Win Extensions for Windows

Posted by joshua in software  Tags: , , ,

9

Oct



Extensions for Windows isn’t freeware and so this review may seem out of place here on gHacks, however I managed to score some free licenses to give away to you guys, just comment below!

Extensoft released their brand new product, Extensions for Windows only a few months ago after intensive beta testing for over two years, in fact I believe some leaked screenshots led people to think what they where seeing was Windows 7.

What is it?

Extensions for Windows is a set of tools and applications which are designed to ‘upgrade’ your Windows installation with new features and functionality, the kinds of things power users find themselves wanting on a regular basis.

I asked Eugene Zvyagintsev, Extensoft’s project manager a few questions,


You’ve been working on this project for about 2 years. Did the idea for this release come about from Windows Vista’s release and a perceived lack of ‘power user’ features?

[Eugene] Actually we came up with the idea 4 years ago.  Windows XP was a mature product then, but was still lacking sufficient features and flexibility. We started tinkering with some concepts and ideas and then accelerated the development since we felt more confident that we could provide a useful product at a great value. When Vista came along, we could see that it was still lacking in many areas while being quite confusing to some XP users.

How did you come up with the initial set of tools and applications? Any scouring of message boards involved? Or were these features which you constantly found yourself wanting when using Windows?

[Eugene] Probably the latter.  As Windows power users ourselves, we feel what the majority of Windows users feel. However, we validated many of our ideas by reading blogs and articles that often praised Windows, but also pointed out its flaws and issues.

Perhaps the biggest thing for many users is the fact that a lot of the features provided in this suite can be found for free in other products. Eugene thinks it’s not that simple,

[Eugene] The main question we asked ourselves was what someone would choose if Microsoft released a sensible and functional Windows upgrade at a reasonable price? Would Windows users choose to continue looking for and download a variety of free tools?; Or would they rather choose to install a better version of Windows with the same features?”

And what should less technical users do? There are those who don’t know how to look for, what to download, and how to use such software. Many of us, experienced users, act as technical support among friends and family. We often get phone calls from friends asking us how to resize an image, how to create a PDF document, another time how to open or convert a document.  This can go on and on. And we tell them: download this, install that, and then call me back so I can explain to you how to use it.  Wouldn’t it be much easier for everyone if Windows simply included more functionality that is immediately accessible and feels familiar?

Therefore, we wanted to create a single and standardized product that we could recommend to all our friends and families…then only to occasionally answer basic questions from them. The thing Extensions really does for them is it gives them peace of mind.

He has a good point, but it’s up to you to decide. The product is sold for $50 for a one year license, that license provides unlimited upgrades, support and access to new products over the year. The current plan is to “polish things up” before releasing an additional 3 products to bring the “total number to 15 by the end of the year”.

I’ve been using them myself now for a few months and my personal opinion is that these tools are still a little rough around the edges. Performance is very good normally, however a couple tools (such as the task manager extension) caused some CPU spikes when running in the background, hopefully things like this will be fixed with time.

Anyway, to win 1 of 5 free licenses simply comment below telling us what you would want if you could choose one feature to be added to Windows… just one.


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32 Users Commented In This Post

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Solaris says:

A useful Software. I wanna one too :mrgreen: .

garbanzo says:

i don’t want a serial for this - Directory Opus fulfills most of those functions very well, and the rest are taken up by fine portable apps - but i’ll still tell you what i want to see in windows.

it’s a little thing, but i would love for the Colour dialog to be revamped. the current one is leftover from win95 and it’s just useless. i do a lot of skinning, and it’s frustrating to have to open a colour picker app, then copy the RGB code from the 3 text boxes in the colour picker app to three other text boxes in the windows colour dialog.

the default widows dialog should really have a magnifier, an eyedropper, and should change the way custom colors are saved, providing support for saving custom swatches.

(i’ve not used vista so i don’t know if this has been changed already?)

Bullitt says:

The software does do many cool things, but like garbanzo says, there are other apps that can fulfil the role of many of its functions (websites such as http://www.techsupportalert.com have reviews of many of them). I wonder if a product that does many things can be as good as a product that focuses on one. It would be great to test it.

Still looks like something I could use. Having one product that fulfils the role of many is nice when you don’t want to have too many programs installed on your PC.

One thing I would like for Windows to have built in is a program that keeps your software up-to-date, much like Ubuntu has.

Mike Martin says:

The one thing I would love Windows to have out of the box is a powerful dual pane explorer like the excellent Total Commander. Also I would appreciate the ability to use custom window themes without having to hack DLL’s.

Bullitt says:

Mike, I use FreeCommander as my explorer replacement. Dual pane with tabs on each pane. I have not found anything free that is better.

Emyol says:

If there’s only one : a Real Powerful Shortcut manager with Function touch replacement.

Raj A Kapadia says:

I am not a techie, unlike most of the other commentators.

However, I wonder if Windows could be modified so that the Right-Click Context Extension Menu stands re-organized every time a new item or items is/are added to it with all related items re-grouped and duplicate items hidden. This would remove much of the clutter from the Menu and possibly make it load faster.

RG says:

I would go for Windows having drive image out of the box.

iampriteshdesai says:

I want Virtual Desktops in Window, not the crappy ones we have currently, but the ones as in Ubuntu. And I’d like to have the license as well.

Will says:

A media converter (that can convert audio and video to the required format). I’m sick of using 20 different applications to perform the required task.XD

Ajay says:

I would love to have a power source code editor which can mix some strong reverse engineering (slickedit, sourceinsight) features with easy editing (vi, emacs etc).

Paul(us) Bekkers. says:

One thing i realy would like in windows xp, is a partion manager.

Gemini says:

I realize you said only ONE, but I’m gonna go ahead and list two features I’d love windows to have out of the box.
1) Support for a bigger range of picture formats (like TIFF etc.)

2)Easy editing of the right-click context menu, since right now it requires some registry hacking (I’m not a huge fan of installing 3rd party applications for all this, as I’d need ALOT of applications for my needs, and there are no programs that can handle everything).

Gemini says:

“One thing i realy would like in windows xp, is a partion manager.”

Start -> run -> diskmgmt.msc

Johan Gustavsson says:

I’d like windows to support burning .img’s of dvd’s out of the box…

Bullitt says:

A good partition manager along the lines of gparted would be great.

Ahmed Kotb says:

what i really want :

-a true user accounts which are totally separeted from each other.

some programs that come pre-installed
-notepad ++
-paint.net

Solarstorm says:

The feature i wish is to make explorer a universal viewer like what explorerview does.
http://www.explorerview.com/

Matt says:

Some of those extensions look really great!

I have a tonne of programs installed that I configure to do just what those extensions do.

I’ll definitely be taking a closer look.

walter bagay says:

I am a mainframe op from the 20th century and we had a screen like this. I would love to see where it would display 4 windows and as you click on the windows it auto expands to full screen..unless it already has this feature…

Vic says:

An easier way to change themes. Not having to change system files and such or use other programs on top of you current build.

It would really bring a fresh feeling to Windows and make windows a more user-specific OS.

Everyone would have their own style, yet you will be able to hop on anyone’s computer and know just how to use it.

KC says:

One feature: mass rename

Carl says:

This looks pretty slick. Having virtual drives and file conversion built into windows would be fantastic!

Joshua says:

Disk Usage Analysis

Mike Process says:

I would like to be able to save a file to multiple locations at one time. This would include all hard and flash drives, and especially networks storage devices on the local network!

venki says:

I would like an additional task bar (on the tp or to the side) to where i can minimize my windows.

Stefan says:

There are tons of things I’d *love* for Windows to have. One of the major ones is a Smart registry/shortcuts - so you can jump into Program Files and move things about - reorganise the whole thing, if you want, or move stuff to new drives/partitions, and part of the process will be the updating of shortcuts and registry keys so everything works perfectly. That would be great

Leonardo Lindolfo says:

What would be great:

- a list of services where we can disable some unuseful ones (listed by environments like Home, Work, School)

Adam says:

Would love a license for this if theres still one going spare please :-)

Looks brilliant.

Many thanks.

Matthew says:

I would really like to see a filter option in Open/Save common dialogs - e.g. only show files/folders etc or better still regexp support in Open/Save common dialogs.

toe says:

nice piece of software

Wyv says:

I would like to have a very, user friendly ,online gaming setup option. Where you could click a button for a certain game and it would automatically adjust your settings,configs,or whatever it takes, to be able to play the selected game without any lag,crashes or other problems. That would be my dream :)

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