Useful Free Applications

[javasharp]

Google Desktop for Windows 5.1.706.29690



Google Desktop gives you easy access to information on your computer and from the web. It's a desktop search application that provides full text search over your email, computer files, music, photos, chats and web pages that you've viewed. By making your computer searchable, Google Desktop puts your information easily within your reach and frees you from having to manually organize your files, emails and bookmarks. It makes searching your computer as easy as searching the web with Google.

Google Desktop doesn't just help you search your computer; it also helps you gather new information from the web with Sidebar, a new desktop feature that shows you your new email, weather and stock information, personalized news and RSS/Atom feeds, and more. Sidebar is personalized automatically, without any manual configuration required.

Download URL

[Ryan Wagner]

So I wonder what's new in this version of Google Desktop? I can't remember if the last version had the "Add Gadgets" page because that is one of the things marked as a new feature.

[javasharp]

BgInfo v4.10



How many times have you walked up to a system in your office and needed to click through several diagnostic windows to remind yourself of important aspects of its configuration, such as its name, IP address, or operating system version If you manage multiple computers you probably need BGInfo. It automatically displays relevant information about a Windows computer on the desktop's background, such as the computer name, IP address, service pack version, and more. You can edit any field as well as the font and background colors, and can place it in your startup folder so that it runs every boot, or even configure it to display as the background for the logon screen.

Download Page

[javasharp]

Index Your Files 4.0
Index Your Files is an alternative way for you to Index and Search through all your files or folders on Local or Networked Drives. With plenty of stats about your files and various ways to manipulate them, it will provide an extremely user-friendly and powerful way to manage your information. Searching can be done by Name, Date, Size, Location, within the found file results. Use Boolean operators to perform multiple keyword searches. Use Windows Explorer context menus on found files. Use drag and drop, copy, rename, delete.

Download Page

[Ryan Wagner]

I can think of several instances where that BgInfo will come in handy...like on everyone's computer that I fix.

[Tinhed]

Index Your Files is a good application. What iam most impressed about is the index size, and the searching speed. Very similar to Locate32, though i cant really say which one is better.

[Tinhed]

Bginfo is a useful tool, and it reminds me of TinyResMeter. Though tinyresmeter does not display software information, like the service pack info, it is choke full of information about hardware, such as cpu speed, memory utilization, number of processes, even the number of threads and semaphores . right clicking on any field brings up the field specific context menu where there many settings available. Though the user interface is really simple, with no thrills or eye candy, the file size( about 100 kb) is what sets this application apart.

Download TinyResMeter

[applefruit]

What was that program that stores an image of your system, then notifies and records the changes in you system like added files once you have installed another program, so you can completely revert to your old system and not have bits of missing files and registry keys left once you have uninstalled?

[bob]

What was that program that stores an image of your system, then notifies and records the changes in you system like added files once you have installed another program, so you can completely revert to your old system and not have bits of missing files and registry keys left once you have uninstalled?

Doesn't system restore on Windows do that?

[spock1982 (Ernie)]

Doesn't system restore on Windows do that?

System restore does not enable you to track the changes so that they can be reversed manually when you want to uninstall a program. I think that is what applefruit is referring to. I do remember that there is a program to do what you want, but I do not remember what it is called. I am sure someone here will have a better memory than me and let you know the name of the program.

[applefruit]

Doesn't system restore on Windows do that?

System restore does not enable you to track the changes so that they can be reversed manually when you want to uninstall a program. I think that is what applefruit is referring to. I do remember that there is a program to do what you want, but I do not remember what it is called. I am sure someone here will have a better memory than me and let you know the name of the program.

Also, system restore keeps all the extra bits of files instead of deleting the unneeded files.

[Ryan Wagner]

One of the major programs that I used a long time ago to do that was GoBack. It's not free, and I think they were bought by Symantec, but it was a really nice utility.

[applefruit]

Something else - does anyone know any program that will add letter boxes to videos, ie. they are widescreen already, change to 4:3.  And any program that will cut off top bits of 4:3 videos and make them widescreen.

[Ryan Wagner]

I actually haven't seen programs to do either of those things...sorry. 

[Tinhed]

Revo Uninstaller Ver 1.30

Revo Uninstaller helps you to remove any unwanted application installed on your computer.

With its advanced and fast algorithm to scan before and after uninstall of an application you can remove unnecessary files, folders and registry keys left over in your computer. Even if you have a broken installation Revo Uninstaller scans for application's data on your hard disk drives, Windows registry and shows all found files, folders and registry items so you can delete them.

With its unique "Hunter mode" it offers you some simple, easy to use but effective and powerful approaches to manage (uninstall, stop, delete, disable from autostarting) and to get information about your installed and/or running applications.

Revo Uninstaller gives you another 8 handy and powerful tools to clean up your system.

Here are the list of all tools and utilities included:

Auto Start Manager - stop programs to start automatically when Windows starts;
Windows Tools Manager - handy and useful tools bundled with every Windows;
Junk Files Cleaner - find and remove unnecessary files from your computer;
Browsers History Cleaner - erase web site history, visited pages history, temporary internet files of Firefox, Internet Explorer, Netscape and Opera web browsers;
Office History Cleaner - remove history of most recently used files in MS Office;
Windows history cleaner - remove recently opened files history, delete temporary files, remove tracks and history saved by Windows;
Unrecoverable Delete Tool - erase files and folders forever;
Evidence remover - make sure already deleted files, folders and other data are unrecoverable

Download Revo Uninstaller