What ? Part 3 ? You said that there would be only two parts in the top xp series. I know that I said that but I wanted to write a third part because of the nice comments that the other two parts recieved. (access part 1 and part 2) This time I will write about the lesser known tools, special purpose ones that most users do not need but some can’t live without. I thought it would be nice to give those tools some exposure as well, they are great and they deserve it.
Free Album Art Cover Downloader
Many portable media players and software players support album cover art which is displayed when a song is played from within the player. Most players unfortunately do not have a feature that automatically searches for and downloads album cover art for the album s that you have stored on your computer. One of the tools that can help you if you like to have album cover art displayed is Album Cover Art Downloader.
Burn Audio CDs from exotic audio formats
Most burning tools that support the creation of audio CDs support only the most common formats by default. Those formats are normally mp3, wav or wma. Some suits support other formats as well but I never found a burning suit that supported all of the formats that I needed. One way to solve this issue would be to use plugins that would increase the supported formats, one plugin pack for Nero can be downloaded here. (Click on Nero Audio-Plug-Ins..)
Automatically sort files with Filesort
Do you have a folder with many files and file types in it ? Sorting those files reminds me a lot of two famous stories I heard when I was a child, namely those of Cinderella and Sisyphus. If you ever tried sorting a folder with 10000+ files you know what I mean. I always thought that it would be great to have a freeware that would help me presort the files and let me do the fine tuning afterwards.
Auto Window Manager
The freeware Auto Window Manager adds additional functionality to the way windows manages the windows it displays. You could for instance customize that whenever a program opens it opens in maximized, minimized or default state. This setting should work with most programs and windows, i tried it with firefox and thunderbird for example.
Top 15 Security and Hacking Tools & Utilities
Finally a great darknet.org.uk that lists 15 Security and Hacking Tools & Utilities. Users who are working in the security field will recognize many if not all of them and beginners will have a great list of tools with explanation that they can work with. You find for instance the telnet and ssh tool putty in the list next to the tool Eraser which overwrites files on your windows system more than once to make sure it can´t be restored that easily.
Astalavista Top 10 Freeware Tools
Astalavista Security Group have a beta page up that lists top freeware software products in various categories including Data Recovery, Anti Virus-Tools, Firewall and IDS and Anti-Spyware. The list contains some of the freeware tools that I already wrote about but also some new ones that might interest you.
