Talent Copy has been designed by its developer as an alternative for standard copy operations in the Windows operating system. Talent Copy, according to him improves file copy speeds with an advanced algorithm that’s especially benefiting the copying of small files.

The copy software has been optimized for standard platter driven hard drives and solid state drives. It optimizes the SSD copying performance by splitting operations into read and write operations for a superior file copying performance.

The developer has tested Talent Copy under Windows Vista and noted that the copy process was up to three times faster than the standard Windows copying process.

Experienced users can modify the program settings for that extra bit of performance. Everyone else may use the software with default settings. The program integrates into Windows Explorer.

Talent Copy adds a “paste with talent copy” to the Windows Explorer context menu. It is first necessary to select the folders and files that need to be copied before the paste operation becomes available.

Talent Copy displays detailed information about the copy process.

But is Talent Copy really faster than a standard Windows Explorer copying operation? And how does it fare against same purpose applications like Teracopy?

That’s hard to tell because it highly depends on several factors including the read and write speed of the hard drives involved, the overall computer speed and use during the copying and the size, location and amount of files that are copied.

Talent Copy V can be faster if a lot of small files in a nested folder structure need to be copied. The program is unfortunately not the most comfortable one as it triggers an UAC prompt whenever it is used to copy files in the operating system.

Alternatives are Fast Copy and Tera Copy.

Some of the features that are missing are the abilities to pause and resume the copy process and to filter files and folders.Robocopy is a command line tool developed by Microsoft that provides the extended functionality that some users require. Command line tools on the other hand are not always that comfortable to use which is why Microsoft created Robocopy GUI which provides a graphical user interface for Robocopy.

Robocopy GUI is a basic software program that requires the Microsoft .net Framework 2.0 (which is included in Windows Vista). It can be downloaded from the Technet website where it was announced.

Robocopy GUI lets you specify your source and target paths, as well as any custom options or filters you’d like to apply, whether or not you’d like to create a drive mapping, where you’d like to store the resulting logs, and so on. These are all features you can certainly execute with traditional Robocopy command line functionality, but for many, having the options consolidated in a graphical interface may really simplify the process.

Robocopy GUI also extends the functionality of the existing Robocopy tool in some very interesting ways. For example, this tool is multithreaded, allowing you to create a Robocopy script, execute it, and begin creating another one while your first script is still running. It also allows you to save your scripts (even if you don’t actually execute them) so that you can create a library of common scripts or share them with your colleagues. And most importantly, Robocopy GUI allows you to save your default settings so you don’t have to start from scratch every time.

The program is a great help for users who prefer to work with graphical user interfaces. The option to use the command line version as well – for example to make use of the functionality in scripts – is still provided.

N2ncopy is a tiny Windows computer software program that allows to copy or move multiple files from different locations to different targets. The application will display a tiny overlay window that can be moved around freely on the screen. The window is divided into a green and blue area. Files that should be moved or copied can be dragged into the green area while the blue area is reserved for the target directories.

A right-click on the tiny interface will open the main interface displaying all the files and targets that have been dragged and dropped into the application up to this point. It is possible to remove some or all of the files and targets again and to specify of the task should by copying or moving files.

The only other options are to define rules if files with identical names are encountered in the target directories. Choices are to either overwrite those files or to rename the new files automatically.

A click on the Do the task button will start the file copying process while a click on Return will display the small overlay window again that can be used to add additional files and targets to the program. The program uses less than 3 Megabytes of computer memory while running.

A window displaying the file copying progress will be shown during the file transfers as well as a status report at the end of the process indicating if it was completed successfully.

The typical action of cutting and pasting does and should (in most cases) work across applications as well as into the command line. The trick is knowing either the key combinations or the correct mouse buttons. So whether your copying and pasting from one document to another, from document to email (or vice versa), or just about any application to any application Linux can copy and paste. Let’s find out just how.

The Mouse

This is the big one that makes your copy/paste life very simple. With the Linux operating system there are three mouse buttons: 1, 2, 3. The left mouse button is button 1, the right mouse button is button 2, and the mouse wheel is button 3. If your mouse doesn’t have a mouse wheel then pressing both 1 and 2 together is the equivalent of button 3. Now that we have that out of the way I am going to show you a nice trick. Go to a document (OpenOffice, Abiword, or even compose an email). Highlight some text by clicking button 1 and dragging the mouse over the text you want to highlight (simple text selection). Once you have selected your text click your cursor in a blank area of the document and click button 3. What you should see is the selected text is pasted where you clicked with button 3. So the action of highlighting text with button 1 is copying and clicking with button 3 is pasting. How simple is that? This action also works from document to command line and vice versa.

The Keyboard

Naturally the standard keyboard key combinations will work for copying and pasting. There are a couple of exceptions. When copying within (or to and from) some terminal windows there are different key combinations to use. For example, in gnome-terminal instead of Ctrl-c and Ctrl-v (for copy and paste) you use Ctrl-shift-c and Ctrl-shift-v for copying and pasting. This can be changed within the profile editor in gnome-terminal (if you want this feature to echo the standard combination.) Be aware, however, that if you copy text by selecting via the left mouse you can not paste by using Ctrl-v. The Ctrl-v combination (or Ctrl-Shift-v combination) only works in conjunction with the Ctrl-c or Ctrl-Shift-c combinations.

The Menu

As you can imagine nearly every Linux GUI application has an Edit menu that includes the Copy/Paste entries. These work exactly as you would expect. These menu entries also work in conjunction with the Ctrl-c/v combinations, but not the button 1 highlight action (button 1 copy action only works with the button 3 paste action).

Final Thoughts

I will warn you that once you get used to the button1/3 copy/paste action you will find yourself attempting it in all other operating systems. This method of copy/paste is the easiest means of copying and pasting content bar none. It is nice, however, that the various Linux distributions include other means for those users who prefer the standard methods.

A major difference between the two applications is the fact that Fast Copy does not hijack the original Windows copy, delete and move operations but comes only into play when the user selects the application to handle the transfers. This can be done by loading Fast Copy or adding Fast Copy entries to the right-click context menu. The option for the latter is provided in the program’s options.

Since the usage is not automatic using Fast Copy makes only sense in situations where the user has to copy many files and folders at once, for example when moving the contents of one hard drive to another. It simply takes about five to ten seconds to start the file transfer because the source and destination locations have to be added to the program manually.

The context menu entry is only adding the source location to the program but the destination would still have to be selected manually. Fast Copy uses parallel processing if the source and destination location are on different hard drives and a huge buffer if they are on the same. It comes with a lot of options that can be changed like the buffer size or actions to take if a file exists in the destination.

The command line options might make it usable for batch files that use file operations. It lacks a few of the features that TeraCopy comes with like a queue that offers options to skip files or pause the process.

Fast Copy in its current version can be used in batch files because of its command line parameters and to copy large amount of files. It does not work as a real transfer replacement for Windows and have to leave that field to Teracopy.

He has to select the folder from which the files are copied – subfolders are automatically included in the process -, a destination drive or folder, a size that should be copied and the file extension. The first two are obvious while the latter two require a short explanation. Size defines the total size of all files that are copied. If you pick for instance 1000 Megabyte as the size and mp3 as the file extension mp3 files with a total size of about 1000 Megabytes will be copied, never more than that of course to avoid the dreaded disk is full message.

The file extension can be any file extension which means you can also copy avi files, documents, images or anything else that you can think of randomly to the folder or hard drive.It is furthermore possible to add additional file extensions with the “;” separator.

Two optional check boxes are available: Clear Destination Dir deletes all files in the destination dir so that it is empty before the copy begins. Replace Existing Files overwrites existing files without asking during the copying.

The configuration can be saved and loaded which is nice if you want to use the program every now and then to load new files on the device. It is even possible to use it once every day before going to school to start the day with a fresh random selection of your music.

Mix2Stix requires Java which has to be installed on the system. The source is included in the distribution.

Copy Handler replaces and enhances copy and move operations in Windows by replacing the native software with an advanced version. This is done by registering the shell extension dll once which has the effect that all move and copy commands are performed by Copy Handler.

The author claims that it can speed up file transfers between different partitions of the same physical hard drive by a factor of 6 which is probably a bit to much. A speed difference is visible nevertheless.

The default Copy Handler window lists all file transfers with information such as filename, source and destination and status. Selecting a file lists even more parameters such as transfer speed, buffer size and the full path.

Buttons give you the option to resume, cancel, restart or pause transfers which is great if only a few of the transfers were interrupted. Instead of transferring all files again you only need to select the incomplete ones and click on resume.

The configuration lists an extensive number of settings that can be changed. The system can be shutdown after file transfers, buffer sizes can be changed as well as windows and information that are displayed.

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Copy Handler

I had to fax some information to Paypal the other day and I had to copy the documents and walk into a store that offered to send papers with their fax. Besides the privacy concerns I lost almost an hour that day just to fax some papers to Paypal. It would be much easier to simply use the camera of a mobile phone to take a picture of the document and send it as a fax or email attachment to the recipient.

I tried two services, one of them free while the other one is a paid service that starts at $4,99 monthly for 10 sheets. Scanr is a free mobile application that supports a wide variety of mobile phones offering a Java and Symbian version of their software. A 1 Megapixel camera is required though.

The only costs are the costs of your wireless carrier. There is no image postprocessing which means that your images could be rather big which would lead to high costs unless you have an unlimited plan.

Comombo is a paid service which offers their application for Java and Symbian as well. The big advantage is the postprocessing of the images which leads to some remarkable results. First the size of the image is reduzed which is always good because you have to send it over the Internet using your mobile phone.

The second advantage is that it increases image quality. It lightens up dark images for instance making the document more readable.

The freeware version is good for 10 pages that can be faxed. All other versions ask for a monthly fee that grant a certain amount of free faxes for that month. I would like to see a one time payment opportunity which gives me a certain amount of faxes that I can send whenever I want to.

This is a good service if you fax regularly and a not so good one if you only do it occasionally.

Update: The Scanr website returns an error for quite some time now. The project seems to be dead and it is unlikely that it will be restored in the future. Please check the comments in the article for suitable alternatives.

If a byte is unreadable it skips only that byte by default and tries the next one. This can be very helpful if you want to copy data from scratched or partially unreadable CDs or DVDs, partially unreadable hard drives or other media like zip drives as well. It is possible to change the number of bytes that get skipped during the process. The author recommends that 1 byte is skipped but it is possible to adjust that value to 10, 100, 1000, 10000, 100000 and one million.

You loose of course more data if you set that value to a higher figure. Using Copy Cat can’t be easier. Just select a source file from your hard drive, CD, DVD or removable storage and select a destination directory. Adjust the number of bytes that get skipped if you like and click on copy.

Copy Cat then tried to read the file byte by byte and copy it to your destination. This method has no guarantee of making all unreadable files work again. I think it should have nice results with text documents and problems with archives. I had no unreadable files of both kinds and could not test my theory. I still think it is more likely that you get CRC errors with the archives if bytes have been skipped during the copy.

The best feature of Harddisk Ogg is that it sits in the tray once configured and you can start the recording with a single mouse click and end it with another one. The quality of the recorded audio can be configured in detail including bitrate, mono or stereo recording and encoding quality.

Harddisk Ogg offers several normalization modes that amplify the input signal to a constant volume. You need to download and move the lame encoder into the folder of Harddisk Ogg to be able to record mp3 files directly.

I would like to explain why a tool like Harddisk Ogg might be useful now or in the near future. Several countries have already laws in place that make it illegal to copy music from Cd’s if the CD is copy protected. They still allow however to record the songs using audio devices and compare this to the recording of radio with audio tapes.

This is also great if you want to rip audio from music videos that you found on the internet or from youtube videos.

Some days later he managed to do the same with a Blue-Ray movie which means that everything is set to get the warez scene going. I think it is kinda strange that it was always easy to copy games for the Playstation systems and many people think that the success of the Playstation systems could be connected to this.

This got me thinking. Why did not Sony try and dump their discs if they knew everyone would be able to install and use Linux on the Playstation 3 ? Did they all miss it or was it probably something they did not care about or even wanted ? What do you think about this ?

Puretext is a freeware utility that helps you in this special case. It adds a new windows hot key to your system (Windows + V) which removes all the formatting of the text that is pasted into your editor. You have some options in puretext like changing the hotkey to Shift + V or ALT + V instead of the default one. You are free to change the key that needs to be pressed as well, making it highly flexible.

Another option if selected pastes the converted text automatically into the active window when you press the hotkey. If you do not enable this the text is stripped of the formatting but not pasted into the editor. You are free to play a sound when this is done but I would advise against it. You may also auto run puretext with every windows start by enabling that option in puretext.

You could try the unstoppable copier which is available for windows and linux. The program will attempt to recover every readable piece of a file and put the pieces together. Using this method most types of files can be made usable even if some parts were not recoverable in the end. The tool could help you in the recovery, it might not work all the time but you get a good chance with it.

Music Retailers argue against the music industry which defends using copyrighted cds by claiming its to prevent the unauthorized duplication of their cds. They take the side of the customers seeing that customers get frustrated by copy protected cds and tend to buy less. Tim Baker of Sunrise Records, a large retailer in southern Ontario puts it this way : “This is just another really, really ridiculous way of telling our customers, We don’t want your business”.

I personally think its good for the customers if music retailers are finally speaking out against this and show the music industry that not only the customers but also the retailers don´t like this practice. Retailers of course have different reasons for this but it nevertheless is a valuable addition to the customers position. Its rather strange that the music industry on the one hand cries about reduced cd sales but on the other hand introduce more and more protection mechanisms that do nothing to stop people from copying their cds but stop the customers from buying them. This is ridiculous.

A lot of my friends stopped buying cds that have a copy protection sign on the case. I think many people don´t care about copy protection until they find out that they can´t copy a song from the cd to their newly bought MP3 player.

Nevertheless its good news that retailers are siding on this topic with their customers.