Rating: 5 

Version tested:  2.2

Description: Id3ToFolder is a powerful program that enables you to change or rebuild the folder structure of your mp3 collection based on their tag information.

Your digital music collection has grown and grown over the years. Let’s say that initially you were putting all folders in the same place, adopting the naming convention “artistname - albumname”, and now after all this time you are wishing you organized them differently. Or conversley, let’s say that you were using a ripping software that was creating a foldername for each artist, with all the folders for the different albums placed inside, and now you would like your music organized some other way. Or let’s say that all of your music has somehow ended up in one big folder, with no organization whatsover, and you’re wishing there was a way to organize all of it into folders without having to do it manually. Read more »

Rating: 5 

Version tested:  2.1.6.101

Description: AVS Disk Creator is a simple yet powerful CD/DVD burning program that offers many useful features including data verification, multisession support, and ISO support. AVS can read/burn a wide variety of media formats, including dual-layer and the new Blu-Ray.

This is one of the most powerful and best looking CD/DVD burning solutions; my definite choice for freeware programs in its category.

What this program offers:

• A straightforward design that is simple and easy to use. Working with files and folder (adding, deleting, renaming, etc.) is very intuitive.
• A clean, compact sleek look (comes replete with a handful of skins).
• Support for a wide variety of drives and media formats, including dual layer the next generation Blu-Ray formats. Supported media formats include: CD-R/RW, DVD+/-R, DVD+/-RW, DVD-RAM, Double/Dual Layer DVD and the latest Blu-ray technology BD-R and BD-RE.HD-DVD format support promised in future versions. Read more »

Rating: 5 

Version tested:  2.3.3

Description: Zsoft Uninstaller is an uninstall utility that provides additional functionality that is not available in the Windows’ Add/Remove control panel, including much faster uninstalls, the ability to find and remove uninstalled programs that somehow remained in the registry, and the ability to monitor an installation and revert back to the pre-installation state afterwards.

What you need to know about this program:

• Zsoft Uninstaller removes programs completely, including the install folder and registry entries.
• It will allow you to delete obsolete entries that are not actually there but are still on the add/remove list.
• Zsoft Uninstaller provides the option to ‘analyze’ an installion, i.e. take a snapshot of the system/registry before and after an installion and compare the two. This allows you to choose to ‘revert’ the changes completely, which might be a good option if you are installing a program that you feel may be dubious and suspect that it might be installing undesirable software on your machine. Read more »

Rating: 5 

Version tested:  1.0

Description: Apecsoft SWF2EXE is a simple tool that will convert your swf files into executables quickly and easily.

I guess now that the holiday season is upon us, we can count on the proliferation of those, ahem, cute flash greeting cards that everybody will be sending. With Apecsoft SWF2EXE you can convert your swf files into standalone exeutables; no need for browser or flash player. Read more »

Rating: 4 

Version tested:  1.1

Description: Filesort is a little program that will look at files within a directory and ’sort’ them (i.e. send them to the appropriate directory) based on user-defined rules. These rules can be either file-name rules, file-age rules, or file-size rules.

For example, you could set Filesort to ‘observe’ a folder and move all mp3’s within it to a specific directory, or all files older than 30 days into a specific folder, or all files over 100 megs into their own folder. Unfortunately, you cannot combine rule types, so for example you cannot send all avi video files that are larger than 100 megs into a directory of their own.

This software is probably most useful to either somebody, like me, who downloads so much software every day that it gets pretty confusing to manage, somebody who does a lot of p2p downloading, or somebody who works with a lot of files or data that belong to different projects and needs a way to keep the files organized. Read more »

I noticed some users looking for this, so here’s how to convert CBZ and CBR ebook files into PDF.

1. Rename the files so that the .CBZ and .CBR extentions are changed to .ZIP and .RAR, respectively
2. Decompress these into a folder; any of these freeware programs will do this: Extractnow, 7-Zip, TugZip, and Filzip.
3. Install a PDF virtual printer. I recommend the free PrimoPDF because it provides multiple print quality options.
4. Open the newly created folder, select all image files, and print all of these collectively. These will print in alphabetical sort order, which is exactly the order CBZ and CBR files are displayed in CDisplay and other readers; see screenshot for how you can do this. More instructions on printing images en- masse in XP can be found here. Another way to print collectively is through your image viewing program, as most support this functionality. Read more »

Rating: 5 

Version tested:  1.2i

Description: Xenu’s Link Sleuth is a program that will browse all pages of a website looking for broken links, and present these in a multi-column sortable report that is easy to work with.

If you have a website (or websites) then you know that the links you have on your website are (a) an integral part of the content of your site, and (b) that these are often unreliable, get broken, and have to be maintained on a regular basis. Enter Xenu’s Link Sleuth, a small and efficient program that will search for and find broken links for you (see screenshot above for a sample report). Xenu will also create a browser-based report than is also useful (see below screenshot). Read more »

Rating: 5 

Version tested:  2.3

Description: Folder Size is a free utility that displays the size of folders in Explorer folder windows alongside file sizes. Works with Windows 2000 and XP, does not work with 64-bit Windows PCs.

Despite the fact that I know that Windows does not display the folder sizes in explorer windows, I somehow manage to be surprised every time I need the folder sizes, look for them, and find that they are not there. This program will finally put them there (see screenshot). Read more »

Rating: 5 

Version tested:  2.0

Description: Riva FLV Encoder is a small freeware program that can convert video files back and forth between FLV (Youtube, Google Video) and MPG or AVI container formats.

This program is a frontend that uses the FFMpeg encoder/decoder, which is why it’s actually pretty powerful (I converted an Xvid encoded 700meg AVI file to FLV without a hitch). Riva FLV Encoder is a small, simple app that can be very useful. Read more »

Rating: 5

Version tested: 1.0.3.173

Description: Auslogic Disk Defrag is a freeware disk defragmentation tool that seems to be significantly faster than Microsoft’s defrag.

The Auslogics claim that this program is a very fast disk defragmenter; however, I have not found any figures as to how much faster than defrag this is supposed to be. What I do know, however, is that the defragmentation process with this program feels pretty darn speedy just to observe. Read more »