There is an impressive range of excellent freeware Windows enhancements and tweaks. This posting will present forty three excellent additions to Windows that you will like.
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ICSI Netalyzr is a service maintained by the Networking Group at the International Computer Science Institute, an affiliate with the University of California, Berkeley and funded by the National Science Foundation. The service got some publicity and found importance after late 2007 when Comcast was sued for throttling Internet traffic which Comcast later admitted to be true.
[Editor’s note: this review was written by Freewaregenius contributor Jason H. Check out his tech blog: 404techsupport.com].
Netalyzr is not the traditional freeware covered here at Freewaregenius, but it is a free service that allows you to test and find out more information about the Internet connection you’re paying for. With no real established metrics for what an ISP must provide, Netalyzr gives you the inside scoop in a convenient report. By running the test, not only will you find out information about your connection and its capabilities, but you’ll also share information with researchers that may improve the Internet infrastructure and provide data to the Net Neutrality argument.
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At heart, this software is a web-clipping tool with online storage, similar to Evernote. Yet Notable App is designed for sharing clipped web pages with collaborators, making notes on them and receiving feedback in a kind of virtual conversation.
Notable App is a web app used in conjunction with a Firefox extension or IE bookmarklet (or even an iPhone app) in order to create and upload web clips or screenshots that can later be shared for feedback with friends, colleagues, or collaborators.This program seems to be geared towards creative teams of designers, webmaster, usability designers, developers and SEO practitioners interested in dissecting websites and sharing knowledge not just on the content of websites but on the way they were put together.
However, you can use Notable App any way you want, as a web clipping app or a platform to simply share sites that you find, like, and choose to clip. Up to three people can use Notable for free; adding more will require paid licenses.
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Seesmic Look is the first Twitter client I’ve used and I have to say it simplifies a whole lot over Twitter.com. Seesmic Look’s best feature isn’t just something that would come with any client though, it looks very polished and presents information in a visually appealing way. Designed to match the graphics of Windows 7, Seesmic Look still works on Windows XP, Server 2008, and Vista as well as Windows 7.
[Editor’s note: this review was written by Freewaregenius contributor Jason H. Check out his tech blog: 404techsupport.com].
Beyond the good looks, Seesmic look also presents Twitter information in a more useful, more presentable way than the Twitter website. Things like Channels, Interests, and “playback mode” all channel information into a usable, eye-catching way. First, however, we’ll need to install Seesmic Look. Its installer runs under a megabyte (669 KB) and requires .NET Framework 3.5 SP1. From what I’ve seen, the Seesmic.Look.exe process runs right around 100MB while in use.
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Another day, another free utility that puts nifty function in the right click context menu. And although it may seem that we’ve seen a lot of the functions that Lammer Context menu offers before, a closer look will reveal some very interesting and noteworthy functions on here, such as mounting folders as virtual drives, search and replace file contents, batch file-and-folder renaming, select all similar files by type, and path operations (copy/move/list/delete) using regular expressions. Supports 32 bit and 64 bit operating systems both.
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JDcontextmenu is a free app that installs a wide range of commands in Windows’ right click context menu. You’ve seen many of these before; here’s a list: "copy full path", ""copy name", CMD line here, MD5 checksum, FileDateTime Stamp, Create new folder(s), send fullname by email as a link, add file to startup folder, clear folders and a favorites folder function; conveniently, however JDcontextmenu allows you to pick and choose the configuration you want and the order in which they appear.
Do not mistake this program with the previously mentioned MP3 merging app from the same author. MakeItOne FileBrowser 32 is a free program that installs a right-click shell extension in your 64-bit Windows environment that launch a 32-bit browser set to the current path/folder, enabling the user to quickly access any installed Windows extensions that may be installed in the 32 bit environment and that would not appear in the 64 bit Windows explorer.
MakeItOne MP3 Album Maker is a free app that can merge multiple MP3s while maintaining full reversibility (the ability to unpack/split the file into its original constituents at any later point). Merged files can be played on any player and MakeItOne and can preserve and edit the audio file tags and add album art as well. It can also unpack audio files packed by the Albumwrap shareware app which are commonly found on the net.
Possible uses are up to your imagination, and include merging disparate chapters or parts of an audiobook into a single file, archiving and organizing albums, and creating a single file for easier publishing or sharing on the net.
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This free app allows you to use your monitors more effectively by dividing your screen into custom sections. It mimics the Windows 7 snap feature but goes further by allowing you to place your windows into any of two, three, or four sections on the screen through drag and drop. It also works with all versions of Windows and even works well alongside the Windows 7 snap feature (you can have both working together simultaneously).
Acer GridVista supports a custom configuration for each monitor, and provides a great user experience. It also offers a handful of other functions, such as transparency and stay-on-top options.
[Click to Read More]Prism HUD (heads up display) is a free, lightweight performance and resource monitoring software. It provides a wealth of information in real-time right on the desktop. Although there are many free system monitoring tools out there, what is unique about Prism HUD is the way it displays information: it does not display continuous chart; rather, colorful icons appear on the desktop in a designated area of the screen only when events are taking place, and disappear altogether when the event has passed.
The five performance areas include CPU (total usage and each core’s load); Memory (total usage and hard faults); Disk (used space, utilization and transfer rate for each drive); Network (each interface’s transfer rate); and Process (the CPU usage, memory usage, page faults and IO transfer rate for each process). If you only care for a subset of these metrics you can customize the program to show exactly the ones you want.
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Auto Mute is a free little program that simply mutes your PC whenever it is turning on or waking up from sleep or suspend modes. It is useful in cases where you might want to ensure that your computer will be completely silent unless you actively un-mute it, such as working late at night or around sleeping children, or in public places such as buses, cafes, or conferences, etc.
If you need a good launcher for apps, files, folders or URLs and would like the option to organize your files and shortcuts into tabs then check this one out. FSL Launcher is a free, tabbed launcher activated by clicking on the top left corner of the screen with the mouse. It supports the dragging and dropping of icons into the interface and allows for a range of useability customizations.
VUE (Visual Understanding Environment) is a free, open source mind mapping and data visualization software developed by the Academic Technology group at Tufts University in Boston. VUE is unique in that it offers a range of innovative functions such as tagging of nodes and of relationships, support for images, videos, and other objects within the mind map structure, and the ability to import and analyze datasets (from CSV files, XML files, and even RSS feeds) using semantic mapping. It also functions as an innovative Powerpoint-style presentation tool, allowing users to define “presentation pathways” on top of the mind map structure, and to create presentation-style content that is associated with the mapped concepts.
VUE can also be used in conjunction with the Zotero Firefox extension to map out and visualize online documents and web clippings.
