIF animation editor, mass image renamer, page creator, as well as a handful of other functions. While it does most of these functions competently, what I like about this program is its ability to combine and/or overlay images and easily add annotations. If you have to use a lot of images in presentations (as I do for work) you will find this program a great help.

48. PDF-XChange Viewer: a very nice PDF reader that allows for form filling as well as annotation and adding notes. The only thing I would change about this program is the icon it displays for PDF files (but that can be done with a program like Icon Phile).

49. Primo PDF: a virtual printer that can create PDF files out of any printable document. If you’re interested in printing to image formats as well try PDFCreator. Another alternative: DoPDF.

50. HobComment: this will add a “file/folder comments” in Windows details view, and a right-click “add comment” extension in Windows explorer (the latter only for NTFS partitions). The end result is a very easy way to add comments to files and folders that can be displayed in the Windows details view.

51. I.Mage: I use this image editing program as a replacement to Windows’ “Paint” program; it’s simple and straightforward and sufficient for my occasional image manipulation needs. If you need a more powerful Photoshop-replacement freeware bitmap editor try Gimpshop or Paint.net (both excellent programs). 52. Flashfolder: an explorer extension that adds user-defined favorites folders (and recent folders) to Windows’ open/save dialogs. A favorite of mine that I always have on my machine.

53. JOCR: can snap any area of the screen (or simply load an image) and provide instant (and excellent) optical character recognition. This one might be a little out of place for an article that advocates using only free software because it needs a library installed with MS Office, whereas I list OpenOffice (#13 above) as the MS Office alternative. Still, I use this program a lot and find it to be a must-install, which is why I decided to list it. Create Disk Image: now that I have my system decked out with all the software that I use, I create another image with DriveImage XML so that I have 2 images; one that contains Windows

XP clean installed with drivers, and one with all the software that I use. Should I need to for any reason I can quickly and easily revet back to any one of these setups.

6 Windows Command prompt tricks that make life easier Tuesday, April 14, 2009 by Kaushik Lists , Tutorials n Tips , Windows Post Windows 2000 and Windows XP, the use of the Windows Command prompt has been on the decline. Everything that is done on Windows today is done through the graphical user interface. There are still some tasks that are done through the Command prompt, but we aren’t going to discuss about commands available for the Command line. There are plenty of references for that. Rather, we are going to find out those tricks that make working on the prompt easier. 1. Copy and Paste Text

If you have ever tried to copy and paste stuff into the command prompt window, you must have discovered that Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V doesn’t work. You can however copy text from other applications, right click on the command prompt windows and click Paste. But how do you copy text from the command prompt? There is a strange way to do it. First right-click inside the command prompt window and click on Mark. The title bar of the window should read Mark Command Prompt.

Now drag a box around the text you want to copy. The selected text will get highlighted.

Right-click again to automatically copy the selected text into the clipboard. Now again right click and choose the paste option to paste the text. You can also paste this text into other Windows applications. There is an easier way to copy paste text in command prompt. Right-click on the title bar and click Properties. Under the Options tab check the box for QuickEdit Mode.

Now you can straightaway drag and select text you want to copy, right-click to copy the text to the clipboard and right-click once again to paste it at the desired location. No need to go into the context menu to choose Paste. This option can be enabled either for the current command prompt window or for all instances of command prompt. 2. Command Prompt History

Do you know that command prompt has a history? Simply press F7 to display the list of commands entered during the current session. Use the arrow keys to select and command from the list you want to run.

To run the previously entered command press F3. To run any command from the history list by it’s number, press F9 and type the command number. 3. Drag and drop to enter file path

There are two ways to execute applications using the command line – 1) navigate into the directory where the application resides using the CD command and then type the application name, or 2) type the full path of the application from any location. Either way, it involves lot of typing particularly if the application is inside directories several levels deep. The easiest way to avoid typing the path name is to simply drag the applications icon into the command window and release it to automatically enter the path of the application. Now you just have to press Enter to run it. You can also drag folders into the command prompt window.

4. AutoComplete

To help you with entering commands and file paths, the command prompt also has an auto complete feature which allows you to complete filenames without typing the entire name. Type the first few characters and click TAB to cycle through all available filenames and folders. 5. Full Screen Mode

In the days of DOS, the command window ran full screen. But from Windows 2000 it started running inside a window. If you prefer to run it full screen, press ALT+ENTER to go into full screen mode. Use the same shortcut to exit full screen. Notice that Windows Media Player uses the same shortcut for running full screen, so this should be easy to remember. 6. Customize the look of the command prompt

If you are tired of the black screen, you can make a few changes to make it look livelier. All customization options are available by right-clicking on the title bar and clicking Properties. Change cursor size, window size, fonts, colors and more.

Matrix style.

11 places to get University courses for free Friday, March 21, 2008 by Kaushik Educational , Internet , Lists Not everybody can go to the MIT or the Oxford or the Yale university, but you can get courses from these universities for free. Such courses are popularly know as Open Courses and are perfect for people with jobs, children, disabilities, or commitments that make it hard to go to a fixed place. And for most courses you don't need any previous qualifications. So here is a list of 11 places where you can get access to thousands of courses and lecture notes from some of the top universities of the world you wish you were able to study at. 1. MIT Open Courseware provides you 1800 courses on diverse subjects from history to biology to physics to astronomy. This site is a huge resource for students. 2. Berkeley Webcasts provides webcasts and podcasts of courses Unversity of California, Berkely. 3. Open Yale Courses provides free and open access to seven introductory courses taught by distinguished teachers and scholars at Yale University namely, Astronomy, English, Philosophy, Physics, Political Science, Psychology and Religious Studies.

4. University of Utah courses on about 14 different subjects 5. University of Washington courses for computer science & engineering 6. The Open University is a distance learning university founded to bring higher education to people who are unable to study at a conventional university. 7. Notre Dame OCW is a free and open educational resource for faculty, students, and selflearners throughout the world. 8. The OpenCourseWare Consortium is a collaboration of more than 100 higher education institutions and associated organizations from around the world creating a broad and deep body of open educational content using a shared model. 9. Osaka University Open Course Ware Pilot Site is a collections of Osaka University's educational materials which is actually used in the courses taught at Osaka University. The materials are published so that they may be accessed by those who are interested in higher education at Osaka University. 10. The Web Lecture Archive Project is a joint venture between the UM-ATLAS Collaboratory Project, the University of Michigan Media Union, and CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics. Its goal is to implement this electronic archival system for slide-based presentations on the Internet. 11. John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health specialize in topics from medical science.

How to find drivers for Unknown Devices Saturday, June 28, 2008 by Kaushik Tutorials n Tips , Windows Usually, when you buy any hardware the drivers come along with it on a disc. If you lose the driver disc you can always download the necessary drivers from the manufacturer's website. But what do you do when you are not sure of the manufacturer of the hardware? This is quite a possible situation and blogger Vinod Chandramouli provides an excellent trick to deal with it. Every device has a Vendor and Device id associated with it. If you can find this ID, you can find the manufacturer. In Windows it's easy to find the vendor and device id. 1. Open Device Manager (Control Panel>System>Hardware>Device Manager) 2. The hardware whose drivers are missing will appear as Unknown device, so it's easier to

locate the device. 3. Right click on the unknown device and click on Properties. 4. Under the Properties window click on Details tab and select Device Instance Id from the

drop down box. 5. You should see a code similar to this

PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_27DC&SUBSYS_30868086 &REV_01\4&1E46F438&0&40F0

6. The portion of the code highlighted in RED is the Vendor ID and the portion highlighted

in GREEN is the Device ID. In this example: Vendor ID = 8086 Device ID = 27DC 7. Once you have obtained both the IDs, proceed to PCI Database. There you can either

search for the vendor from the vendor ID or directly get information about the device along with the vendor name by searching with the device ID. Great isn't it? Now you will never have to go hunting for correct drivers.

5 free ways to create a mobile version of your website Thursday, March 19, 2009 by Kaushik Blogging , Internet , Lists The number of people who browse the Internet on their cell phones is on the rise and if your website is not accessible via mobile phones or is not mobile friendly, you are losing a large portion of potential traffic. Creating a mobile friendly version of your website is very easy and there are large number of free services out there waiting for you to use. Take a look at some of these online tools and find out which suits your requirements. 1. Mofuse: If your website has an RSS feed, you can create a mobile website out of it using Mofuse. This is the one I’m using to create the mobile version of this site (http://m.instantfundas.com). Sign-up for an account, enter your RSS feed, choose a sub-domain like yoursite.mofuse.mobi and you have a cell phone as well as iPhone friendly website. You can also use a custom domain name. Mofuse allows a lot of customization such as adding new pages and links to your mobile site, adding logos, changing colors etc. It also has their own Google Analytics like tracking tool to keep track of your mobile visitors. Publishers can also show Google Adsense ads and split the revenue 50/50 with Mofuse. It has pretty much all that you can ask for a price of zero bucks! 2. Mippin is another tool that turns an RSS feed into a mobile website. It’s pretty straightforward but customization options are limited – you can upload logos and change font color and type but you cannot use custom domains, so it isn't something I would like to use. You also cannot track your mobile visitors. But you can monetize your website and you get to keep all of the revenue to yourself. 3. Wirenode is a very basic mobile website creation tool. Customization options in Wirenode is even more limited. It offers some pre-made templates to use on your site and allows some minor modifications like font color and background color. It has no support for custom domains but it does have a visitor tracking tool.

4. Swift’s features are comparable to those offered by Mofuse. It has plenty of customization options, a lot more than what Mofuse provides and it’s possible to make your website sport a completely unique look. This means that you can customize everything from logos, to link colors and backgrounds and the position of various elements. It also has their own analytics tool for visitors tracking and supports custom domain. The only downside of Swift is that it adds a small advertisement banner to your pages and no it does not share the revenue with you. If you upgrade to their Pro plan at $10 a month, you can get the banner removed. 5. Google Mobile Optimizer is the quickest way to convert any website into a mobile friendly one. Just supply the site URL and it will optimize the site for viewing in mobile phones by removing the site header, ads and resizing all image contents. This is actually an on-the-fly mobile site creation tool. There are no signups and no way to customize the look of your site. This is how Instant Fundas look as optimized by Google. http://www.google.com/gwt/n?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.instantfundas.com%2F&_gwt_pg=1 If you want to use this tool with a custom domain, you have to setup a redirect to this URL, provided you web hosting company supports sub domain redirects. Another way would be to use a URL shortening service but that would look very unprofessional. Among the above tools, I prefer Mofuse, Swift and Google Mobile Optimizer in that order. I’m using Mofuse but if Swift allowed me to remove that banner, I would be have opted for Swift because it has better customization options. Google Mobile Optimizer is bland but quick and hassle free. Of course, if you aren’t so picky you can use any of these services.

How to create Windows XP Live CD, complete with preinstalled programs Monday, November 19, 2007 by Kaushik Software , Tutorials n Tips , Windows To create a Windows XP Live CD we will require 1. Bart PEbuilder 2. A CD burner like Nero 3. A bootable Windows XP CD and 4. Some pebuilder plugins to customize the CD. Step 1: Download PeBuilder from here and install it. Make sure you have enough free space on the drive where you install the program. After you have finished adding all programs it will create an ISO to be burned into a disk. The size of the ISO will depend upon how many programs you add to your live CD. I would recommend atleast 700MB of free space. Step 2: You may want to set a wallpaper that will appear on the desktop when you boot the CD. For this open the folder where you have installed PEbuilder and replace the file bartpe.bmp with the wallpaper of your choice. Step 3: Download XPE plugin from here (direct download link). It's the GUI shell of the XP Live CD that will create the XP start button and taskbar. You are free to download as many plugin (applications) you want. Currently there are more than 500 applications to choose from. Both freewares and commercial applications are available. Antivirus programs like Kaspersky,

NOD32, Avast; burning program Nero; media players like VLC; OpenOffice, Foxit PDF reader, Acrobat Reader etc are available. Pebuilder plugins repository More Plugins here Step 4: After you have finished downloading all your favourite programs, open PEbuider and specify the source path to the Windows XP installation bootable CD. You can copy the CD to your hard disk and point the source to the copied file.

Step 5: Click Plugins and add all the plugins you have downloaded. Since we have added XPE, disable nu2shell and the startup group from the list of plugins. Step 6: Specify the ISO image file and click Build. The program will integrate the plugins and create an ISO image. Step7: Burn the image into a disk using any burning software and your live CD is ready.

The Live CD Desktop

Running Abiword

Running VLC Media Player Source: Digit magazine Nov 2007 issue.