Get Linux lets you find and download more than 100 distros
If you want to download a particular Linux distribution you could go online, run a quick search or two, and you’ll probably turn up the necessary links fairly quickly. But a portable Windows tool called Get Linux aims to offer an even simpler solution.
Launch this small program and you’ll see a list of more than 100 Linux distros. Enter the name you need in the Search box, choose whether you’d like the 32 or 64-bit build, click Download, then just wait while Get Linux grabs the necessary ISO for you.
AIMP 3 adds own sound engine, 7.1-surround sound support
First released back in 2006, AIMP’s lengthy feature list has helped to make it a popular free audio player. It has been out of the news for a while as the developers worked on the latest release, but they’ve finally finished, and now we can all sample AIMP 3′s new features for ourselves.
Top of the list has to be the introduction of the program’s own sound engine, which allows you to output using ASIO, WASAPI or DirectSound (click Preferences > Playback to control this).
Wavosaur -- lightweight, full-featured audio editing
With even some budget computers now arriving with 1TB of storage, and perhaps more, drive space isn’t generally much of an issue these days. But we still get annoyed when we see software become unnecessarily bloated, grabbing vast amounts of hard drive real estate for no good reason. It’s lazy, and even if you have plenty of hard drive space left, will still slow down your searches, virus scans, defrags, and any other whole-drive operations.
Fortunately there are still plenty of projects that treat your hard drive with a little more respect, however. And there are few better examples of this than Wavosaur, a surprisingly full-featured audio editor that crams a vast array of functionality into a tiny 560KB executable, while refusing to clutter your system with anything else (no codecs, no DLLs, nothing dumped in your Windows folders at all).
Add another layer of security with Smart PC Locker Pro
If you’re working on a PC in a crowded area, and need to move away for a moment, then the system can easily be locked simply by holding down the Windows key and pressing L. You’ll return to the login screen, and only someone who knows your user account password will be able to restore normal operations.
Of course is this is a shared PC then there may be several people who know the password. And Windows account passwords offer only limited security, anyway; there are ways to bypass them. So if you’re concerned about privacy then it may be wise to add another layer of security, courtesy of the free Smart PC Locker Pro.
CloseTheDoor on unwanted network connections
Understanding exactly which processes are listening for incoming network connections (and why) is an important part of monitoring your PC’s security. You can uncover this information with Windows alone (just enter netstat -anb at an elevated command window), but if you’d like the data to be displayed in a more intelligible way, and get plenty of assistance to help you figure out exactly what’s going on, then you’ll need something like CloseTheDoor.
At first glance the program looks much like many similar networking tools. So you just launch it to instantly see a table of listening ports, with details like the network interface, port number, protocol (TCP -IPv4 or IPv6 -- or UDP), the responsible process and its process ID, any associated services, and details taken from the process executable file (Company, Product, Description and so on). Which is good -- but that’s just the start of CloseTheDoor’s abilities.
CoolNovo: Chrome with benefits
Chrome is an excellent browser, one of the best around, with plenty of essential functions and features.
Could it be better, though? Maple Studio says yes, offering their own version, CoolNovo (the browser formerly known as ChromePlus) as evidence. It’s based on the same source code, so you’ll feel at home right away and can use all your favourite Chrome extensions, but the company has then taken things further by adding new features of its own.
Backup to most cloud services with Duplicati
While cloud storage may have taken off in a big way, most backup tools are yet to catch up: if you can save your target files to anything more than an FTP server then you’re probably very lucky.
Some backup utilities are now giving you more options, though, and Duplicati is a great example, with the program supporting backups to Amazon S3, Windows Live SkyDrive, Google Docs, Rackspace Cloud Files, WebDAV and FTP servers, as well as local and network drives. And that’s just the start of the program’s many configuration options.
New Year's Eve giveaway: O&O DiskImage 5.6 Professional Edition
Hardware failure, malware, human error or software bugs: your files are at constant risk from a whole host of potential calamities. So it’s really a very good idea to create regular backup images of your system.
Of course with the wrong backup software that can be a constant hassle, but install O&O DiskImage 5.6 Professional and the program will create complete images of individual partitions or complete hard drives in just a click or two. And while it would normally cost you $29, Downloadcrew’s Giveaway site offers the entire package, no charge at all, for this New Year’s Eve only (or more specifically, from 23:59 Central European Time on December 30 2011, to 23:59 on December 31).
Build beautiful panoramas with Hugin
Blending multiple images of a scene into a single panorama is one of those tasks that might seem easy -- at first, anyway. After all, if you could just align one image over another at a point where they share some common feature then that’s the job almost finished. Right?
If you’ve ever tried to do this manually, though, you’ll know the reality can be far more complex. There are barrel distortion, vignetting, and many other camera and lens issues to consider. And you’ll need to take account of variations in image exposure, alignment, and the list goes on. Although, of course, if this seems too much like hard work, then you could just get the open source Hugin application to handle everything for you.
Duplicate protected Windows files with Fast Raw File Copier Pro
It’s barely two weeks since Italian security vendor NoVirusThanks released a bunch of small tools as freeware, but it seems the company is still feeling seasonally generous -- another two of their utilities are now also entirely free to use.
Fast Raw File Copier Pro, for instance, is an apparently simple file copying tool: point it at one or more files, select a destination, and it’ll transfer the specified data at a click. Which sounds ordinary enough, but this program has a twist. It figures out where your files are located on the disk, then accesses the clusters directly, without going through Windows, and that means it can copy anything -- even files that would normally be protected.
Windows Inspection Tool Set takes the fuss out of Event Logs
The Windows event logs can be a mine of useful information about the state of your PC, and understanding what they contain is often key to troubleshooting any problems you might have.
And so it’s a shame that the standard Windows Event Viewer makes accessing this data so awkward: it’s a bulky applet, horribly slow and with an intimidating interface that means even expert users can take a while to find the information they need. There are simpler alternatives around, though, and the Windows Inspection Tool Set includes a particularly appealing example.
Get a better command line with ColorConsole
Most people could benefit from working at the Windows command prompt, if only occasionally. But it’s also an area that many PC users will do their best to avoid, because it’s just so uncomfortable to use: even apparently simple tasks like copying text from the command window to the clipboard turn out not to work exactly as you might expect.
You don’t have to live with these inconveniences, though. ColorConsole is a free, portable tool that extends the default Windows command line in a variety of useful ways, and could save you a considerable amount of time and hassle.
Clean up duplicate files with Dup Scout
Most people begin the process of freeing up hard drive space by clearing away leftover temporary files. And that’s sensible enough: tools like CCleaner make the process quick and easy, and can recover a surprising amount of real estate. This is just the start, though. If you’ve not checked your system recently then it might also be worth scanning it for duplicate files, which may also be wasting a great deal of space. And Dup Scout makes this very easy indeed.
You get started just by choosing the folders you’d like to scan (which Dup Scout calls “Input Directories”). If you just want to scan your system drive, say, you might choose C:\ , and the program would check the files in this folder and all of its subfolders. Clicking Duplicates > Search then kicks the scanning process off, and you can simply sit back and watch as the list of duplicates appears.
Perfect365: Makeover your portrait like Photoshop professionals
Do you need a new photo for your Twitter or Facebook profile? Finding the right shot can be a challenge. And especially at this time of year, when festive overindulgences could mean you’re not exactly looking your best.
You could retouch any image with a photo editor, of course, but that’s a lot of work for often unspectacular results. So it might be easier to try Perfect365, an interesting tool that can give an in-depth makeover to the faces in almost any image, with a single click.
NirSoft Password Security Scanner -- use it!
It’s no secret that using passwords like “1234″, “qwerty”, “password” and any similar easily-guessable variants is a very bad idea, and one that could see your web account hacked before you can say “I guess that was my fault, really”.
Okay, so you know this, but do all the other users on your PC? What kind of password choices are they making? If you’re curious, then NirSoft’s latest release, Password Security Scanner, can help you find out.
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