Need to find files or folders nearly instantly? Try UltraSearch 1.7
AM Software has released UltraSearch 1.7, a major update of its super-speedy MFT search tool.
As with many similar tools, the program doesn’t waste resources maintaining an index on your hard drive. Instead it accesses the NTFS Master File Table directly, which allows UltraSearch to retrieve its results at very high speed, typically just a second or two.
Use CastCor to correct photo colors
If the colors of your latest digital photos are less than accurate, then most photo editors will allow you to try and resolve this manually. Tweak RGB here, maybe HSV there, and with a little work there’s a good chance you can improve the situation. If that sounds too much like hard work, though, you might prefer a tool like CastCor, which aims to correct color problems almost entirely automatically.
There’s nothing too special about this, of course -- most photo editors include at least some automated correction tools -- but CastCor delivers more than most: “White Point Auto”, “Grey Point Auto”, “Contrast Auto”, “Auto Color Enhance”, “Highlight-Shadow Enhance”, “Adaptive Equalisation”, “Luminance Correction”, and more.
Yes, you can read QR Codes on Windows
From ads to packaging, websites to business cards, QR Codes are everywhere, these days. The characteristic blocks of square dots are used to encode links, phone numbers, addresses and more, and may then be easily read by scanning with a mobile phone (and a suitable app, of course).
Figuring out QR Codes on a PC can be a little more challenging, unfortunately, but there are a few options available. And the latest is the CodeTwo QR Code Desktop Reader.
WMI Code Creator deserves a place on your hard drive
If you’ve looked into Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) before then you’ll probably know that it’s a powerful Microsoft technology with a lot of useful system management capabilities, ideal for creating scripts to report on your current system state, or tweak it in just about any way you like.
But it’s also, well, a huge topic. And often highly technical. Even if you’re an expert developer, wading through the various namespaces, classes, methods and more will probably make your head hurt.
DivX Plus 9 beta converts video up to 10x faster
DivX has revealed the first public beta of its DivX Plus 9 Software, which as previously includes the Codec Pack, Player, Web Player and Converter.
And while DivX releases aren’t the big deal they used to be, there are some major steps forward here.
Start your PC faster with Argus Boot Accelerator
Lengthy boot times must be one of the greatest irritations you can have with any PC. Not only can Windows take an age to load, but then the hard drive thrashing can continue for minutes, in some situations, slowing down everything else you want to do.
Investigating exactly which programs are being launched along with Windows is a good first step to resolving this situation, of course. A tool such as Autoruns will reveal all, and disabling or uninstalling surplus applications should make a difference.
Is junk cluttering up your hard drive? Try JFRemover
There are hundreds of tools that promise they’re the ideal solution for cleaning up your hard drive, but in our experience the vast majority are a huge disappointment, achieving little more than Windows own Disk Cleanup applet.
And so our expectations of JFRemover (a brand new temporary file remover) were, well, low. To put it mildly.
Uh-oh, that video won't play? Try Convertilla
Finding videos online is easy. Finding videos in a format you can play is sometimes more difficult, though, which is why you might need a tool like Convertilla to convert movies from one file type to another.
The program’s big advantage is its simplicity. There’s no talk of codecs or bit rates here; conversion can be as easy as dragging and dropping your file onto Convertilla, choosing the output format and clicking Convert.
You can do better than the Windows 8 command line
Windows 8 brings fundamental change to many parts of the operating system, but the command line isn’t one of them. It’s just as annoying a place to work as it ever was.
If you’re tired of the console’s many deficiencies, then, we’d recommend you don’t waste any further time waiting for Microsoft to fix them. Just install the open source ConEmu, instead: it’s a powerful console emulator which comes packed with options to make your command line life easier.
Lightroom 4.2 supports 22 more cameras, 37 new lens profiles
Adobe has unveiled Lightroom 4.2, a welcome maintenance release that extends the program in a number of areas.
In particular, the new build adds extra camera raw and lens profile support, makes tethered capturing (the ability to take shots directly from your computer, once it’s connect to the camera) available for more devices and provides a number of bug fixes.
Emsisoft’s Online Armor 6 supports Windows 8
Emsisoft has announced the availability of Online Armor 6.0, the latest release of its versatile firewall.
And while there’s no revolutionary additions to this build, the program does benefit from several worthwhile tweaks and enhancements.
Avira Internet Security 2013 review
If you’re looking for a leading edge security suite, something packed with the very latest features and functionality, then Avira probably isn’t the very first name that comes to mind. The company’s recent suites have been capable, competent, but not exactly exciting.
Avira Internet Security 2013, however, looks like it wants to be a package that changes all that.
Need to check your router settings? Try rCon
Years of PC-related experience -- software development, support and more -- have made me the go-to guy whenever friends or family have computer problems, and for the most part that’s just fine: I enjoy the technical challenge.
There are some issues which seem to crop up over and over again, though. And figuring out exactly how to access the settings page on a router is one of the most common.
Use FiRE to rename folders
Renaming one file in Windows is easy enough. Renaming an entire folderful is a little more tedious, though, which is why many people tend not to bother, simply accepting whatever those original names happen to be (“track1.mp3″, “track2.mp3″ and so on).
It doesn’t have to be that way, though. Especially if you grab a copy of FiRE, the File Renaming Engine, an interesting tool that provides multiple ways to batch rename files on your PC.
MRU-Blaster helps protect your privacy
"Most Recently Used" lists are generally a good feature in applications, as they allow you to reload recent documents without having to remember exactly where they’re stored.
But, of course, there are also privacy implications with doing this. And so if you don’t want other users of your PC to see exactly which documents you’ve been accessing recently, you may want to use a third-party tool, like MRU-Blaster, to wipe them all away.
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