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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FreeFileSync is a free/open source folder and file synchronization program that features a beautiful, two pane user interface and a host of powerful options. It can do the following: compare files by their content or by file size and date, synchronize files and subfolders, process multiple pairs of folders at once, load/save folder comparison sessions, create batch jobs that can be run from the command line, and can can handle cloned files (i.e. symbolic links or junctures). It also offers UniCode and Network support. There is also a portable (no-install) version.
Caderno is a freeware text editor/Notepad replacement that’s focused on delivering an excellent user experience. It features a minimalist, tabbed user interface on the one hand and some powerful features on the other, without overloading the user with too many functions. Features include search/find/replace, go-to specific line, crash recovery, session management, Unicode support, as well as Syntax highlighting (INI, XML, HTML, Java, PHP).
Invisible Hand is a free Firefox extension that kicks into action when you visit any of a number of well-known online shopping sites. It can monitor the pages you are browsing and notify you if the items you are looking at are available at a better price in any of the other sites on its network.
FORCES (also known as BattleForces) is a free, online turn-based strategy game that is played in the browser in single player or online multiplayer modes. It takes elements from RISK as well as concepts from other strategy wargames and blends them into a game that is surprisingly playable and addictive.
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Printee is a free Internet Explorer extension designed to remove elements of a webpage to create a perfectly printable page without ads or extra information (e.g sidebars, unrelated images, other stories on the page) that you might not want to waste ink and paper printing. Provides a single-click wizard when pressing CTRL+G that can provide a printer-ready page on-demand, instantly eliminating extraneous page elements.
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SmillaEnlarger is a free, open source program that enables enlarging/magnifying bitmap images in high quality. Based on original algorithms, this standalone software uses a number of filters that are designed to remove some of the typical artifacts generated by the enlarging process and “fill in” image information to achieve a much higher quality image than image enlargement algorithms typically employed in most applications.
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This posting will describe how to split a very large CSV or Text file into a number of smaller parts by specifying the number of desired lines within each of the resulting pieces (for example, by 65536 lines for use with Excel 2003 or 1,048,576 for Excel 2007). The method described will use free software to do this and will work for very large files (even files larger that 4 gigs in size), will avoid loading the entire file into memory when processing, will maintain the format/extension of the original file, and will not add any additional information to the resulting files.
PDFTools is a free tool that can perform a wide range of PDF editing functions including ones that you would expect such merging, splitting and extracting of PDF pages, as well as many other less common functions such as stamping PDFs with a text message or image, rearranging PDF pages in a document, as well as decrypting a PDF document or encrypting/editing the document’s user permissions.
SuperF4 is a free utility that resides in memory and delivers instant, quick termination of apps or processes via hotkey. It is designed to forcibly terminate any running program effectively and instantly, but without notifications or prompts to save your work. This is done by pressing CTRL+ALT+F4 for terminating the active app, while WIN+F4 will allow you to use the mouse to click on any visible Window to terminate that app or process.
GSplit is a freeware program that can split any file, even extremely large files, in any number of ways including by user-defined sizes or predefined sizes, by spanning across a number of removable disks/media, by number of desired pieces, or even by number of individual lines or occurrences of a pattern in the file. It can create a tiny program to re-unite the split files without needing to use the original application, and can even integrate this into the first file of your splits. Gsplit also adds a Windows explorer context menu entry for on-the-fly splits. Portable version available.
Pointy Haired Dilbert is a blog that provides some amazing, freely-downloadable MS Excel resources. The philosophy behind the site is a focus on data charting and visualization and on “telling stories” with data. Templates that can be downloaded from the site (all 100% free) include sophisticated reporting dashboards, templates for advanced charts (e.g. bullet graphs, Gannt charts, Petal Charts, Speedometer, Candlestick charts, etc.), and even Excel-based games and apps (including a calendar and an Excel-based Twitter client).
MetatOgger is a free, powerful program for tagging and renaming MP3s and other audio files. It offers the functions you would expect from a tag editor (e.g. mass renaming, tags from filenames or path, scripts to perform editing functions) as well as a few that are not so common, such as “acoustic fingerprinting” of unknown songs using the MusicBrainz database, built in album art search, importing lyrics from lyricwiki.org into your audio tags, and the ability to download a massive audio tag database that it can use as a tagging resource.
