Best of Breed - The Best Freeware for Windows

I’ve been looking for a good graphics viewer. FastStone Image Viewer is a very functional freeware product. It is quick to lode, easy on the resources, provides a fast and effective way to navigate through your photos, gives you a way to do some basic editing, and it provides a utility for renaming and/or resizing your photos in batch mode! You can’t ask more from an image viewer. Except… maybe they could add a way to export photos to some of the online organizations like Flicker or Photo Bucket but I’m not complaining because FastStone image viewer packs a lot of features into their viewer while keeping resources in check and ‘load time’ acceptable.

If you are not a ’shutter bug’ and don’t do much graphic editing, this one program will do everything you need. However, for those of us who like to experiment with our photos and design graphics for applications and web pages, there is a need for a more robust graphics editor and I’ve covered those requirements in a previous post. With the addition of the FastStone Image Viewer I think we’ve nailed down the best free suite of graphic image editing and I would compare it to anything on the market.

When you go to FastStone’s download page, you will notice there are 2 other products that might sound interesting to you; the Photo Resizer 2.4 and the MaxView 2.1. Both programs are components that were rolled up and used to build the Image Viewer. So all the functional abilities in those products are rolled up into the Image Viewer.

http://www.faststone.org/download.htm

Friends, I am still a fan of launchy however, I was surprised to find out that Launchy and each of its plugins draws a ‘critical security threat’ and each must stay connected to the internet to work! Why in the world would a program launcher need to stay connected to the internet? Your guess is as good as mine. So one word of advice… Minimize the problem by double checking the plugin folder to make sure that no modules exist in that folder. You can delete everything in the plugin folder… It looks like there may be room for improvement on the program launcher front after all. I was very surprised the application was doing this. And when I shut it down via my firewall, I couldn’t get my firewall to accept my browser any longer. I ended up having to uninstall and re-install my firewall. A fine waste of an afternoon that was. So heads up! I’m still using it but I am certainly looking for something that accomplishes the same thing without connecting to the internet.
I’ve worked with so many program launchers over the years and I’ve seen the task approached a number of different ways but when it gets right down to getting access to my programs quickly, Launchy is the best possible solution. Instead of having to work to update your shortcuts every time you add new software or change the list of things you want to run, you point launchy at a directory and it does the rest. So setting up and maintaining Launchy is truly a snap.

When you want to run an application you just tap ‘alt+space bar’ (at the same time) and small search window will appear. You start typing in the application that you want to work with and you see the file name fill in the search window and then you hit enter and Launchy disappears again until you need it. Launchy also employs some intelligence so it knows what programs you run regularly and gives them priority over the .exe files that you rarely use.

To wrap things up… Launchy is extremely lean on resources to run, it is unbelievably slim on set up and maintenance, and it is as smart as a program launcher can be. Which leads me to believe that there will never be a need to run another program launcher (well… as long as we use keyboards) because the task of launching programs can’t be completed any more efficiently than Launchy does it.

This is your ‘1 click’ download link for Launchy.

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=132975&package_id=146049

I recommend downloading the skins too. After you download just unzip them and put them in the ’skins’ file where Launchy is installed… probably c:\program files\Launchy\skins You can download the Skins and get other product information from Launchy’s main page at this link.

http://www.launchy.net/#download

Like most people, I’ve struggled with Internet passwords since the Internet was created, and I still do, but now most of the time I’ve found a solution that works for me. Passwordmaker provides a good interface to store the passwords in and it automatically records the url. It will generate a password for you but, to be honest, I have not gotten to the point where I use the automatically generated password yet. I still use one standard password for as much as possible and then write it down in the interface. Therefore, I’m not using all the capabilities of the product but I may soon be confident enough in the system to do it. I’m just not there yet. However, this works as a great spot to store my passwords for now and I have room to grow and more things I could use it for as I move over to a more secure system. By the way, in the picture you can see that it asks for a ‘master password’ and it’s optional and I don’t use it. Just in case you were worried about having to type a password to get your password…

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/469

ps - I’ve tried nearly every solution they have out there for this. I spent a significant amount of time on Roboform (and some of the others) but never really got them to work well. So learn from my mistakes and use this for now. If you want to security of generated passwords it is in this product for you and I’ll update you if anything better comes along.

pps - One other piece of code, that I use as a safety net, is Password Exporter and you can install that at the link below. It exports all your passwords to a file on your PC and you should go through that manual exercise once in a while. You can also just look at your passwords through it’s interface.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2848

I forgot how essential this extension was until one day I disabled it while trying to clean up my extension list and I found that I couldn’t drag and drop files onto upload boxes any longer.  This extension works so transparently that I didn’t even realize I used it!  Therefore, in gmail I can drag a file over the ‘attachment’ text and it automatically uploads  the file.  It works on any site with an upload box.  It should be a part of the product but for whatever reason it’s not and it is a vital bit of functionality that will save every Firefox user time.  So install it and forget about it, just don’t forget to drag and drop.  :) 

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2190

This is a no brainer. Just install this because eventually you might need it. It expends no resources and it doesn’t take up space in your browser. The information it provides at your fingertips could be crucially important to you.

I’ve had a couple of problems with Firefox booting up and the interface looks all broken up. Like it’s at the wrong resolution and there are problems with the frames and menus. It’s not a functional browser and I have not been able to fix it. So then I have to create a new “profile” in Firefox. Well you’ll want to move your old bookmarks and extensions file over from your old “profile”. Even if this has never happened to you, and it might not because I am a power user of Firefox, it’s great to know where your bookmark, theme and extension files are stored. Even with this drawback to the browser environment I still think very highly of Firefox and the user community. Eventually these issues will resolve and having this information limits the potential damage it could cause you.

After you download the extension there is a menu option under your “tools” file that says “open profile folder” and when you select that it brings up the file in the file Explorer. Sometimes it can become really important to have this information at your fingertips.

https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?id=545

From time to time we all have files that we want to put somewhere that no one else can see. Axcrypt is the best desktop file encryption software that I’ve found. Once you download and install it you’ll notice that it has placed an entry on your context menu so that whenever you highlight a file you can select ‘axcrypt’ and it will bring up a screen that asks for your password. Input your password, the file encrypts as fast as a file zips, and it’s your set and no one can touch it but you. The beauty is that you can also go through that same process with a folder and it will encrypt every file under the folder. Anyone can still enter the folder but they’ll see that every file in the folder is encrypted. You can do the same thing to decrypt the file.

One thing I’ll point out. There is a difference between this way of securing your files and a locking a file folder. Axcrypt is fast but it goes through the process of encrypting every file so if you wanted to quickly lock a folder with a 3,000 files in it and still have quick access to each of those files the best thing to do would be to lock the folder and not each file. You can’t do that with Axcrypt. I have not found a freeware solution that works well for that specific need. There is a popular shareware product named Folder Lock that works nicely but it is shareware and someday someone will come out with a freeware version of something that locks folders well but I have not seen it yet.

Axcrypt is a snap to install and it works really well for encrypting files.

http://www.axantum.com/AxCrypt/Downloads.html

Microsoft Explorer is OK if you just have a single task to take care of and you’re going to be quick in and quick out but if you’ve got a continual need to navigate around your files and move, copy, rename, split, compare… then you need a file manager that has 2 panes, tabs, and the tools that make it easier for you to accomplish your tasks. I leave my file manager running at all times so it’s always at hand in my system tray. File management has been a very important characteristic of my computing environment for several years and I’ve carefully evaluated a lot of the freeware programs that are out there. Free Commander is the best one I’ve found. It has the features that most of the free programs have ‘hidden’ because they sell a shareware version that enables those features. To start, Free Commander supports a dual frame, and tabbed browsing, but that’s just the beginning of the features. You can split and compare files, and securely delete, using the native Free Commander interface and tools. Another feature that is usually turned off is the ability to highlight via file type and Free Commander supports that and it also lets you select the color of the text. I have all my .exe and .lnk files selected to show red and .dll to show green. It gives you all kinds of highlighting alternatives. It also has a program launcher built into it and it has shortcuts to the start menu and control panel. I had used Xplorer2 for years and I didn’t think I would change but within 5 minutes of working with Free Commander I knew that I had found a new file management solution. I havn’t even seen a fee based product that does as much as Free Commander does.

Free Commander is a product that you can tinker with and change just about anything you can think of. Try it out and see for yourself!

http://www.freecommander.com/fc_downl_en.htm

This is a great application that allows you to easily change the colors of your ‘folders’. I use this to organize the files in my ‘c:\program files’, everything that I’ve installed and use I color blue, everything I want to uninstall I color red, anything that I know is something my operating system needs I color gray

and anything that I don’t know or have no idea how it got there I color pink. It’s another dimension to folder management and it is very useful. The nice thing about this product is how easy it is to color the folder. After you install the product, every time you right click on a folder you’ll see the icolor menu choice and you just pick what color you want the folder to be. There are several folder ’skins’ to choose from so you can change your style if you get tired of the old XP folders. I have not had a problem with this product interfering with the windows icon system, which was something I was a little worried about, but I’ve used it for well over a year and have not had any issues. I’ve also noticed that it has a process that runs all the time but it doesn’t take much memory to run. It’s always at the bottom of my list of processes (which is good because I sort them by virtual memory used).

This freeware is mostly for looks but I need to emphasize the value I’ve experienced by using it to sort my program folders. I use customized icons on most of the folders I use regularly but this was a good way to organize my program folders so I know at a glance what is new, what I need to uninstall, and what to leave alone. For those of us with ’style inferiority complex’ because our friends are always showing off with their nifty Macs. We can even the score a little because the Mac folder icons are included in the ’skins’ bundle.

After you download and install the main program, download the ’skins’ file and put it under the main ‘icolor’ folder. It installs itself to your autorun directory but you’ll want to get things going right away so click on the icolor.exe folder and it will bring up a small interface so you can select which ’skin’ you want. Then you’re ready to go!

http://icolorfolder.sourceforge.net/download_icolorfolder_page.htm

Today so many applications automatically assign themselves to your start directory so they get executed while your system is booted up. Eventually this creates a backlog of processes that unnecessarily lengthen the amount of time it takes to turn your computer on. Another problem is that most of these programs don’t just have their .exe or .lnk files executing but they also have .dll files loading and changes to your registry. It gets to be a sloppy mess if you don’t go in and delete the things that you don’t need once in awhile. Today, everyone needs some kind of tool that will allow you to look in your start menu and see what is listed. The problem is, there are several places programs can store these files that start when your computer boots up. There are a number of tools out there that will tell you what is in the start menu but none, that I’ve found, do the job that the Systernals Autorun program does. It lists everything and allows you to deselect any of the files that load on startup. It also allows you to save the file and it will compare it for you at a later date.

There are tools that have a nicer GUI and I use those sometimes, but when I really need to pin things down this is the ‘goto’ program. Sadly, everyone needs to have this program loaded on their PC and they have to be familiar with running it. Otherwise, it’s going to take you a long time to boot and you’re going to waste a lot of resources. So download this file, run it, and be amazed at all the junk that starts when you boot your system. One word of warning, don’t go through and shut off a bunch of the Windows services the first time you look at things. Just close the things you are sure you put on the system and no longer need. Eventually you’ll get more knowledgeable and you’ll know what items it makes sense to turn off. Also, after you run the program, save the file before you do anything else. Then you’ll always know that your system can run with that saved configuration.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/Utilities/Autoruns.mspx

Filemon is the utility that I use when I can see that my system’s CPU isn’t stressed and the memory looks available but my system is really slow or it seems like it is always running a lot. Besides CPU and Memory there is another thing that you should take a look at and that is what files are opening and closing on your disk. One time I had installed one of the popular antivirus software packages and I couldn’t figure out why my system was slow when both my memory and CPU looked like they had plenty of availability. So I booted up Filemon and I immediately found out what was going on. I couldn’t believe the amount of file open and close commands SpySweeper was initiating. It brought my system to it’s knees. I don’t want you to think that I have a total dog of a system. It’s an average system that someone would buy, maybe a little light on RAM with only 512k and I do run more things at once on my machine than the average user but SpySweeper was killing my system with disk accesses and I didn’t know what was going on until I ran Filemon. Now I use Filemon every time I see my system running amuck and I can always get the answer from the utilities I run. Filemon is the probably the best way to tell what is happening to your system. It gives you a window that shows exactly what files are accessed and by what program.

Everyone should keep Filemon on hand, just in case you feel like your system is on a runaway mission and you don’t know what caused it. Filemon is a small program that doesn’t even require an installation. Just download the file, unzip it, and run ‘filemon.exe’ and the secrets will be revealed!

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/Utilities/Filemon.mspx