Category «Software Tips»

Open Source or free CD/DVD burners

I recently posted a quasi-review of Nero 7 Ultra Edition ENHANCED. At around the same time, Download Squad had 2 different postings about open source (among other things, this generally means free). CDBurnerXP 4: Free CD/DVD authoring tool Despite its name, CDBurnerXP is not just a CD burning application for Windows XP. It’s actually one …

Get all your keyboard shortcuts at KeyXL

From Download Squad: KeyXL is one of the largest online databases of keyboard shortcuts around. Search by software, operating system, Windows, Macintosh, Linux and browser based application, this database has it all.

JkDefrag

I think I’ve mentioned before that I am a big fan of “portable” programs. By this, I mean programs that you do not need to install. You can just run the executable from anywhere (including a USB drive), and it will run. I came across a defrag utility recently that doesn’t need to be installed. …

Windows Directory Statistics

There are many utilities out there that will show you the space used in the various folders on your system. One of the better ones is WinDirStat. WinDirStat is a disk usage statistics viewer and cleanup tool for Microsoft Windows (all current variants). WinDirStat reads the whole directory tree once and then presents it in …

Download free hard disk imaging utilities for Windows XP

This is from the TechRepublic Microsoft Windows Blog: Windows Vista’s hard disk imaging utility, Complete PC Backup, allows users you to create an image file that contains the complete contents and structure of a hard disk. If you want this capability in Windows XP, you don’t have to pay for a third-party utility, such as …

CloneDrive Setup

I read about this in the September issue of TechNet Magazine: Dealing with physical media can be a real drag. Since switching to Windows Vista and losing direct compatibility with the Microsoft Virtual CD-ROM Control Panel, I have been looking for a replacement to mount CD and DVD images… One tool I’ve found that does …

FastStone Soft freeware

The other day Chris was telling me about an image preview tool that he uses called FastStone Image Viewer. It is free software that can either be installed or run as a standalone executable. You can use the software to view, resize, and touch up photos, as well as do things like make a slide …

Emailing Large Files

I saw this at Canoe: Summertime – a great time to take lots of pictures. And with the price of memory cards ar an all-time low everyone gets shutter happy, including yours truly. Now, we don’t want to keep all these works of art to ourselves – we want to share them. We could choose …

Manage Boot Configuration Data

I read about this in the August issue of Microsoft Technet magazine: Every IT pro I know has at least one or two multi-boot machines. Today, those systems usually include an instance of Windows Vista® or Windows Server® 2008, formerly code-named “Longhorn.” If you are running a multi-boot system with one of these operating systems, …

Create a custom Control Panel in Windows XP

From TechRepublic: To simplify access to the tools in Windows XP’s Control Panel, Microsoft created the Category View, in which the Control Panel’s tools are organized into categories. If you’re an old-school Windows user, you can still switch back to the Classic View, in which all of the Control Panel’s tools are available. If you …