Indeed…sometimes, I have these bouts of insaneness and I open up task manager, and start killing memory hogging processes. This usually takes some time as I scroll through XP’s 60ish processes and Vista’s obscene 100 processes. Well…I shall do that no longer!
What you do with this little app is mark up system and critical processes, etc, that you want to keep. Press the big kill button and everything else goes poof!
However, what you really want to do before you do this, is know what you’re killing first. Because, honestly, for your own sanity, don’t kill processes you dont even know 😛
First, figure out what all those nasty processes are, THEN do this. 😉
Check it out: EndItAll
An interesting application for today…this little app starts applications at startup according to if your Caps Lock button is on or off.
I know, this sounds a bit weird and probably useless…but…think about this.
For example, most people, open up IE (GASP) or FF, outlook, etc, once their computer turns on. Its kinda like your default workspace. Well…what if some days, you honestly just want to check something real quick and don’t want everything popping up, while most days you want everything there?
Capster! Set it so all your daily programs run if caps lock isn’t on, and if caps lock IS on, nothing loads. That way, when you’re logging in, you can determine how much stuff you want to load when you login. It could come in nifty 😛
Check it out: Capster
No….it doesn’t remove all the noise that you hear while you’re trying to concentrate, although that would be REALLY nice.
This little program removes digital noise from photographs. This is really obvious when you’re either taking a photograph at high zoom (when camera starts digital extrapolating) or when you’re taking photos at night and you have a high ISO on. Its all the little red and yellow dots that appear over the image. This program learns as it fixes noise and removes it to provide a much cleaner image. Now…sadly, this thing is one of the few programs that is posted at flashladybug that…isn’t free 🙁
However, you can clear up a few photos using the trial edition which is for 15 days, or buy the full version for 20 bucks. Still kind of sad that it isn’t free. I had expected the standard edition to be free and the profession ed to be paid…but such is not the case.
Check it out: Imagenomic
Here’s an interesting little program that I have found to be quite nice for the few days I’ve had it. Nubs allows you to use all 4 sides of your monitor as “taskbars.” When you drag a window to one of the sides, it makes a little “nub” on the side that looks like the taskbar minimized window. So, right now, I have firefox on the top of my screen, aim windows on my left, and the rest on the normal taskbar. This lets me organize a bit better, and I dont know, I seem to like it 😛
Give it a shot, Nubs
My poor desktop…while having an extremely large amount of hard drive space, is suffering from duplicate files. I’m pretty sure i have 2 copies of alot of music, quite a few redundant backups that are useless, and just in general, a lot of doubled up files. Double Killer will hunt down and remove those duplicate files for you. First off, its NOT just based on file name, because thatd be kinda stupid. It checks name, size, date, and checksums of your files to make sure they really *are* duplicate. And hey…its not like its erasing it from the face of the earth, you can set it to put the files in the recycle bin 🙂
And of course, it excludes system files, because god knows whats in that whole group of stuff.
Best of all…its made by Big Bang Enterprises, and is free!
Check it out: Double Killer
A nice utility that I’ve been looking for quite a while. You have programs to burn .isos, mount them, etc, (Alcohol 120, daemon, etc) but do you have a tool that can create .isos or burn dvd video files? Burnaware is a cheap solution, meaning…free. Its currently in beta and supports HD and bluray in the off chance you have the hardware. Its a very nice utility that comes in handy quite a while if you burn or meddle around with media alot.
Check it out: Burnaware
There are programs out there that just suck up CPU. Many of them can freeze your computer and cause it to crash. Process Lasso goes and takes control of these processes. It monitors processes and before they go and freeze your computer it lowers the priority of those processes so your other programs will still function. You can also set process rules such as forcing a certain process to run on a certain processor. Finally, its free, works on Vista and XP, and uses up a rather small footprint of 10 mb ram. Check it out: Process Lasso
If you use Aim, Yahoo messenger, MSN, ICQ, Skype, etc, and you want to manage your IM history…you could either find an open source program that combined all of the formats into one program and use its history saving. Or…you could try out IM History. This nice little program will save your IM’s in a nice format and for any/all of your IM programs. If you are either not worried about possible privacy issues or just want to keep tabs on everyone at all times (j/k) it also has a slightly odd function that it can sync histories across multiple computers. Of course, this is slightly excessive for the normal user, but hey…you can use it just for keeping a history so you can say “I told you so” or “HAH! you *said* it a week ago.”
*shrugs
🙂
Check it out on im-history
You know how sometimes, you’re helping someone fix a computer problem and the person just can’t tell you want you need to know. Example:
You: ok, so, move your mouse to the bottom of your monitor and tell me what you see.
Person: I see…a cow…a blue background, an X, a window that says Not Responding, some word documents, an IE button, a powerpoint button…
You: OK….do you see anything that says “Your Computer Will reboot in 15 seconds?”
Person: OHHHh, well….theres a window that says Your Computer Will reboot in 10 seconds…does that count?
You: *Bangs head on table
Yes…so, this of course is usually the way it goes 🙂
So much could have been solved if you had just been able to see what their screen looked like. In some times, remote desktop wont work, remote assistance is just impossible to do…
Remote screenshot grabber lets you do that to a remote computer provided you have administrative rights on it and someone is logged on. Its a nifty tool and free too 🙂 Check it out: Remote screenshot grabber
From the same group who made remote screenshot is someone who made remote interactive executer. This little tool lets you run programs with parameters on a remote computer provided you have administrative rights. This…now this…is a holy grail of remote installation 😉 You don’t even need to walk over to the other computer to start installing, or running pings, or doing anything of the sort. 😉 Check it out: Remote interactive executer
You know how your finger twitches to press ctrl shift esc whenever ANYTHING happens on your computer. And how its just oh so easy to kill a frozen program there. Well, theres a more ahem…advanced/expandable version of taskmanger, called System Explorer. This has detailed information about not just processes, but what explorer is doing, IE, drivers, connections, etc. Theres even a history of processes activities. One function that makes me like it nearly instantly is the registry/file snapshots, which lets you compare changes in your configuration. Of course, with this many functions, it ought to be purchased..but nope. Its free 🙂
Check out SystemExplorer.