To burn audio CD’s using K3B follow these simple steps. Click on the new audio CD project icon in the welcome screen of K3B.

Locate your music files using the K3B window browser then drag and drop the music files you want to burn in the current project window. Please take note that mp3 file is not supported by default. You need to install plug-in for mp3 to be able to burn them using K3B.

After you have completed adding your files, click he burn button to finalize you audio project start the burning process.

After completing the burning process your CD will eject and you should be able to see a message, Writing successfully completed

To create a data CD or DVD select new data project from the welcome window of K3B. Browse for the data file you want to burn then drag and drop the files in the current projects window then click burn.

To copy a disc select the copy CD option in the welcome window of K3B. Configure your CD copying procedure the next window and click start after you finish your configurations and settings.

Other functions are available by clicking the Further actions button. Other functions included are VCD and DVD project, Multisession project, CD/DVD eVomix project, Image file burning, CD/DVD erase and formatting, and audio/video CD/DVD ripping function.

From above we can see that it doesn’t support bootable disc burning, although it supports a wide array of burning projects.  It allows over-burning which is essential if you downloaded AVI movies that exceed the 700Mb size.  With drag and drop capability and support for multiple types of projects it rivals the commercial burning tools like Nero.  Compared with the burning tool in Windows Explorer, K3B has the upper hand as it has more features and it’s free.

Ben Carigtan shows you how it’s done!

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K3B – Free CD/DVD burning tool for KDE Linux

It is possible that the security software missed something.  It is also possible that some other factor is the cause, such as defragmenting, or lack thereof.  Of course, there is always the potential for the culprit to be the security software itself.

To be fair, security software is generally memory and processor intensive when it comes to running a full computer scan.  For those of us without Big Blue running underneath our computer’s hood, this means starting the “deep scan” type option, and leaving the computer alone for an hour or more.

If you are not certain that your anti-malware package is a resource hog, begin running a full scan, then try opening things like Microsoft Office, Adobe Reader, or Internet Explorer.  Perhaps they will take a few minutes to open, if at all.  You may also experience the wind tunnel effect when you hear your computer’s cooling fans prepare for take off.

Not all security software attempts to consume all possible resources though.  Being service and performance flexible, Sunbelt’s VIPRE Antivirus and Antispyware (found here) attempts to prove that your computer does have to lend the bulk of the available processor and memory usage to malware scanning, and have an easy to read interface.  This is not the first time a gauntlet like this has been thrown, but we will determine if these claims hold water or not.

Before we get to the scanning test, let’s look over VIPRE’s interface a bit.  Any type of security software should not be complicated and a trial to navigate.  Looking at VIPRE’s main screen, it appears that we are off to a good start.  Here we can see our current standings for things like status of Updates and Active Protection.  If we have to get into one of these section’s settings, there is a convenient link to the right of each editable entry.

Towards the upper right-hand portion of the graphical interface, there are four menu tabs.  Moving from the Overview to the Scan tab, we are presented with a quick list of manual scan types to choose from.  This is common in other security software, but it is nice to be able to scan only the registry or only the running Windows processes.

When in the Manage tab, we can look at Quarantined items from past scans, historical information on what VIPRE has scanned and removed on your computer, block and allows lists, and your current times for scanning.  In similar fashion to the Overview tab, each item here has a link on the right-hand side, which may allow you to edit specifics of view additional information.  Although, the link for the blocked items will not hold any information until you allow VIPRE to block the actions of a virus or other program.

In the Always Allowed list, we have added a handful of programs that we want VIPRE to ignore if they run.  To add a program, click on Add, use the Browse selection to find your file, then add it to the list.  As an option, you may also add an entire folder versus a single file.  This proves handy if you have a program with different executable files that may or may not trigger VIPRE’s defenses when they run.  Adding the whole folder covers all the files within it.

The Quarantine section holds any item placed into the Quarantine as the result of a quick, deep, or custom scan.  Here you can look over a list of programs and files caught in its net.  You can view a more through description of any of the threats here by selecting one then clicking on Risk Details.  You may also release these items using the Restore from Quarantine button, if you think one was mislabeled.

The last tab on this list, Tools, hold three utilities that are very useful.  The Secure File Eraser, though not activated by default, adds an option to your normal right-click menu allowing you to thoroughly remove files from your computer (far more stringent than the Windows Recycle Bin).

History Cleaner is not just for the Internet; it also covers recently opened documents in addition to clearing out your web browsing tracks.  Finally, PC Explorer allows you to view items that are normally obscured from your view, such as Active X entries for various programs on your computer.

On the interface side of the equation, VIPRE’s screens are easy to manage and move about in.  However, the other half of the matter is the resources it does, or does not, allocate for its consumption.  The next screen shot was taken of the Window Task Manager while VIPRE was running a full computer scan.  The service name is SBAMSvc.exe.

This test was run on a Windows XP Professional (SP3) computer, 3GHz P4 Hyper-Threading processor, 1 GB of RAM, and a 80 GB 7200 RPM hard drive.  At the time the computer was running two active windows of Firefox 3.5, two active windows of Internet Explorer 8, Microsoft Outlook 2003, iTunes 8, the Task Manager, and Microsoft Word 2003, with no hiccups or interruptions.

Each time another application or application instance was opened, the processor load adjusted accordingly.  Does this make VIPRE superior to other security programs?  Not necessarily, but it definitely puts it ahead of many from a performance standpoint.

You can also check out my review of SUPERAntiSpyware, another free program that you can use to remove malware from your computer. Spyware Terminator is another favorite spyware removal tool for many people. Enjoy!

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VIPRE Antivirus and Antispyware Review

With greater access to the Internet than ever before, more steps must be taken to keep kids safe online.  Parents can teach their kids when to let them know if something strange is happening, or if they get directed to website they did not intend to enter.  Even though there is more information on how parents can limit and monitor Internet access for their children, having some helpful tools to bolster this effort never hurts.

One of these tools is KidsWatch Parental Computer Control (found here).  While other Internet monitoring software leans more towards general web filtering, KidsWatch does filtering, and more.  With KidsWatch, you can, to name a few, lock down the Windows Control Panel, password protect the program’s settings, and use template based web restrictions based on age groupings.

When using KidsWatch, it does help to have separate accounts for your children.  It makes it easier to let them have a different Windows account, so you can assign specific restrictions with KidsWatch.  You can began editing their access by pulling up the main screen of the KidsWatch graphical console.  Choose one of the Windows accounts from the main screen, then click on Edit User.

When modifying user access via KidsWatch, there are many choices for restrictions available.  If you should need to change their Windows User account password, you can do that in the Account tab.  Here you can also choose from a pre-built, template list of restrictions.  Each restriction set has a select age range and a descriptive entry describing the strength of the content filtering.  You also have the option of following along with the tab choices at the top, and creating more customized account restrictions.

The next two tab sections restrict the target account’s access time for computer use and Internet use.  Both of them allow you to alter the allowable time on a daily or weekly basis.  The first tab, Computer, covers the target account’s use of computer resources, not just the Internet.

The subsequent tab, Internet, governs the time restrictions on access to the Internet itself.  This is not filtering, but curtailing Internet use across the board, and limiting Internet availability by pre-selecting time slots.  The limiting functions are similar for the Computer and Internet tabs.  In this example, we have restricted the other account’s use of the Internet to 3 PM to 5PM, on Monday through Thursday.

In the next tab section, Programs, you can restrict what currently installed programs, including Windows programs, the target account can or cannot use.  With this list, you may allow all, none, or some.  Furthermore, you can also setup time restrictions on the programs, akin to the Computer and Internet tabs, by double-clicking on the program entry.

Moving further to the right, in the tabs list, we come upon the Web Filtering tab.  This section’s default setting is to have Mature Categories selected.  Each main category, has several selectable sub-categories of filtering.  Each sub-category has a further break out list of what they cover.  If you have ever dealt with web filtering technology, you may have encountered legitimate websites being flagged as inappropriate, blocked, etc.  This is one area that you may want to test periodically to make sure it works to your liking.

The Chat and Instant Messaging tab is pretty self-explanatory.  This section just covers the activating, or deactivating, of the Chat and instant Messaging monitor.  The actual data collection area will be covered later, as it is in a different section of the KidsWatch program.

In the Ports tab, the average person may bypass this one altogether.  Not everyone knows why these ports are used; unless you are familiar with these ports and protocols.  At least some of them have descriptions next to them in order to assist the use in understanding what certain ports are used for.  This type of functionality is similar to a firewall, except does not distinguish between inbound and outbound connections, just wether the port is active or not.

The Advanced tab covers some of the internal workings of the Windows operating system.  Here is where you can stop access to the Control Panel and other Windows functionality, such as the Run command, and the Task manager.  Letting a child wander about the Control Panel could become problematic, and thankfully it is easy to turn it off in this section.

If for some reason, your children continually run into problems with legitimate websites that are being blocked, and they have a good reason for accessing information on the blocked websites, you can issue them a temporary password to bypass certain restrictions mechanisms.  Each password is good for one session, and a new one has to be issued when the other one expires.  This password will permit the use of extended Computer or Internet time, going through the web filter, or granting access to otherwise unusable programs on their account.

When you have completed your list in this account, you can click on Ok to commit your changes.  Now you have an account established with the restrictions you want.  However, there is another couple of areas, which may need attention.  If you head back to the main screen of the program, you will notice an Options button on the left-hand side of the screen.

Within this Options section, you can setup the warnings that let the other accounts know when they are short on time.  You can also setup how often reminders are transmitted as well as whether or not to show the warning on screen.  Should you feel the need, you can turn off the website filtering in this location from within this screen.

To the right of the Web Filtering tab, you will notice the Email Settings tab.  Here is where you can assign an email address to receive KidsWatch reports.  These reports cover items like Internet messaging, and website visits.  You will need your email server information to make this service work correctly.

Should you want to get information out of KidsWatch, you may want to visit the reports section.  To get to this location, click on the Reports button located between Home and Options.  The first three tabs under Reports cover the data gleaned from KidsWatch.  The last tab is a specialty function dealing specifically with sex offenders.

The first tab in Reports gives you ability to generate scheduled reports.  It is fairly straightforward.  The second tab however, is more specific in nature.  Here you can get a date range breakout of chatting history for a particular account.  If an account was using a chat service within the time period you selected, it will appear in the lower text box.  You can then view the interactions that account had with other people.

The next section, Real-Time Alerts allows KidsWatch to send notifications to a predetermined email address.  This covers any attempts to get into web sites covered by your previously selected restriction criteria, as well as words you can set to be flagged in chat conversations.  If you allow chat services to run, you may want to test the responsiveness of the terms you put in to be flagged.

Last but not least, the Predator Watch area of KidsWatch is specifically for parental usage.  Here you can locate sex offenders (via a website) by clicking on the “Track Sex Offenders” button.  You may be surprised at the results.  Additionally, you may sign up for email based alerts should registered sex offenders be relocated to your town, zip code, etc.

To say that KidsWatch has a variety of options would be an understatement.  This is the type of utility that parents need to keep their children safe on the Internet.  While this does not replace talking to your kids about the benefits and perils of Internet use, it helps in the absence of parental authority.

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Kids Watch – Keep kids safe while on the Internet

True enough, it is entirely possible that you began creating folders on your Desktop, and began loosely categorizing them simply to throw files into the folders.  This is a start to organization, however, it is possible that you may become overloaded with many folders.  The problem with either move is that you cannot see your desktop, but what if you could still place many items on the desktop, but organize it even further?

Fences (found here) is a simple program to help you curtail file and folder bloat in your Windows Desktop view. Instead of creating extra folders to hold your files, Fences gives you areas on your Desktop when you can drag and drop files and folders.  These areas can be resized like a window by dragging the edges and corners.

When you start up Fences, the left hand side of the window shows a small menu navigation bar.  By default, the Fences menu choice is selected.  This is where you have a quick Fence setup for choosing your initial layout.

Here you can start with a pair of Fences at one of several places on your Desktop, selectable by a drop-down menu.  These can be adjusted later.   However, it gives you an idea of the Fences positioning on your Desktop.  If you have the Vista sidebar, or other type sidebar application running, it is easier to adjust the initial layout of Fences.

When you click on the Customize menu choice, you are presented with options to modify how Fences appear on the Desktop screen.  Here you can change the positioning elements of the Fences and labels.  You can also change how transparent your Fences are, and what type of coloring they use.

Within the Tools menu section, you can choose whether or not to hide Desktop icons by double-clicking on the Desktop itself.  You are also presented with the option of rolling back to a pre-Fences Desktop by restoring the Pre-Install Snapshot.  A snapshot can be taken at any point you change your Fences arrangement.

At the bottom of the Tools menu, there is a More Tools link.  Within this are you have some advanced options to play around with.  Here you may also Enable or Disable Fences itself, should you desire to turn it off.  This area also gives you the choice of running an automatic layout of your Desktop Fences .

To add objects (file and folders) to your Fences, all you have to do is drag and drop files on to one of your Fences.  They act just like open Windows type folders, except they will always be open.  The more you add to them, depending on how you sized them on your Desktop, the scroll bar on the Fence’s side will grow accordingly.

While you have Fences running on your computer, your right-click menu, activated from the Desktop, is changed.  Instead of the normal icon arrangement options, these have been changed to align with Fences.  Here you may select Lock Fences if you do not want to resize your Fences with your mouse.

Should you want to rename, remove, or reconfigure your Fences setup, these options are available at the Desktop level.  Simply right-clicking on one of your Fences label bars gives you access to these functions.  If you use the Delete Fence option, the items contained in that Fence are pushed back onto your normal Desktop area.

If your idea of Desktop cleanup is dumping everything into your My Document folder, and it works for you, then you may pass on Fences.  This program focuses on the Windows Desktop.  But if you are someone who lives and breathes by your file being the Desktop, and are in need of some organization, Fences may be right up your alley.

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Clean up your Windows desktop using Fences

However, what if you want to simply take a snapshot of your current operating system and virtualize it? Though I have talked about converting a physical server into a virtual server, I have not yet discussed how to take a consumer OS, such as Windows XP and convert that into your own virtual machine.

Luckily, there is a really cool program that will allow you to turn any PC into a virtual machine in just a few minutes!

Disk2vhd is a nifty little program from Sysinternals that will convert your entire PC into a Microsoft Virtual PC virtual machine. Of course, it will only run on Microsoft Virtual PC, but that’s fine since it’s now free.

What’s cool about this program is that it doesn’t require any installation, it just runs as a stand-alone program. This also means you can copy it to your USB flash drive and run the program on any computer you like!

Secondly, it uses the integrated Snapshot feature of Windows so that it can copy the entire disk while the program is running in Windows! There is no need to restart the computer, boot from some disk, etc, etc like many other backup utilities require.

When creating the virtual machine, try to save the VHD file onto a separate drive than the one you are converting. An external hard drive would be perfect.

When you launch the program, it detects your disks automatically. Just select the drives you want to include in your virtual machine and click Create! That’s it! Once the file has been created, download Microsoft Virtual PC and load up your newly created VHD file.

This is also a great way to create a backup of your computer to use later on for testing purposes or whatever you like. Note that Virtual PC supports a maximum virtual disk size of 127GB, so if you have a bigger hard drive, you won’t be able to access it via Virtual PC.

Overall, it’s a really useful tool for anyone who wants to either create a backup of their computer at its current state or who wants to virtualize their computer for testing purposes. Enjoy! [via Lifehacker]

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Convert your Windows computer into a virtual machine

Some of these tools are not too difficult to find.  The Control Panel, for example, is easy to get at.  All one needs to do is click on Start, then Control Panel (in Windows XP); provided they have not changed to the Classic Start Menu.  If this is the case, click on Start, then Settings, then Control Panel.

Granted, something like the Registry Editor is not as easy to find, and for good reason.  This tool can do some damage to Windows itself if not used properly.  Still, one would imagine that there would be a way to get at both of these equally well should the user be on a call with technical support, and need access to some harder to reach tools.

If you own a Windows computer, and do not care for searching several different areas for system functions and tools, the Commands in Demand (found here) program was created with you in mind.  Commands in Demand takes all of the popular Windows tools, and gives the user a consolidated area where each of them is easily accessible.

When you open the Commands in Demand program, you will note that the left side of the window contains the menu selection for the entire program.  Each selection covers some aspect of Windows functionality.  Clicking on each one will bring up a tool, or set of tools, surrounding that particular topic.  For instance, we will first click on Applications errors.

In this menu topic, we are presented with tools that would help recover from a stuck or frozen program.  Though we can access the Task Manager from here, one can utilize the other choices, and may not require the Task Manager to be opened.

Simply clicking on “Kill a Non-Responding Application” will close down any program that has been frozen for a few minutes, and currently doing nothing.  If it is more that one program that is stopped, clicking on “Restart Windows Explorer” may prove more practical.

If we move down on the main menu to Desktop, we are presented with a list of options regarding the Windows Desktop operation.  Other than the Screenshot option in this list, the other choices appear to be more for experimentation purposes than anything else.  If you wanted to see how much real estate on your Desktop you would reclaim without all of the icon clutter, feel free to click on “Hide/Show your Desktop Icons”.

Within the Internet menu selection, we find a few interesting choices.  You can create an email message within this area, provided you have an email client like Outlook or Thunderbird setup.  You can also run a search on the Internet for this menu as well as use Google Maps to locate something.

When you get down to the Memory and CPU menu, you can get some good information on how your Windows computer is running.  This menu shows you how much free memory you currently have, how hard your processor is working (CPU Usage) and what your CPU speed is rated at.

Note:  There is a button here, which is supposed to help clean up your memory by eliminating bits of programs that are not currently in use.  This choice is not foolproof, so use with caution.  Depending on what program you have running while your computer is active, it may freeze or stop other service from running correctly.  This tool may require some experimentation before being used frequently.

While perusing the main sidebar menu, you will notice that you can get to the Control Panel as well as Empty the Recycle Bin.  You can also look at the Taskbar selection, if you want to Hide or Show that Taskbar.  However, take a look at the Windows applications menu choice for a minute.  Here we find a nicely grouped list of commonly used Windows programs.

From this area, you can find the Registry Editor, if you need to; or Windows Explorer.  Perhaps you need the Disk Defragmenter tool; it is here as well.  notepad, Paint, DirectX Diagnosis, and the list goes on.  For the most part, people using Commands in Demand will probably find themselves in this section more often than not.

In the long run, Commands in Demand in a good program for people who prefer a consolidated list of options, rather than hunting for different applications within Windows.  If someone is already proficient with finding these applications in Windows, they may not desire this type of software.

Of course since this program is freeware, and since there is no direct cost in trying it out, then why not play around with Commands in Demand and see if it cannot make for a better Windows user experience.

You can also check out out previous post on Handy Tweakers, a free tool to tweak Windows XP. Another good program to tweak Windows XP and Vista is Anvir Vista/XP Tweaker.

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Free PC software to tweak Windows – Commands in Demand

1.  Tucows.com – tucows earned its reputation as one of the original free download sites.  Now with over 40,000 software titles, it is a very dependable resource for free software with software reviews and ratings.  It has minimal ads on the banner, but they are not distracting. Tucows, like MTV, might sound outdated by the savvy downloaders of today but still packs a powerful punch when it comes to providing free software.

2. Download.com – Featuring editor and user-rated reviews, Download.com is the trusted, safe, and secure resource for software, mobile applications, and game downloads.

With everything from PC starter kits to games, security patches, screensavers, and mobile apps, you can download more than 80,000 free programs.

Download.com has a good reputation for unbiased software reviews and ratings system.

My only gripe with download.com is that it doesn’t review software that falls under these categories: corporate security, drivers, and networking software.  If you are interested in those categories, you will need to go to other places to get reviews.

3. Sourceforge.net – unlike the sites mentioned above, Sourceforge.net offers services that help people build cool applications.  The best thing about Sourceforge is that you get the source code of the application and not just the installer.

Programmers could easily tweak the source code to fit their needs and distribute in accordance with the softwares’ license agreement.  This is a good place to look for script based apps like PHP/MYSQL projects, Python scripts, home brewed software and also community developed applications.

4. Filehippo.com – this web site is perhaps the most Spartan of all.  The main page contains tabular lists per category of software so anyone who feels like downloading an app will see what’s hottest instantly.  Filehippo focuses on hosting quality freeware – there are no reviews or rating system – just the link to the file with descriptions about the software and some technical details.

5. Snapfiles.com – this one you may have not heard of or seen yet, but it offers good selection of software and reviews for both shareware and freeware categories.  Visitors could post their own reviews of their favorite software so don’t be surprised if you find over-the-top un-objective reviews like the one below:

Those are my Top 5 freeware resources.  Do you know better sites to get free software?  Post their URL in the comments section. Also, check out my list of 5 free programs for geeks.

Ben Carigtan shows you how it’s done.

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Top 5 sites to download free software

Like Irfanview and Picasa, this software packs a lot of functionality: picture viewer, editor, animated gif creator, color picker, raw format converter, picture frame maker and others.  The first thing a user will see on the GUI is an arranged shortcut to these functions.

The tool covers the basics of a photo editing app like the capability to zoom in/out, rotate, crop, level, contrast, midtone adjustments and others.  It has auto level and auto contrast capabilities – something similar to Microsoft Office’s auto-enhance image feature.

You can also add decorative frames built-in from the tool:

The tool also makes collage frames easy to create.  You can choose from a lot of frame designs and then just drag and drop pictures to each section of the frame.

Arranging pictures for printing to a single photo paper is also easy.

This tool offers a lot of goodies.  For users who want to combine pictures into frames – this might be the best freeware for them.

Ben Carigtan shows you how it’s done!

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Now that more people have higher speed connections (Cable, DSL, Fiber), as of late, one would imagine that downloading a trial copy of Halo would be fast and steady. Well, not always.  Instead of the person carefully watching their connectivity status while running their download, it is the group distributing the software, that is monitoring their bandwidth use.

Consider the possibility that greater bandwidth for the end user can mean greater amounts of requests for a target website.  The chances that your download can be slowed down, or broken, increase.  With larger websites, like Download.com, they take step to build infrastructure around maintaining the bandwidth necessary to support many thousands of active connections.  However, for less frequented, or newer download or file sharing sites, the same environment may not be available.

To help you get the most out of your down stream speed on your Internet connection, tools like Download Accelerator Plus (found here) are available to boost your file grabbing speed and download connection quality.  Download Accelerator Plus (also known as DAP) does more than simply make downloading files faster though.  It also allows you to effectively pause a download and restart one, should a link set become broken.

Historically, this tool was an add-on for Internet Explorer, and now it has evolved into a suite of products.  Included in Download Accelerator Plus is an FTP connection tool, a download dashboard, and a web browser.  A simple tabbed interface allows the user to bounce between the three views.

The main draw behind this tool is the multiple download threads it utilizes when downloading a file.  It does not simply get the download information from one site, and begin transferring the file.  Download Accelerator Plus looks at other websites for the same file, and pulls from the as well.  When you use DAP to get a file, it will display a multi-colored progress bar, showing several file connections.

When looking at Download tab, you can view the controls to Pause and Resume your downloads.  You may select one or several streams for the purposes of stopping and starting the file transfers, or you may do all of them at once.  One could see the practicality in this, because you could pause downloads that are taking longer then others, allowing DAP to focus on finishing certain transfers first.

When you pause an active download, a small icon pops up next to the selected transfer.  This icon appears in the Status column and viewable while you are in the Download tab.  The paused status remains until Resume is clicked.

For the purposes of downloading a file from a website, most people will navigate to the website, and locate the file on the site itself.  This is tried and true method for finding file you wish to get at.  That and the Google search engine covers most bases.  However, if someone sends you a HTTP address link in an email, for instance, you can copy and paste the whole address into Download Accelerator Plus.  All you have to do is click on the green Add icon in the Download tab, and a text box will appear for you to enter the website address of the download.

Please keep in mind that the version of Download Accelerator Plus reviewed here was the Free Version.  There is a paid version of this software, and depending on what you click on within DAP, it will remind you frequently of this fact.  The premium version does offer some nice privacy tools to help clean up Internet tracks with respect to downloaded files.

Is Download Accelerator Plus right for you?  That is a determination that you will have to make for yourself.  If you have a 265k DSL type connection, adding a tool like DAP will boost your file download time; whereas if you have a fiber connection of 20mb and upwards, DAP may not have the impact you want.  Even if the speed is unattractive, the ability to effectively manage file downloads is reason enough to get this tool.

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Download files faster using Download Accelerator Plus

While a little unnerving to think about, the same can be true of your hard drive.  Over a period of years, you hard drive has had files added to it, some files removed, and other files tucked away, which you may not realize are still on your computer.  These file are not malicious, or anything of that nature.  They are just quietly, and unnecessarily, consuming hard drive space.  And just like your closets, need cleaning every so often.

Of course, you are not going to fling open your closet door, and dash in, garbage bags akimbo, and get rid of most of the items.  You just need to sort out what to keep and what to get rid of.  In regards to your computer’s hard drive, it is in your best interest to know what you are getting rid of before you execute the plan.

In order to examine the file structure of your hard drive, a tool such as Space Sniffer is needed.  Space Sniffer (found here) scans your hard drive, and sorts the results for you to review.  Now, bear in mind that the results are not in the format you may expect.  Space Sniffer does not bring up a Windows Explorer type window, as some other applications do.  This program shows its scan results in a block type schematic on the screen.

This first screen may not look like much, but it illustrates the top level of the diagram, the C: drive.  At the C: drive level, you will see blocks of what is directly underneath the C: root directory.  This would include items like Windows, Program Files, Documents and Settings, and the page file.

Should you be one that desires more detail in what they are looking at, this is easily accomplished.  There are two blue boxes towards the top of the Space Sniffer program.  The icon on the left reduces the amount of detail on screen, where the right icon increases the level of detail.

Granted, the icon that increases detail will only go down so many levels, before you are expected to click open the container.  At some point, there would just not be enough of your screen’s real estate to properly display everything.

This is a view a few folders down.  This is a section of what is under the My Documents folder.  You can navigate within Space Sniffer in similar fashion to Windows Explorer.  Instead of jumping through folders though, the main interface stays in place, while you dig further into a particular set of files or folders.

If you want to, you can click on the green star shaped icon in the icon bar within Space Sniffer.  Doing so will show the free space available on your hard drive, in Space Sniffer.  Free space is represented, color wise, by green.

Though it would seem that a simple program like this does not have the need for extra options, there are some available to you.  Clicking on Edit, on the menu bar, then Configure, opens up an options window.  Here you may alter the geometric and coloring effects of Space Sniffer.  You can also modify the initial detail level, if the first set of results was visually too much for your tastes.

Space Sniffer may not be the only program you use for file management on your computer, but it is one that is worth looking at.  It is very light on system resources and does not have to recalculate something every time you go one level deeper into your file structure.

Additionally, it is not installed on your hard drive, and can be used with a portable utility set (like programs on a USB thumb drive).  If nothing else, it is fun to play around with and serve as a visual interpretation of how many files you have crammed into your My Pictures of My Documents folder.

Other programs that you can use to analyze hard disk space usage include TreeSize, a nifty little utility that will help you free up hard drive space. If you have a very defragmented hard drive, check out PerfectDisk, my favorite disk defragmenter. Enjoy!

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Space Sniffer – Analyze hard disk space usage

The idea behind Evernote is simple, for users to be able to save and edit notes with images, text, clips, audio, PDF and other formats online. Since the data is saved in the Cloud, users don’t have to transfer files if they need to switch computers.

It is a good free alternative to other paid solutions like Sharepoint and online MS Office services. It’s even better than other free competitors like Postica, an online note taking and file sharing tool. The client software can also import Microsoft Notes files, so compatibility seems to be not an issue.

The PC client software is a lightweight document editor that lets users create and edit notes.  It lets users login to their Evernote account and then save notes online.

The free account lets users attach JPEG, PNG, GIF, MP3 and WAV files. If you want to attach other types like DOC, AVI and PPT, you will need to upgrade to a paid premium account.

The free account lets you save up to 40MB of files per month, not bad for casual note takers, but not so good for more demanding users like me (my blog drafts alone are more than 100 MB per month!).  This service is for power note takers who are always on the roll.

If you think you need a cloud computing service like this, checkout their homepage at http://www.evernote.com

Ben Carigtan shows you how it’s done.

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Save notes online for free using Evernote

There are numerous programs on the market, which can take screen shots.  Some of them are commercial based software, while others are freeware applications found on popular download websites.  The abilities of these type of programs range from simple screen capture to having an image editor bundled in with it.  The add on pieces may be nice, but what you really want to figure out is how well a particular program handles screen shots.

PicPick is one such tool that not only does an excellent job with screen captures, but a nice lineup of image editing tools.  Billed as an “all-in-one” type program, the screen shot part of the program performs quite well.  After installing PicPick, and running the program, it sits quietly on your Start bar.

Since we are looking into screen shots, the first thing you will want to do is access the options menu for the screen capture hot keys.  To do this from the Start bar icon, right-click and select Program Options from the menu choices.  Once in the Program Options menu, click on Hot Keys to view the available key combinations for creating screen shots.

The top half of this menu covers the screen capture utility.  The lower half lists the hot keys combination for the other tools in PicPick.  Notice that while PicPick is running the PrintScreen key now operates as a hotkey extension.  When running Windows normally, pressing PrintScreen will put a screen shot to the clipboard, and then you have to open a separate image editing program to paste the screen shot into.

With PicPick turned on, the screen shot will automatically be loaded into PicPick.  Assuming we just pressed print screen, we will go into PicPick and see our image.  Enter the Editor by double-left clicking on the Start bar icon.

By default, our new screen capture is named Image 1.  Pressing PrintScreen a second time will create another image (Image 2) in a new tab within PicPick.  While the image editor is open, each subsequent screen capture will get its own tab.  To save the image, left-click in the upper left-hand corner, and then select Save, or Save As should you wish to change the file name.  Taking screen captures has been whittled down to a short process with PicPick.

Within the PicPick editor, you may notice a familiar interface.  The Ribbon Bar similar to Office 2007 appears here.  The bar is separated in a few different sections, and not too cluttered.  The first section, as seen above, contains Zoom functions, Paste options, and the blue icon button akin to the File button in many Windows applications.

To the right of Zoom and Paste, PicPick has a set of tools covering photo alterations.  Here we can resize and rotate an image.  Clicking on the Effects button will bring up some common image editing utilities.  Though screen captures typically come out better than images from digital cameras, it is good to know you have some options for image tweaking.

Next the Effects tools, you are presented with a set of drawing options.  These include the Select tool, Paintbrush, Eraser, Fill, as well as drawing rectangles, circles, rounded rectangles, lines, and text.  If you click on a tool, such as the rounded rectangle tool, you will have addition options to pick from.  With this drawing item, you can choose empty, filled with border, or fill without border.  You may also select the pixel width of the border.

Using the line tool is a little different however.  Should you click on the button with three period marks, you are able to customize the line to be a line or arrow.  You can also change several aspects to a drawn arrow such as the type of arrow tip, the type of end, and whether or not it will be outlined.

Further towards the right-hand side of the ribbon bar, you will notice the color palette.  Here you can choose from a variety of colors, beyond the default black and white.  You also have a color picker tool, which helps when you prefer to utilize the colors in the screen shot instead of the color palette.

When you completed any additional desired editing, you can go back to the blue tab in the upper left-hand corner of the PicPick window.  Below is a screen capture of the available options underneath this selection.  From this menu, you can choose a Capture function, bring up one of PicPick’s other image tools, or send the image to another program (MS Paint, Photoshop, or other application on your computer).

It is a given that PicPick covers a wide selection of image editing abilities.  This one program could easily replace a handful of image type applications on your Windows computer.  Thankfully, PicPick is not too overbearing with what it can do, and the extras do not distract from its core functionality of taking good screen shots.

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Take screenshots of your desktop with PicPick

1.  Firewall:  Sunbelt Personal Firewall.  This program can be found at Sunbelt’s website.  It is easy to setup and does not consume too many system resources.  A good firewall is an essential piece of security all computers need, and this one fits the bill for Windows.  Additionally, when it asks you for permission to allow or deny a connection to something, it will remember your choice.  There are other firewalls that suffer from memory problems when you instruct them to block a service, only to forget and ask you again at a later date.

2.  Anti-malware:  Microsoft Security Essentials.  Even though it is not officially released as yet, Microsoft Security Essentials (code name: Morro) does quite well even as a beta product.  Though the downloads have been cut off at the Microsoft Connect website, it can still be found at softpedia.com’s website.  While some people may be apprehensive about using a Microsoft branded security product, Security Essentials has come a long way from the initial offering of Windows Defender from years past.

3.  System Cleaning:  CCleaner.  A Windows computer builds up temporary and useless files daily with normal use.  Surf the Internet, get temporary Internet files.  Install and uninstall programs, your computer has leftover files that did not get removed.  There are also other programs like Windows Update and Microsoft Office, which produce unneeded files periodically.  CCleaner runs through Windows, and flags the excess files for removal.  The user is able to select what that want to remove, or keep, and let CCleaner do the rest.

4.  Search Tools:  Google Desktop.  Your three year old computer may not be as uncluttered as it used to be.  Thousands of digital pictures, emails and other files later, it can be daunting to find things.  Luckily, Google Desktop is there to help locate what you are seeking.  Putting the power of the Google Search engine on your computer, and after it finished its initial indexing routine, finding files is much faster than clicking through folder after folder, or using Windows Search.

5.  Image Editing:  Paint.NET.  When you need something better than MS Paint, balk at the price tag of Adobe products, and are overwhelmed by programs like the GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP), there is a third option.  Paint.NET is light on system resources, but plenty of options for good image editing.  The authors also have a message board and tutorials on their website for those who want to get further information on their software.

6.  File Compression:  TugZip.  With the ability to compress to and extract from a sizeable list of compression formats, TugZip is a freeware must have for anyone needing a program for making ZIP type files.  TugZip adds a list of formats to the Windows right-click menu, making the compression of a file or folder a simple two step operation.  Additionally, TugZip gives the user the ability to create encrypted archives so they can safely store there computer files, without too much complexity.

7.  Instant Messaging:  Trillian.  Having been available since 2001, and going through many updates, Trillian has place itself as an excellent tool for replacing brand specific instant messengers.  By combining services like MSN Messenger, AOL Instant Messenger, and Yahoo Messenger, Trillian eliminated the need to run separate IM programs.  It also covers the social networks of Twitter and Facebook, for posting; as well as the ability to tie into Skype.

8.  Download Tool:  Download Accelerator Plus.  Though this software is Ad Supported, it is free.  Accelerator Plus can greatly boost your file download times by attempting to get the data from multiple sources on the Internet.  This program also has the ability to resume downloads if your connection experiences interruption, or the originating file location has issues.

9.  Disc Burning:  Ashampoo Burning Studio Free.  When it comes to burning CDs and DVDs, the easier the program, the better.  With a friendly graphical user interface, and a step through process for burning disc media, Ashampoo Burning Studio Free answers the call of the need for disc creation software at a practical price (free).  This program can also create ISO files for those of us who need operating system discs; as well as other specialized disc formats.

10.  File Restoration:  Recuva.  Made by the same group as CCleaner, Recuva helps people get back lost files.  Whether you emptied the Recycle Bin, or pressed the Shift+Delete key combination with files highlighted, Recuva scans your hard drive(s) and looks to see what is still recoverable, and what is not.  It does an excellent job of file recovery considering the price tag, free.

Have any other suggestions? Feel free to list them out in the comments. Enjoy!

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10 Free Essential Programs for Windows

Personally, I have local backups, remote backups, backups of just my files, backups of my entire system, and backups of my physical hardware! The amount we rely on computer these days necessitates this kind of paranoia.

And it’s always great if you can create PC backups using free software! Easeus To-do Backup 1.0 is a free software backup utility that lets you backup and restore entire hard disks or partitions.

The interface is clean and very intuitive, making it easy for anyone to use. Here are some of the good features of Todo Backup:

• Backup system data, partition, or entire disk to an image and restore it quickly.
• Clone a disk (copy all data from one disk to another)
• Mount and browse backup images files as virtual drives
• Check image files to make sure they are not corrupted
• Copy using either file-by-file or sector-by-sector copying
• Ability to backup the data straight to CD or DVD thereby saving time
• Excellent help file with lots of information and explanations
• Ability to compress and password protect image files
• Supports FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, and NTFS file formats
• Supports IDE, SCSI, USB, SATA, and Firewire hard drive interfaces

There are a few scenarios where this type of program really comes in handy. Let’s say you have a computer with one hard drive which is 30 GB in size. Now let’s say you’re close to filling it up and you would like to upgrade to a much bigger hard drive without having to reinstall everything and copying data manually.

Well, with Easeus Todo Backup, you can simply clone the drive and restore it to the new hard drive. That’s it! Set the partition on the new hard drive to Active and you’re up and running on a brand new hard drive.

Also, if you ever download a virus or your system becomes unstable due to software issues or hard drive failure, you can quickly restore the backup to get back to the pre-crash state.

Restoring is a piece of cake as it lets you create the bootable recovery media in the software itself. Also, it has several bootable options, so if one boot method fails, you can restore using another method.

Overall, the software is excellent because of the number of features it has and it’s ease of use. I used to use Acronis True Image for backing up my computer, but this software has all the same options and it’s free. Enjoy!

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• Backup, restore, and clone hard drives using Easeus Todo Backup
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Backup, restore, and clone hard drives using Easeus Todo Backup

This list is automatically generated based on the type of content stored on your USB drive. This is great if you really use one of those options, but what if you always choose “Open folder to view files” or what if you disabled Autoplay?

Actually, starting with Windows Vista and on, Autoplay is now disabled by default because of the viruses and spyware that spread using this feature. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could plug in your drive and just have a link to it show up on your desktop instead of having to manually go to My Computer?

Desktop Media is a nifty little program that will automatically add drive icons to your desktop when you plug in a USB drive or removable drive.

Here are some of the main features of Desktop Media:

• Automatically detects new or already connected media and creates an icon on your desktop
• Ability to create soft links (shortcuts) or hard links (symbolic links)
• Supports not only removable drives, but also fixed, network, CD/DVD and RAM disk drives
• Ability to save the position of the icons

The program runs in the system tray and you can right-click on it to access the options:

In the options dialog, you can select which shortcuts you want to appear on the desktop and which drives to ignore that you do not want to show at all.

Overall, the program is useful for Windows Vista and Windows 7 users. It’s also useful if you have disabled Autoplay on XP (which you should have).

There is also another program very similiar to Desktop Media called Desk Drive, which also creates shortcuts to drives right on your desktop. Both programs have a good number of features and Desk Drive also has the ability to hide the tray icon also. Enjoy!

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Automatically add shortcut to USB drives on Windows desktop