Spicy News @ Express Speed.

Following tools and utilities must have for window user, These tools would make your life much easier, and make your windows work much better, and most importantly they you want it.

• TaskSwitchXP Pro - a much better alternative to window’s ALT+TAB window switcher. This is not as slow as the PowerToys one either. It’s actually pretty quick.
• TopDesk - If you’ve seen the Expose feature on the new Mac OS X, you’ll love this little utility. Works just like the Expose, but its for windows. Nice.
• Highlight 2.2 - This utility will conver just about any source code into HTML, XHTML, RTF, TeX, LaTeX, XSL-FO and XML format. Simply amazing.
• FUNDUC Search & Replace - If you like GREP, you’ll love this thing.
• Whiteboard Photo Image Capture - You gotta see this one to appreciate it. It transforms images taken of a Whiteboard into a clean and clear image with full color. Really cool. Check out the examples.
• BootDisk.com - If you’re the computer geek in the family and everyone comes to you to fix their computer, then you NEED to have these bookdisks handy at all times.
• Ultramon - Why this kind of functionality isn’t built in, I don’t know. But it’ll keep the guy at RealTimeSoftware in business! Ultramon is the ultimate utility for Multiple Monitor systems. It’s most significant features, IMHO, is the addition of TaskBars that are monitor specific, and the addition of buttons NEXT to Minimize and Maximize to move open windows over to other monitors. Great if you’ve got 2 monitors, but a MUST if you’ve got more than 2!
• Tail for Windows - There’s lots of ways to get this functionality, including the GNU Utils for Windows and BareTail. The point is, it should have been included! A “tail -f” for Windows.  Great if you work with programs that write to log files and you want to watch the log as it’s being written.  Also has keyword highlighting so you can see things get visually flagged as they go by.
• SlickRun, Windows Search and/or Dave’s Search Bar - Pick one, and love it. Why there isn’t a floating or docked command-line in Windows I do not know. Probably so my mom wouldn’t freak out.
• RoboCopy - When COPY and XCOPY just won’t cut it, try the “Robust Copy”
• Nero 6 and ImageDrive - Nero 6 is a fantastic value and the greatest burning suite out there.  It also include ImageDrive that let’s you make and mount ISO images.
• BgInfo from SysInternals - If you log into a lot of boxes remotely and always wonder, where the hell is this? This wallpaper tool creates custom wallpapers with all the information you’d need, like IP Address, Box Name, Disk Space, and it’s totally configurable.
• AutoRuns - I always am suspicious that someone is running something automatically on my system.  AutoRuns (from SysInternals) checks EVERYWHERE that could be running something, the registry, win.ini (remember those?), the Startup Group, etc… 
• Marc Merrit’s Event Log Monitor (EventReader) - Sits in the tray and pops up a nice XP-style baloon whenever the event log is written to.  I hate tray icons but I love balloon tooltip info, so it’s a good tradeoff.
• Filter Files with Unknown Extensions for XP - Chris Sell’s provides a .REG file that let’s explorer’s find files with file extensions that are not known.  A real irritant with XP, fixed.
• Paint.NET - The Paint Program that Microsoft forgot, written in .NET.
• GhostIt - Little tray app that lets you ghost (make transparent) any window by clicking on it.
• NetPing - Jeff Key’s multi-threaded pinger…it continues to include new features, like right-click and launch Remote Desktop. Great for administration of small networks. I use it all the time.
• Magical Jelly Bean KeyFinder - Misplace your Windows and Office Product Keys?  Find them with this.
• NetworkDriveInfo - Helps you find free drive space on remote systems. 
• PSTools from SysInternals - All the command-line tools that Windows forgot…kill, loggedon, remote exec, shutdown, getsid, etc.
• TrueName - Right click a file in Explorer and find out it’s TRUENAME (Remember the Truename.exe?)  The 8.3 name of My Documents might be C:DOCUME~1SHANSELMMYDOCU~1.
• RealVNC - When RemoteDesktop is a hassle and PCAnywhere is lame…VNC stands for Virtual Network Computing. It is remote control software which allows you to view and interact with one computer (the “server”) using a simple program (the “viewer”) on another computer anywhere on the Internet.
• WHICH - It’s which and it’s back.  Wondering WHICH copy of that .exe is being run first in the path? Run “which calc.exe”
• URL Bandit - Monitors the clipboard and saves all URLs that go by in the click-stream.  If you copy a 1 meg file to the clipboard, URL Bandit can find, for example, all 200 URLS within it.  Yum.

Popularity: 3% [?]