Print Conductor is a small software for Microsoft Windows that can print multiple documents in a batch process which is invaluable if you happen to work with a lot of different file times throughout the day. The tool supports 16 file types including pdf, doc, txt, xls, ppt and dwg which means that probably the most common file extensions in offices are supported.
Keyloggers record anything that you type and where you type it on your PC in a log and transfer those logs to the person - better thief - who did install the keylogger on your computer. He can then find out all the urls you visited, the passwords that you entered on those websites and what you did there as well.
I find it hard to tell how much time I have left to work with my notebook when running on battery and always thought it would be nice to have an application that would display the notebook battery status somewhere on screen. BattStatt is a small software that displays the battery status in the system tray when hovering over the icon.
Now seriously. Have you ever received a document (a clean one) with an extension you never heard of and didn't even know what application you were supposed to use to open it? That's not a problem any more due to applications and online services that can understand varied file formats and display the contents of those files for you. Of course, you can't edit such files with viewers because their only purpose is to display the contents of the document. But hey, better that nothing, ain't it...
I have been using IRC quite a lot a few years ago and even then thought that software like MIRC was not ideal for beginners. It was not that easy to setup and had the charm of a Windows 95 application written all over it. I did switch to Chatzilla eventually which offered IRC access in Firefox which was great for a quick connect to IRC.
Stuffing your system with tons of fancy fonts may not be the best idea because, as you probably know, the number of installed fonts can rapidly change the speed at which your system loads. Your system may have become slower without you even knowing it because many applications do install their own fonts that they (do not) need which adds to the size of your fonts folder.
One of the latest security trends is to use virtual systems to protect the computer from harm. The benefit of those systems is that changes are only temporary and undone after the next reboot which means that you always start with a fresh system. Most users do not want to use virtual systems because they seem complicated to setup and maintain.
I do not like printers that much, they always seem to run out of ink, have paper problems or do not react when needed. Setting up a printer in a local area network can be frustrating as well but this could be - thanks to Printer Anywhere - a thing of the past. Printer Anywhere makes it easy to send a print job to another computer that is also running Printer Anywhere.
Windows does not offer a way to prevent users from accessing executable files. While NTFS does offer a rights-system it is only valid of NTFS hard drives and does not come into effect if a user plugs in a USB drive, CD or floppy disk. Most computers get infected nowadays by executing email attachments followed by file downloads and Windows security holes.
Scan Disk is the Windows tool that scans a hard drive for errors and bad sectors. The software is not really comfortable to use, it is for instance not possible to make the tool scan all hard drives at once. Check Disk is a Scan Disk replacement that offers a more comfortable way of checking your hard drives for errors.
When you open My Computer you see floppy disk drives, hard drives and DVD drives. Lots of space is wasted in that window and you have to click several times to reach the location that you wanted to. If you do have folders on your hard drives that you use over and over again you might want to consider creating folder drives which would make them appear as drives in My Computer.
Microsoft has introduced so called add-ins in Microsoft Office and Word which are first-party or third-party applications that extend the functionality of the software. One add-in in particular is being a great asset for me personally, it is called the 2007 Microsoft Office Add-in: Microsoft Save as PDF or XPS and works with eight Office programs including Microsoft Word 2007 and Excel 2007.
Wlandscape is a Java application that displays the Wlans in a specified area on a street map making it so much easier to identify possible hotspots that can be used to access the Internet. The software needs some batch file editing before it can be used, nothing serious though.
Thumbwin was mentioned by a few readers in my Bring Order to your Desktop and Taskbar article which described a software called Minimize which allowed the user to display minimized windows as thumbnails. Thumbwin is apparently a software of choice for some of my readers and that is good enough for me to take a look at it and review it here at Ghacks.
Every window that gets minimized is placed in the taskbar which holds a limited amount of windows and starts to group windows of the same process together to save space. MiniMize is a software that brings order into that chaos. Instead of minimizing windows to the taskbar it displays them as thumbnails on your desktop.
I have been using Antivirus software for a very long time and even though I kept it up to date it never catched a single virus, worm or Trojan. It did however slow down system startup and the scan of new files also used system resources. This let to my conclusion that I did not need a Antivirus software, because frankly, Antivirus software is basically preventing the user from doing something stupid.
Rruben send me a link to an interesting software called Resizor which is an image resizer that utilizes the newly introduced seam carving technology to create impressive results. Instead of modifying the dimensions the same percentage throughout the image it analyzes areas that are less important and removes or adds to those with priority.
I seldom come upon a software that is small and packed with so many useful features that should have been integrated in Windows in the first place. What I really do not understand is that Microsoft does not seem to look at those applications and put the most thought after functionality into their next Windows.
This is going to blow you away. What do you normally do when you save a file or want to open a file in a specific folder on your hard drive ? You click your way through the folder structure of your operating system until you finally reach the desired folder. This is a thing of the past because we can use bookmarked folders to reach those folders instantly.
Have you ever wondered why the mouse cursor stops when you reach one of the monitor borders ? It feels like it is bumping right into a wall. CursorUs is a tiny 22K software that extends the mouse cursors functionality and lets the user move beyond this invisible wall. The mouse cursor will appear at the opposite end of the screen whenever it reaches the border of the monitor.
Gigatribe is a software that creates a private Peer to Peer (P2P) network that offers a group of users, for example your friends and family, an easy way to share files securely. All communication is protected by a 256-bit Blowfish encryption so that no one can snoop on the files that you send and receive.
If you need to quickly check a file for malicious code that you downloaded then Virus Total might be something you might want to take a closer look at.This service stands out because it uses multiple antivirus engines instead of just one or two. The antivirus engines list looks pretty impressive because it contains 32 engines.
ZoneAlarm Anti-Spyware which comes bundled with the ZoneAlarm Firewall can be downloaded free of charge today. The security software retails regularly for $19.95 and includes one year of free updates as well. This offer expires on November 14th 5pm PST so hurry up if you would like to give this software a try.
I have explained the concept of par files before. In short, they can be used to repair any rar file that is part of the archive as long as the blocks of the par file are at least of the same size than the corrupt rar parts. A software like Quickpar can be used to split big files into smaller ones and create several par files to be able to recover the whole archive if part of it gets corrupted.
When I first read about Backup to Email I thought that surely no one wanted to backup files and folders to email. I never thought that email would make a good backup alternative for backing up large files and folders considering file size limitations and upload speeds of the own Internet connection.
If you are looking for a highly configurable system monitor you should take a closer look at Glint. The software displays system activity of many - and I really mean many - different values. The default program window alone displays 26 different values like CPU Processor Time, Disk Read and Write Bytes and Memory Bytes available.
You might have never entered a Windows or Office product key before in your life. If you did buy a preinstalled version of Windows for example it could already be activated by the default. The product key can be usually found on the Recovery CD that comes with the purchase of the hardware, on the hardware itself or on a booklet.
The build in Windows search is slow, really slow compared to a software like Locate that indexes all of your files on all hard drives and offers almost instantaneous results. But let us start at the beginning. Locate32 is a small software for Windows that works like updatedb and locate on Unix machines.
While you can buy hundreds of different calendars each year depicting celebrities, comic book heroes, nature, animals and landscapes you could be inclined to create a custom, unique calendar to either use by yourself or give to someone that you like very much. Custom calendars can make great gifts, especially if the person who receives them feels connected to the pictures of the calendar.
Not every game runs perfectly with the default settings. Some drop in performance more than others when increasing quality settings such as Anti-Aliasing and Anisotropic-Filtering while others show no gain in quality when raising certain settings.
You might have encountered the term Port Forwarding when configuring bittorrent on your computer or analyzing slow or none existing traffic with bittorrent. One of the first answers of those helpful support guys in all forums is always check Port Forwarding, but what the heck is it ?
A non fixed Microsoft Excel 2007 has calculation issues with certain numbers. Two scenarios exist that result in a false value being shown as the result of a calculation. If the result of a calculation is a number between 65534.99999999995 to 65535 the result will be shown as 100000 instead.
Every software that is starting during system startup is delaying the system boot process. You might not notice an increase if the software is small but there are applications like those from Norton for instance that can delay it by more than a minute. It is therefor always a good idea to check which softwares are starting during Windows startup and get rid of any that are not necessary.
Every company that has it's own website or software seems to advertise their toolbar that you need to install on your system. Spammers also like toolbars and most computers have many toolbars installed that are most of the time simply unnecessary. The real difficulty begins when you try and uninstall a toolbar which is not as easy as it sounds.
Folders in Windows look all the same which serves the purpose of being able to recognize them immediately. While this might be nice for novice computer users advanced users might want to change the appearance of some of the folders to make them stick out from the rest.
How are you writing down notes when working with your computer ? Do you create text documents and write the notes in there, do you use Post-It notes and stick them to your monitor or desktop or do you prefer to use a software like Shock Sticker which combines the Post-It functionality with that of the text document ?
I was always puzzled by the fact that uninstallers would not delete all data, folders and files created by an installation script but would leave traces of that program on the system. What sense does it make to keep registry settings, config files or empty folders on the system if the user opts to remove the software ?
Self Image is an Open-Source hard disk imaging tool. It is capable of backing up hard drives or partitions even if those partitions or hard disks are not mounted in Windows. This means that it is for instance possible to backup a Linux partition in Windows using Self Image.
I received two of those fake emails today and thought that it would be a good opportunity to dissect it to show how phishing emails try to lure customers into a trap. The first and most obvious hint that something is wrong with this email is if you think about the subject of the email.
PC Pal is a software that is currently in Beta that checks your Windows installation for weaknesses and possibilities to optimize it. The process is very user friendly and requires minimal user interaction. Basically the user pushes one button and PC Pal checks the computer for problems related to security, networking, printing and performance.
