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Page Defrag is a tiny 70 Kilobyte software that displays information about how fragmented your paging files and registry hives are. Defragmenters running in Windows have no way of defragmenting those paging files and registry hives which usually means that they get fragmented over time which can degrade system performance.
I was looking for a way to start softwares at a given time of the week and found X-ecutor to be the perfect choice for that. X-ecutor actually gives you even more options that that. It allows you to start softwares at system start, shutdown and at a selected time or day.
Font Smoothing is not optimized properly on your computer. I can say that because it holds true for almost any computer that is running Windows XP using a LCD display. Windows XP offers only two ways to smooth fonts which are both deeply hidden in the system.
We all know that Microsoft can update Windows Vista and Windows XP at will if automatic updates are enabled. Did you know that Microsoft can also update your operating system even if you disabled automatic updates ? Most users would probably deny that this is possible but it turns out to be true.
Windows file operations are displayed in an basic window with no option to enhance them at all. This can be really tiresome if you copy hundreds of files only to realize that the operation was terminated somewhere in the middle. There is no possibility to resume transfers as well and no list showing all file operations including their status.
Enter Startup Delayer. What this software does is to list all applications that are started when Windows starts. You can then delay the startup of applications that are not system critical. I would for instance instantly start my security applications but delay the start of lesser important programs such as Office, iTunes and other applications of that kind.
If you happen to work regularly with the registry of your Windows system you might have thought that it would be great to be able to open the most used registry keys using a bookmark like system. It's kinda funny that I never noticed until now that it is possible to add registry keys to the registry favorites.
Firefox, Word, Thunderbird and several other applications all have a build in spell checker that warns the user if a word that was written was not found in the dictionary file. There is however no general spell checker in Windows which means that users have to write their texts in softwares that have a spell checker and copy paste them into the software that has none. Or they could write their texts without spell checking.
Windows does not handle Wallpapers for Dual Monitors very well. If you ever tried to use different wallpapers on each monitor or stretch a wallpaper across both you know what I mean. We - again - have to rely on third party softwares to add functionality to Windows.
If you are looking for a sophisticated file and directory monitoring software that looks rather complex on first sight but offers a lot of possibilities if one works for a short time with Log Monitor. Directories or files that you add are monitored in intervals - even realtime is possible - that you specify and commands are executed if checks that are performed in that intervals return a positive value.
Gili over at Connected Internet compiled a list of 15 applications that he calls the best free software for your computer. We all know that it can be quite difficulty to compile a list with the best because the best is nothing more than a personal judgment. I would agree that about half of the recommended softwares are must haves while the other half are nice to have but not really required.
Windows Vista does have some nice features that are a great addition but not enough to justify a purchase. That is why clever software coders stepped in and implemented those features for Windows XP. XP has the major advantage that it is a fairly stable system that is not as resource hungry as Windows Vista is.
Wordpad offers an advanced functionality in comparison to Notepad but is not able to compete against Office suites such as Open Office or Microsoft Word. Ultra-Pad is a Wordpad replacement for Windows which adds several features that Wordpad does not offer. It can be enhanced with themes for instance, an option that Wordpad does not offer.
Microsoft tried to enhance Windows XP by adding a central folder for user data which is called MyDocuments which is the default place for save games, pictures, music and everything else that is user related. The default location has some disadvantages though. First, it adds another folder that has to be backed up if you do backup your data regularly.
I have been working with the ftp client Filezilla for some time now and switched to release candidate three of the new and upcoming Filezilla 3 just recently. I have to use ftp clients on a daily basis to upload files to my websites and edit php and html files that are already on them. They are indeed useful for webmasters but on a decline when you take a look at all Internet users - my opinion but supported by the fact that most modern browsers support ftp downloads as well.
It has been a while since I posted the first part of this mini series entitled 10 Freeware Recommendations. Two months are a long time considering that I write about software almost every day here at Ghacks, that is why I decided to open my treasure trove again and present you another batch of freeware recommendations for Windows that will probably make your day.
It happens from time to time that folders are not deleted when uninstalling software in Windows. It can also happen that other applications move data and leave folders intact in the process. This happend to me when I used a new mp3 tagging software that moved all my mp3 files to a new directory leaving the old folders empty.
If you want to show of your Windows Experience Rating in Windows Vista which displays a hardware rating of your computer but have a rather weak score you should consider tweaking the results to get a better score displayed at the end. The Experience Rating is derived from five subscores which are: Processor, Memory, Graphics, Gaming Graphics and Primary Hard Drive.
Ghacks is a technology news blog that was founded in 2005 by Martin Brinkmann. It has since then become one of the most popular tech news sites on the Internet with five authors and regular contributions from freelance writers.
