What’s This About?

MultiRes by Entech has been around for quite a while. It allows the screen display settings to be quickly and easily changed from the system tray or from the command line. The settings provided in the system tray are for supported values* for the screen and graphics adapter however non-standard or not supported values can be set from the command line which means batch files can be written to quickly change between different settings.

* The “supported” values are presumably obtained from the combination of the graphics card and monitor settings held by the system. If appears if the system only has a default monitor that some display settings may not actually be supported by the monitor.

Why Would You Want It?

There are lots of reasons why you may want to change the screen resolution and other graphics related settings for different applications such as  changing from office types applications to graphics, video, games, etc.

Another possible reason is to fit fixed sized windows onto a small display. I recently purchased a Samsung NC10 Netbook (great piece of kit which I would recommend to anyone wanting a small ultraportable solution). A small problem I experienced quite early on was that the display resolution of 1024 X 600 pixels. This meant that some of the standard software I use has fixed size “Option” screens which are deeper than 600 pixels so that some options and buttons were off the bottom of the display. I needed a solution that would allow me to quickly change the display settings to a non-standard size so that I could manage these types of windows before switching back to the standard (native) resolution. While MultiRes won’t display non-standard (supported) resolutions it would allow changing to them using the command line.

What Does It Do - The Essentials?

Summary:

• Changes Display resolutions
• Supports multi-monitor setups
• Changes other display settings e.g contrast, colour settings
• Comprehensive command line values

Pros: What’s Good?

Features & Benefits

• Freeware

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Popularity: 52% [?]

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Starter is a portable program that will list all your startup programs, running processes and windows services in a simple and well laid out tabbed window. It allows startup programs to be disabled/enabled as well as editing and adding new programs to startup on system boot. All Windows Services are also shown and these can also be edited or details shown. Finally, you can also manage all running processes in a similar way to the Windows Taskmanager. The program is simple and the user interface is well thought out for simplicity combined with good features. As a bonus you also get real-time information on CPU (by core and total) and memory usage in the statusbar area.

Why Would You Want It?

Many Windows systems end up with a lot of programs added into the registry or Startup folder so that they are automatically run when the system ids first started (at system boot).  While this can be immensely useful and save time it can also slow down the boot process and the overall performance of the computer if too many programs and services are running. Often these programs are automatically added to be started by the installer (another good reason to use a portable program suite!). Quite often the program or service is really unnecessary for the day to day use of the compute and is just draining resources and slowing down everything else. Windows provides the msconfig utility to view and mange startup programs and you can also view or manage services through the Computer Management console. However, Startup provides a single, well thought out and easy to use utility to manage both of these as well as running processes.

What Does It Do - The Essentials?

Summary:

• Identifies Startup programs in registry, startup folder and system ini files (win.ini, etc)
• Allows startup programs to be:
• disabled
• enabled
• edited
• Shows details of programs in Tooltip or separate window
• Identifies all Windows services
• Allows services to be edited
• Shows details of services in Tooltip or separate window
• Identifies all running processes
• Gives details of processes in main GUI (similar to Taskmanager)
• Allows process priorities to be changed
• Gives details of processes in separate window

Pros: What’s Good?

Features & Benefits

• Freeware

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Popularity: 85% [?]

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What’s This About?

CyberShredder is another very small portable application which is designed to remove all traces of old file data from your hard disks. It does not touch any existing files or the files in the recycle bin. This is very useful to ensure that files that have not been securely deleted cannot be recovered.

Why Would You Want It?

As noted under the previous post Privacy – Use CyberShredder to Securely Delete Files & Folders :-

When Windows deletes files from your hard disk using the standard delete or cut/paste methods it does not erase all the file details, just the index entry. So the file is still there you just can’t see it. There are plenty of free, portable programs available to recover such files ( see Recuva - Easy and Quick Way to Recover Deleted Photos and Files). Over time the “deleted” file may be overwritten by new files but this could be slow and is a random process. If you need to make sure personal details or other sensitive information is erased, for instance if you want to sell a hard drive or your old computer, then you need a program like CyberShredder.

Disk Redactor provides the complimentary piece of software to CyberShredder by “wiping” the areas of the disk that may contain information from files not deleted by a secure method.

What Does It Do - The Essentials?

Summary:

• Overwrites unused disk space
• Securely erase single or multiple folders
• Uses different methods depending on level of security

Pros: What’s Good?

Features & Benefits

• Freeware

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Popularity: 84% [?]

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What’s This About?

CyberShredder is a very small portable application whose only purpose is to delete files and folders on your hard disk and remove all traces of the file. It does this by overwriting the file with other characters and changing the file entries in the system file  index.

Why Would You Want It?

When Windows deletes files from your hard disk using the standard delete or cut/paste methods it does not erase all the file details, just the index entry. So the file is still there you just can’t see it. There are plenty of free, portable programs available to recover such files ( see Recuva - Easy and Quick Way to Recover Deleted Photos and Files). Over time the “deleted” file may be overwritten by new files but this could be slow and is a random process. If you need to make sure personal details or other sensitive information is erased, for instance if you want to sell a hardrive or your old computer, then you need a program like CyberShredder.  However see the “Cons” and “What Could Make it Better” sections below.

What Does It Do - The Essentials?

Summary:

• Securely erases single or multiple files
• Securely erase single or multiple folders
• Uses different methods depending on level of security

Pros: What’s Good?

Features & Benefits

• Freeware

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Popularity: 78% [?]

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What’s Up?

So I couldn’t think of a really good title that describes the recent “technical” problems that have resulted in no new ProReviewer posts for the last couple of weeks

Soon after I finished the post on ClipGuru a couple of weeks ago, as I was about to start on the next post, in fact at just after 5pm Saturday 8th November, we had a local power cut. No idea what caused it but after a few seconds the switchgear somewhere on the main grid automatically tried to reconnect the power twice in succession. No big deal you think, happens 2 or 3 times a year.

bigfoto.com

When the power was eventually restored a little later I found that my server PC wouldn’t start up, my Windows Home Server was dead and my main XP desktop, which I use for all my work and blogging, had some data corruption (or so I thought).

What Next?

Well I started off with the dead machines checking al the usual things like fuses on the mains and then working into opening up the machines and checking connections, boards and memory properly seated, etc. To cut a long story short over I pinned it down to the power supplies having failed by taking an old power supply from another machine and trying it on the dead ones. This all sounds fairly straight forward but lack of time and pressure of other things at home and work meant this took until the middle of the week to sort out.

In the mean time my main working desktop and started to behave ever more strangely. Crashing, freezing and the graphics display working intermittently. I thought it was the graphics card as I could connect remotely and al seemed to be working normally. A new graphics card and power supplies were ordered. However, the main desktop just got worse and worse. In the end I decided it could only be the motherboard.

What Now?

Well I sorted out the server PC and WHS machine power supplies and they are all working properly. I have a motherboard/processor/memory bundle coming tomorrow (the old mobo/cpu/memory were over 3 years old, therefore well out of date, so I decided to replace the lot).

I have used part of the available time to transfer data and install programs to my Vista machine, which I am using now to write this post. It also means I have been able to move the computers around in the study so it will now be possible to switch between my main desktop with XP and the Vista PC which should help with posts including more Vista programs.

So I hope to resume normal service over the next week to 10 days with 3 to 4 posts a week

Popularity: 71% [?]

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What’s This About?

ClipGuru is a semi Portable Application which monitors the clipboard and stores the information it finds there as text or images. This type of application is generally referred to as a “clipboard extender”. It stores this information in a database which provides a history of stored clips that can be reused. It has a variety of useful options for both storing and recalling the stored information

Why Would You Want It?

ClipGuru is a small, portable and light on resources. It allows you to store text clips or images (copied on there own without any text).So if you need to store text on it’s own, or images on their own, with the option to save different sets and paste multiple selections this could be very useful.

What Does It Do - The Essentials?

Summary:

• Monitors the Clipboard for text or Images
• Stores information in a simple database
• Multiple storage sets
• Clip text searching
• Combine clips
• Combined pasting
• Manage clips

Pros: What’s Good?

Features & Benefits

• Freeware

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Popularity: 90% [?]

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What’s This About?

DisplayFusion (Portable Freeware version*) provides the ability to move and resize windows between monitors in a multi-monitor setup. It also allows you to set wallpaper and backgrounds from photos on your computer or from Flickr. It is a great alternative to the shareware “Ultramon” program.

* There is a shareware upgrade to a Pro version however the Free version does everything that I need.

Why Would You Want It?

If you use a multi-monitor setup (and for a serious computer user the only reasons I think you shouldn’t is lack of money or space) then moving windows, particularly maximized windows between the monitors is something you wan to easily do. The ability of DisplayFusion to move a maximized window from one monitor to another by dragging and dropping makes it worth installing for just this one feature. The addition of hotkey window operations and wallpaper/background management are just an incredible bonus

What Does It Do - The Essentials?

Summary:

• Drag Maximized Windows between monitors/screens
• Move, Size and Maximize Windows with Hotkeys
• Set Separate Images as Screen Background/Wallpaper
• Auto Snap Windows to Monitor edges

Pros: What’s Good?

Features & Benefits

• Freeware

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Popularity: 97% [?]

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What Is It?

Statusable provides a second statusbar in Firefox that displays the “progress bar” and some standard text

Why Would You Want It?

Numerous add-ons in Firefox use the statusbar to display information. Statusable provides a second statusbar displaying progress and some standard text. This frees up the standard statusbar to display other information. This is very useful, particularly when combined with other add-ons which help with displaying the information that you need or using add-ons options to limit what is displayed in the statusbar. So if you need a bit more room in your statusbars this certainly helps.

ProReviewer has previously reviewed Statusbars by Marius Gunderson which did a great job in helping to organize what is displayed in multiple statusbars for Firefox 2. Unfortunately this has not been updated for Firefox 3.

What Does It Do - The Essentials?

Summary:

• Provides a second statusbar
• Shows Progress and some standard text

Pros: What’s Good?

• Freeware

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Popularity: 84% [?]

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What’s This About?

Flexible Renamer is a portable program that will rename files and folders, change file attributes including dates, change tags for different file groups (music, photos, docs, etc.) It has very powerful rules and methods combined with a wide range of options, defined presets and methods as well as both simple and advanced ways of working.

Why Would You Want It?

The need to rename batches of files in collections of photos, music tracks, documents, archives, websites, etc. can be met by many programs. However, Flexible Renamer offers this and more in a small portable program which includes comprehensive renaming rules, changing dates, changing attributes, changing tag information for most common tagged files and the ability to create batches of prenamed files. Sometimes you just want to add something to a file name, for instance you may want to add a place and date to the name of all the photos you took on holiday. You might want to add  something to a batch of documents that all relate to the same project. As you can use the file date for sorting in many file explorer programs you may want to change dates as a method of indicating that older dated files are part of a “most recent” set on a particular subject. This, combined with the ability to also change the folder names and tag information makes Flexible Renamer very powerful

What Does It Do - The Essentials?

Summary:

• Renames Files and Folders
• Provides comprehensive rules and rename methods
• Changes Attributes including dates
• Changes File Tag information for common tagged file types
  such as photos, music, documents, etc.
• Adds Shell Extensions for Context Menus (Optional)

Pros: What’s Good?

Features & Benefits

• Freeware

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Popularity: 100% [?]

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PicPick is a portable freeware screen capture program and a drawing program combined with some other useful drawing tools including a screen ruler, color picker on screen drawing and screen protractor. The capture and drawing utilities are very much like Faststone Capture which is no longer freeware.

I first saw this on winAddons.com a couple of days ago, since when it has “been doing the rounds” on many of the tech blogs. So read on if you are interested in some more detail and screenshots on the full potential of this great little portable program. The version reviewed here is PicPick 1.8

Why Would You Want It?

PicPick provides several tools in one small portable package, all integrated into a single main Manager window(GUI) and also accessible from the system tray menu.

The main functions can all be used independently of each other so you could still use it as a drawing and picture or photo annotation tool even if you don’t need screen capture. Of course you might just want it as a free, portable and very versatile screen capture tool. The fact that extra tools are included is a real bonus

What Does It Do - The Essentials?

Summary:

• Captures Screen
  • Full Screen
  • Active Window
  • Window Control
  • Region
  • Fixed Region
  • Freehand
  • Repeat Last Capture
  • Autoscroll (for pages longer than the on screen window)
• Drawing Program/Image Editor with
  • Standard shapes, arrows, lines, etc.
  • Blur, opacity, hue, contrast, brightness, pixelate, etc.
  • Rotate, Flip, etc. (Whole or selected part of picture)
• On Screen Drawing Tools (Whiteboard)
• Color Picker
• Color Palette
• Screen Crosshair
• Screen Protractor

Pros: What’s Good?

Features & Benefits

• Freeware
• Portable

(more…)

Popularity: 63% [?]

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