We recently wrote about Microsoft Message Analyzer, and explained how it could be used to monitor and better understand your network and internet traffic.

It’s a hugely powerful tool, but also bulky and with an intimidating interface. If you’d prefer something more lightweight, then as usual, NirSoft might have the answer.

Continue reading →

If you’re having problems connecting your laptop to a wireless device or network, there are a host of tools to help you view what’s in range and its signal strength. If you’re having trouble with Bluetooth, it’s a different story. The standard Windows applets might list available devices but you’ll see little, if any information about them.

Bennett is a tiny portable tool which displays extra details on your Bluetooth adapter and in-range devices, and might be able to monitor their signal strength.

Continue reading →

Even if you don’t know Piet Mondriaan’s name, you’ll probably recognize the Dutch painter’s distinctive geometric style: white background and a black grid, partly filled with primary colors.

It’s not an approach that appeals to everyone, but if you’re interested then you can now generate new Mondriaan-style images with the free Mondriaan Creator.

Continue reading →

If you’re still looking for the perfect email experience on Mac and iOS, then Polymail, Inc may have something to fill the gap left by Mailbox’s unceremonious exit back in February. It’s just officially released Polymail for Mac 1.01 after around six months in beta.

Polymail for Mac joins existing iPad and iPhone client, Polymail for iOS 1.21, to provide a cross-platform email client for Apple fans.

Continue reading →

Clavier+ is a simple macro manager which enables launching programs, opening websites or inserting text with your chosen hotkey. The program has been around for years, but still works well on even the very latest PCs.

Installation is quick and easy, no real surprise as the entire program folder used only 1.24MB of our hard drive (and 1.13MB of that was the uninstaller).

Continue reading →

Set up a new PC and one of the first things you’ll do is install and choose a default browser, which then handles all your website-viewing needs. This mostly works fine, but you might want to open some links in different browsers: intranet in IE, YouTube in Chrome to use an extension you’ve found, your bank in a secure browser, whatever it might be.

Browser Chooser 2 is an open-source tool which helps you control the browser that’s launched in any given situation.

Continue reading →

Run a "setup.exe" on your PC and there’s no way to tell what might happen next. Will it install adware, hundreds of system files, maybe just a single executable? Who knows?

InnoEx is a free portable tool which can display the contents of some setup files, without having to install them first.

Continue reading →

PassMark Software has shipped MemTest86 7.0, a major update for the veteran memory diagnostic tool. Testing now runs in Parallel CPU Mode by default, as long as it’s supported by the UEFI firmware, significantly improving performance.

Smarter testing for the row hammer effect should result in the detection of more "disturbance errors", where memory cells may interfere with each other’s operation and change their values.

Continue reading →

Microsoft Message Analyzer is an expert-oriented tool for capturing, displaying and analyzing network traffic, file activity, Windows Events and device activities on Windows 7 or later systems.

This data may be filtered and presented in grids, charts, graphs, timelines and more. While the program is aimed at developers and system admins, if you’re comfortable with tools like Sysinternals Process Monitor then you could also find it handy.

Continue reading →

Professional PE Explorer is a portable tool which allows investigating Windows executables including EXE files, SYS, DLL and more.

The download is so tiny you’ll wonder if it’s broken -- 78.1KB, really? -- but no, this is all you get. Unzip it and run PPEE.exe to get started.

Continue reading →

While there are endless MP3 tag editors around, cover art support is often basic, if it’s included at all. DisCoverJ is a Java-based editor which focuses solely on cover art, automatically locating, downloading and tagging your MP3s with the right images.

Installation is straightforward on Windows, Linux and Mac. There’s no adware or other hassles and you’re ready to go in seconds.

Continue reading →

Many graphics tools offer some sort of mosaic effect, but it’s often very basic, "let’s pixelate the image a bit and hope for the best". Pattaizer is more imaginative, and can transform your pictures using a host of mosaic-related and more abstract effects.

Some of these appear to be based on fairly standard mosaic effects, for example replacing blocks of pixels with hexagons or lego bricks. But a "Deform control" adds a random variation to every individual component of the image, ensuring you get far more interesting results.

Continue reading →

When you’re building a batch file it’s often necessary to display status information to the user, but Windows gives you very few tools to help. MessagePop enables creating alerts with styled text, clickable links, optional timeouts, even a "Do not show" option which allows the user to hide it in future.

This makes for a complicated syntax, but the package includes a sample MessageTest.bat file to show you how it works.

Continue reading →

PC Hunter is an expert-level Windows tool with an array of advanced features: it’s a task manager, a Registry editor, a rootkit hunter, a file explorer, and more.

The program isn’t updated very often, but with recent releases extending its Windows 10 compatibility, we decided to check out the latest build.

Continue reading →

Mandelbrot Fractal is an open-source fractal generator with a difference: its spectacular images are produced using pure JavaScript, no external libraries or other oddball dependencies involved.

This makes for a very simple structure, essentially just an index.html with a supporting app.css and two .js files.

Continue reading →