[Editor’s note: this review was written by Freewaregenius contributor Gaurav Paul with subsequent editing by the webmaster].

There are two kinds of people reading this right now; readers in the first group are excited about the prospect of easily and quickly backing up their drivers and being able to restore all or some of them at will. Readers in the second group, on the other hand, are not quite sure (a) why this is of value, and/or (b) why they should bother with this activity at all.

The answer to these questions is simple: backing up drivers is very useful in case things go wrong. Specifically, if you decide to re-install your operating system it is possible/likely that you will need to invest considerable time and energy hunting down the correct device drivers online or on random CDs that you didn’t know you had. You can prevent this by using a program like DriverBackup and instantly get all of your drivers restored. The other situation where having drivers backed up is useful is if your drivers are corrupted and/or your hardware is not working properly, inwhich case you can use DriverBackup to remove the drivers as well as quickly get your working drivers back.

Here are some notes on this program:

• The main window: lists all types of drivers that are installed in the system with their full info.
• Selection modes: the three available modes of operation are (a) Backup (b)Restore, and (c)Remove
• The backup process: is fairly straightforward. Check the drivers you want to backup, select the path, and (optionally) enter a short description about the device/driver type.
• Filtering: you can filter the list of drivers using tabs ("All" "OEM", and "Third Party" drivers). You can also use the "Digital Signature" and "Full portability" buttons to select the device which has WHQL(Windows Hardware Quality Labs) signature and full portability button list you the device drivers which has full capability to be backup and restore.
• Restore: allows you to select and restore the previous versions of drivers that has been saved by the Driverbackup program in case of errors.
• Remove drivers: gives you a very simply and handy method to remove drivers, if that is what you want.
• Automatic Driver Restoration: this functionality under "Start Backup" is designed to create the necessary files if the drivers are to be restored on a system which doesn’t have "DriverBackup" installed. The "Generate file for auto-restoration” checkbox forces DriverBackup! to generate executable files for automatic drivers’ restoration. These files include a batch file “Restore.bat” and “Autorun.inf” that enables autorun in removable devices (USB Flash,CD-DVD-ROM). Note that in order to enable autorun, backup files (Backup Info file “.BKI” and directory tree) must be copied in the root path of device.
• Command Line Builder: this feature can be accessed from the "Tools" menu and is like magic; it offfers a simple way to access DriverBackup from a command line or script. For example you can burn the driver files into a Windows CD and all drivers can be installed from the command line at once; very cool!

The verdict: this program combines powerful functionality with an Easy GUI that both a "normal" and advanced user can easily interact with. There is no hitch in the backup/restore functionality, and expert functions like "Command line Builder" and "Automatic Driver Restoration" can be extremely useful.

One thing comes to mind with respect to "Automatic Driver Restoration; we’ve previously featured a similar program on Freewaregenius, DriverMax, which is excellent and offers a similar functionality, but requires installation on a new computer in order to restore drivers. In this light DriverBackup’s ability to create .exe files and restore in batch without the program itself being installed is a very nice innovation. An excellent software overall.

Version Tested: 2.0.0

Compatibility: 64-bit MS Windows, All 32-bit MS Windows (95/98/NT/2000/XP), Vista

Go to the program page to download the latest version (approx 319K).

[Editor’s note: this post was written by Freewaregenius contributor Gaurav Paul, who introduced the idea of a "featured bookmarks" weekly post].

BackupURL: creates instant cached copies of web pages. The site does the same thing that Google Cache, Yahoo Cache and the WayBackMachine do, but the best thing it allows you to create a snapshot copy of desired webpage on-demand and get a BackupURL link to the same. This is very cool if you require the content of a web page to stay the same while you share the link.The cached page can also be used for referencing or even mirroring data. The cached page will always be online (html, CSS, images) no matter whether the original site is up or down .

[Editor’s note: for a good freeware program that takes a snapshot of a site and saves it locally, check out Local Website Archive Lite].

Odee.com: ever wondered why the human mind hones in on what is “odd” amongst all that is “normal”? Whatever the reason, Oddee is a blog that delivers news and stories on some of the weirdest and amazing things that have to do with people/places/science/web/humour.Very entertaining, take a look !

Tagoo: is a media search engine that searches for music, video, and even downloadable software from a number of good sites around the web to fetch you a simplified list of your searched subject. It gives you information such as file type, BitRate, File Size, Duration, etc. It also gives you the option to PLAY or DOWNLOAD (if available) media in the search results.

Keyboardr: is a simple customized search engine that basically uses an AJAX GUI on top of Google search results in order to dynamically provide instant search results with each additional letter that you type into the search box. Its objective, to quote its creators, is to “replacing the feeling of ’searching’ with the feeling of ’launching’.”

The site is designed for mouse-free, all-keyboard browsing using the arrow and enter keys (hence the name “Keyboardr”). In addition to Google results, it also displays results from “Wikipedia”,”Google images” and “Youtube” in same page, which is pretty useful, and it runs pretty fast too!

PhoneArena: as cell phones ownership increases and as they become more and more integral to modern life, “PhoneArena” is a site that is stepping forward to provide the latest news, detailed reviews, specs and info from the mobile world. This frequently updated site covers all the buzz that surrounds cell phones and mobile manufacturers.

[Editor’s note: this review was written by Freewaregenius contributor Gaurav Paul with subsequent editing by the webmaster].

We all hail Firefox for it’s customizability, the many great add-ons that it supports, and for greasemonkey! For those who use Internet Explorer and may have been disappointed by the lack of good add-ons, IE7Pro promises (and delivers) on many items that are on your wish list and provides a much enriched web experience, all within a single, fast install. Some notes on this program below:

• The user interface: right-click the IE7Pro icon in the statusbar in order to access the various functions (many of these also support keyboard shortcuts as well).
• Mix and match what you like: if you’re concerned about adding too many features and options if you install IE7pro you need not fear. One of the coolest features about IE7Pro is that it has a plugin-architecture which enables you to activate the features that you want and disable those you don’t.

IE7Pro offers a great many features, so I will not list them all. Instead the ones I will mention here are (a) features that I absolutely love, and (b) features that I really, really, like but that should have been better implemented (and that I am wishing they would revisit).

Eleven Twelve IE7Pro features that I really like:

1. IEscripts: similar to Greasemonkey for Firefox.You can add user scripts to tweak how you view certain website(s) or to provide certain functions. Many scripts come with their own installers such as the GMail CSS skin,YouTube downloader, Myspace Notifier and many others. What this means to you is that you can create your own scripts or, if you’re not a coder, you can visit this site for many useful downloadible user scripts.
2. Tab History: maintains a list of your history of visited tabs that you can can use to quickly re-access any recently visited site (you can optionally add this to IE’s context menu).
3. Form filler: this is a full-fledged auto-password and form completion alternative to Keepass or Alpass. It is also local, in case you are uncomfortable using an online password manager such as Lastpass (which is actually my current favorite). It takes a bit of manual setting up at first as it does not auto-detect forms, but generally it works well. Also does not pre-fill forms but can be prompted to do so using a hotkey. It is the sheer simplicity and straightforward-ness of this one that I find attractive.
4. Clear privacy data: using a single click. Works well. An alternative to, say, Click&Clean or Cachepal. Cleans all areas that contain information on your internet activity such as your browsing history, cookies, forms, etc. Also included is an “AutoClear upon browser exit” option which can be very useful.
5. Proxy switcher: simple and works very well.
6. Show password on mouseover: a reader-created script that simply displays the password underneath the asterisks. This can be a lifesaver, and is the first one of its kind out of many that I tried that actually worked for me.
7. Mini Download Manager: allows you to pause/resume downloads, and to keep a record of your downloads and the URLs whence they originated. If you are not interested in a full-fledged download manager/accelerator such as Orbit Downloader or Flashget (which can be somewhat intrusive and may introduce P2P features that some people might want to avoid).
8. SpellChecker: quickly correct your typos within browser-based forms. Uses the open source Aspell. Works well.
9. Session Manager: allows you to save the currently opened configuration of sites/tabs as a session to be retrieved and resumed at a future point (similar to say, IESessions, but I kind of prefer this one).
10. Resize IE window: to 800×600, 1024×768, 1280×1084, or user-defined. Perfect for webmasters, developers, and designers who want to quickly see what their sites look like under different resolution settings (1024×768 being the most widespread).
11. FasterIE: with this enabled you can expect some speed optimizations to Internet Explorer. I couldn’t measure this myself, but am putting this feature on the list anyway.
12. AdBlocker & FlashBlocker: similar to AdBlock Plus for Firefox. Blocks ads on all sites, but you can manually add filters to it to enable them on certain sites if you want to.

Other available functions: a good number of these; URL Aliases, Findbar (enhanced on-page text search), capture screenshot of whole site, navigate by mouse gestures, custom page autoscroll , auto-refresh at set interval(s), scroll by grab and drag, a (fairly good) user created module for downloading from video sharing sites, etc. etc.

Wish list: Three IE7Pro features that can be better implemented

• Crash Recovery: automatically opens a tab with a list of the tabs/sites that were open when IE last crashed, similar to Firefox. In theory a terrific function; in practice “crash recovery” seems to produce a list of the last visited URLs whether there was a crash or not (and sometimes you do not want this on a shared computer). After a while I found this annoying and had to switch it off. I also found myself wishing I could access these recovered URLs somewhere private rather than first thing I see when I launch IE.
• Online bookmark sync: a bookmarking service that connects to the IE7Pro developer’s website and stores your favorites remotely; useful for syncing your bookmarks across multiple computers.(You have to register an online account first, obviously). My wish list for this one would be the release of a Firefox add-on that enables sharing bookmarks across browsers as well.
• Easy Homepage: optionally replaces your home page with a thumbnail grid of your favorite URLs. Sounded good to me, except the thumbnails were inexplicably lo-res and did not maintain their aspect ratio when the IE window was resized (which looked jarring). Also “Easy Homepage” seemed to be rather slow when launched, which I didn’t like.

The verdict: I am a Firefox user and will admit that I usually do not use IE unless I have to. One of the main reasons for this is that I find it very hard to have great add-ons like the ones I use in Firefox. But this IE add-on delivers a much improved IE experience and has completely changed the way I perceive IE.

The only criticism I have of this software are (a) some of the modules could have been better implemented (as mentioned above), and (b) documentation for individual modules is at times sparse: you might enable a plugin or module and find yourself doing a lot of fiddling around and experimenting to figure out how to get it to work. Most of the tasks being performed are simple translations from various Firefox add-ons and functions, and they’re very good/useful to have. The addition of user scripts make it highly customizable.

If you use IE this app promises to increase your productivity and enhance your experience; a must have install for IE users. Recommended!

Version Tested: 2.4.5

Compatibility: this software was tested on IE7 but the developer’s website confirms compatibility with both IE6 and IE8 RC1.

Go to the program page to download the latest version (approx 2.36 megs).

Usernamecheck

[Editor’s note: this review was written by reader Gaurav Paul with subsequent editing by the webmaster].

Although most of us have a username that we particularly like that ideally we would want to use across the board for all web services and websites that we use, we have all had the experience where our preferred name was already taken. The Usernamecheck service can check your username across a great many sites at once so you can either take quick action to register your name or otherwise help you find that distinct username that still works on all the services that you are interested in.

How to use: enter your desired username and the site will check for availability in (currently) 68 different and popular sites, including Gmail, Twitter, Wordpress, Ebay, Yahoo, YouTube, MySpace, Stumbleupon, Delicious and many others. It will show you the username status as “available or taken”. (Facebook is notably absent).

Note that Usernamecheck doesn’t actually register available names for you; for that you will need to go to each site separately.

The verdict: a brilliant concept and overall a very good, well-designed site.

Go to the Usernamecheck site.

[Editor's note: this review was written by reader Gaurav Paul with some subsequent editing by the webmaster].

Imagine a situation (or perhaps this may have actually happened) where you may have cleared a very difficult level in a game that nobody from your circle ever dreamed of. “I did it man” you tell them, to which their response is, unfortunately: “give us the cheat, where is it ?!”. The problem is that almost all screen recording/capturing software will record normal desktop activity but will not handle 3D graphics. Don’t fret, though, for this tiny software, which comes up to a mere 257K download, is here to help you produce some proof.

Taksi is able to record 3D applications that use DirectX 8, DirectX 9, OpenGL, or GDI API. It screen-records your favorite applications, allows you to choose your FPS setting, and encodes the output into video files using your favorite codec(s). It can also capture screenshots easily so you can share them with others – and it’s FREE. Here are more notes on this program:

• How to use: the first thing you have to do is let Taksi know which app you want it to record. You cannot specify an area of the screen; it will record the output generated by the app you select (whether it is 3D graphics output or normal app activity).
• App Hook: this allows you to tell Taksi to latch on to the next app that you open or select.
• Recording: Taksi will (optionally) superimpose a small, square indicator on the top left of your screen that is there to show the current app which is being recorded/captured.
• Half-size output: you have the option to produce full size videos or half the original output resolution. The latter can be very valuable in terms of cutting the video size down. I personally would always use this option by default, especially if the videos are intended to be ultimately published on the net (where chances are they will be made even smaller).
• Hotkeys: you can define hotkeys for various controls such as record/pause/stop functions. Many of these are function keys by default but can be changed, which is good in the case that your game or app actually uses that hotkey (for example you can change “begin recording” from F6 to Alt+F6 if you need to).
• Codecs: choose the type of video and audio codecs (installed in the system) to encode with. Keep in mind the device you may want to play it on when you do this. If you are unsure of a good codec, download and install Xvid, found here.
• Target frame rate: choose the target FPS as per your convenience. Be mindful that the higher the frame rate the larger the size of the captured file.
• Performance: is generally very good although the game I was recording was somewhat choppy and less “smooth” in its 3D rendering than usual.

Wish list: (or how this program can be even better)

• Audio support: will make a huge difference, obviously. The Taksi website states that Audio support is in the works but it seems to be taking a long time (the last update of this app reviewed here is dated June 2006). You may want to record audio separately (e.g. with a program like Mp3MyMp3) and re-combine with your video using an editor such as VirtualDub or AviDemux.

The verdict: overall this is a great app to work with and use. Initially you might have to experiment with codec, compression, and FPS settings as these relate to your desired video quality, but you are certain to figure it out quickly after two or three trials. You will finally end up loving it just as I did!

Anyone will quickly be able to use this tool, from budding gamers playing Counter-Strike (or any other game) to people who may want to create and publish video tutorials on, say, 3D modeling software.

While Taksi specializes in 3D graphics, it is also great if you are interested in video-recording a specific (3D or non 3D) app or apps without worrying about specifying the exact recording area around it, etc. For screencasts of general desktop activity other free apps such as CamStudio or Debut Video Recorder are probably more suitable (and will record audio to boot).

Version Tested: 0.76. Tested apps: Counter Strike 1.6, Google Chrome, winRAR, Notepad.

Compatibility: WinAll.

Go to the program page to download the latest version (approx 258K).