Just a quick post for my loyal readers.

My current installation of Windows XP is now grinding to a halt. (Not sure if that is the right expression as whenever a Windows OS reaches this stage, in my experience, it is in fact resulting in endless disk activity and very little else

Anyway the time has come to reinstall an earlier backup, update with the latest “Windows Security Updates” and then reinstall the essential software.

This gives me a great opportunity to share with you all the details of the software I currently have installed, the programs I consider essential and the ones I won’t be bothering with in future . Of course this will be my very subjective view but I hope it will be of some use to you all in your decision making. A you probably know by now one of the main aims of my Blog is to help you in making decisions about what software and particularly Freeware to install. So the next couple of pots starting next week will cover this aspect.

So I intend to produce a table of my currently installed software, whether I will or won’t reinstall it and the reasons why!

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What Is This All About?

Yesterday I wrote about the basic things you can do with the Windows Toolbar functionality in the taskbar. Today will tell you about some clever little tips and tricks that allows you to use toolbars to help you get more productive and generally make your computing life a little easie

Today will show you how you can go from this:

to this:

(Click on screenshots to show full size/enlarged)

and a lot more!

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What Is This All About?

Going from this:

to this:

(Click on screenshots to show full size/enlarged)

(OK ignore the wallpaper in terms of this post)

I am sure everyone is familiar with the Windows Quick Launch Toolbar as part of the Taskbar. Dragging and dropping new shortcuts to it, or having them automatically installed as part of setting up a new program. Perhaps even dragging and dropping the icons in the Quick Launch area to get them into some sort of practical order. If you are like me it’s soon full of icons and you can’t remember what program they start so you rely on hovering the mouse cursor to get the tooltip. My own experience is that the tooltips don’t always work or take for ever to appear and it all becomes very frustrating. You want to show text and you can but then there isn’t enough space to get everything in!

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The Microsoft  Remote Shutdown Tool can also be used to shutdown or restart a local computer. Creating shortcuts to do this using the various options available enables different user defined alternative shutdown procedures to be defined. Also you can create a shortcut to STOP the shutdown process once started providing this is within the timeout period .

This is certainly not a new tip but a post today on one of my favorite blogs also showed how a GUI can be started, more of this at the bottom of this post. What I thought may be useful would be to give a overview of the available options and how to create the shortcuts to help less experienced readers.

This is a screenshot of three shortcuts I have created to shutdown, restart and stop the shutdown process.

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What Is It?

DeskPins is a program that will “Pin” any window to keep it “Always on Top” of other windows. While there are many other programs out there with this facility and some programs have this as a built in option for themselves, DeskPins has the extra ability to “Pin” by rules based on the Window name.

Why Would You Want It?

Loosing focus on the current window you are working in can be anything from irritating to disastrous if, like me, you are frequently looking away from the screen while typing. My recent post TIP - Stop Applications in Windows Stealing Focus gives you more information and a way to change settings to help deal with this problem. However, due to the different ways in which developers implement their programs the solution suggested doesn’t always work. DeskPins is a way of making sure that important programs that you are working in never loose focus (depending on how you set the rules ).

What Does It Do - The Essentials?

Summary:

• Keeps any Window “Always on Top” (Topmost)
• Allows Rules to be set to Automatically “Pin” a window
• Wildcards allowed in rules
• Set Global Hotkeys

Pros: What’s Good?

• Freeware

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Applications in Windows have a nasty habit of stealing focus from the program you are currently using. Generally this is because the default registry settings have been overwritten by a program installation. It is quite easy to change the settings back to the default either by editing the registry or by using a “Tweak” program such as Microsoft’s TweakUI. This problem has recently been driving me mad, I am not a touch typist so tend to spend a lot of time looking at the keyboard while typing. So, every time a program steals focus I loose the work I am typing and sometimes make changes to the program that stole the focus.

UPDATE - Also see this post DeskPins - Help to Stop Other Windows Stealing Focus

To change settings install TweakUI from here:

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USB flash drives, memory sticks, etc. normally come preformatted as FAT (FAT16). This has four main advantages and one big disadvantage.

FOR:

• FAT16 is quicker than FAT32 or NTFS for writing files to the drive.
• The number of read/writes is less than NTFS for any given set of files actions.*
• Data loss is less likely when unplugged without using “Safe Removal” ** (more…)

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What Is It?

A small and efficient utility to manage the amount of CPU time being used by the programs currently running on your PC. This is achieved by a simple set of rules that you can control through the Process Tamer GUI.

As I have said before I am a huge fan of the Donation Coder utilities and this is one that I have installed on all of the PC’s/Laptops I use on a regular basis.

Why Would You Want It?

Some processes(programs) use the CPU very intensively when they are running or maybe only at certain times. When this happens other programs that you are running have less CPU time available and therefore respond slowly. Sometimes you may have to wait for relatively long periods of time before the program you are currently working with will respond or it behaves very sluggishly. Process Tamer will help to overcome these sort of problems in a simple and intuitive way..

What Does It Do - The Essentials?

Allows you to set rules for the process priority of running processes based on individual process names or global rules.

Summary:

• Provides a way of automatically changing process priority
• Allows the setting of explicit rules for individual processes
• Shows feedback on changes being made in real time
• Optional Log of changes as they occur

Pros: What’s Good?

• Freeware

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What Does it Do - The Essentials?

PortableApps Menu is a a small utility that sits in the system tray and provides access to a suite of programs contained in the associated folders. It also provides access to a set of folders associated with the portable applications folder to make documents, music, pictures and videos available on you USB Flash drive or removable hard drive. (Or just use them in a folder on your PC - see Why You Want to Use Portable Freeware Applications) PortableApps Menu is part of the PortableApps.com Suite available here at PortableApps.com.

The suite comes in 3 versions:

Basic - PortableApps Menu, PortableApps Backup utility and custom folders, icons and AutoRun

Standard - Firefox Portable Edition, OpenOffice.org, Portable, Mozilla Songbird Portable, Gain Portable, Sudoku Portable and Thunderbird Portable Edition

Lite - As standard edition but replaces OpenOffice with Abiword

No doubt the above applications will be subject to the My Free Review treatment in the coming weeks.

Summary:

• Gives simple access to a suite of portable programs
• Provides a set of portable document and multimedia folders
• Can be set to run automatically at Startup

Pros: What’s Good?

• Freeware (more…)

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What Does it Do - The Essentials?

Shutter is one of those tools that must have started life with the intention of being a fairly straightforward replacement for the Windows “Shut Down” dialog.

Of course I am speculating here but when you look at what the program now offers it shows all the signs of the developer (den4b) deciding “oh! that would be useful, I’ll add it in”.

Shutter allows the user to program Actions based on Events or to carry out the action immediately by pressing the “Now” button. The program can be set to run at startup and will reside in the system tray for access by left clicking with the mouse or a menu appears on right clicking.

The System tray Right Click Dialog Box

Summary:

• A useful piece of software that I use frequently (although I also use Brutus Shutdown Tools) .
• Very useful as part of a “Portable Suite” of programs to keep on a removable drive/USB stick/Portable Programs PC Partition.
• Easy to use at a basic level but also has many advanced Events and Actions

Pros: What’s Good?

• Freeware
• Portable

  
  

• Small Memory requirement
• Run from startup option
• Very Flexible

Cons: What’s Not So Good?

• Too many options?
• Over Complicated?

I have questioned both these Cons comments as it may be that the complexity of options and functions are a real benefit to some users.

Why Would You Want It?

1. Provides an alternative way to shutdown your system
2. Provides many more shutdown options
3. Provides events to trigger shutdown
4. Also provides actions that do not shutdown the computer

More About What it Does in Detail:

Events:

Allows for a series of different events to have happened to trigger a shutdown “Action” which in fact may not be a normal shutdown process

Actions:

Provides a series of shutdown actions and further actions that may be useful

Options:

The screenshots below are all self explanatory (click on the picture to open full size)

General Tab

On Action Tab

On Action Extra Tab

Web Interface Tab

What are the Technical Details & Compatibility?

What is the My Free Review Experience?

I have used this program for several months on one of my laptops and it is part of my “Portable Applications” suite which I have installed on all my PCs and laptops as well as on a removable drive and USB stick. It gets used at least once and sometimes more each day but only to shutdown or restart the laptop. Usually this is done using the now button but occasionally it has been useful to set the timer to allow running tasks to complete before the shutdown.Used in this way I have found it to be simple and efficient to use and have not experienced problems with crashes or hangs when using it. All in all it appears to be a useful part of my program toolbox.

What Could Make it be Better?

• As den4b is currently working on the next version let’s wait and see this before commenting

den4b Quotes on his website about progress on Shutter V3:

January 30 2008

……….On the other hand, considerable time was spent for re-designing and re-working Shutter. Bits and pieces are coming together now, and hopefully I’ll have a release candidate soon ready for testing. If anyone wants to have a pre-release look at it - you can contact me for more details. The underneath structure has pretty much stabilised now, but looks and feels of things do require some user attention.

What Other Posts are Relevant?