PCTips3000 » Software

A Free 64-bit FTP Client For Windows, Finally!

Codrut Nistor — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 13:02:59 +0000

Ever tried to find a FTP client fully compatible with your 64-bit Windows Vista or 7? Obviously, there’s not only one program to fit the description, but when talking about freebies that work properly on 64-bit operating systems, things are getting really interesting… and today I decided to tell you a few words about a free 64-bit FTP client for Windows, namely Null FTP.

The Null FTP client is available as both free and paid versions (this one’s called Null FTP Pro), and while the free edition has some limitations, most average users won’t feel the difference. Anyway, if you want to know what you’re missing, you should know that the free version does not allow Z compression, can only work with 3 concurrent transfers and the number of registered servers is also 3. At last, the free version has a TCP buffer size limited to 128KB.

These being said, I should also add multilanguage support, integrity checks, and the fact that you get no additional restrictions when using the free version, except those already mentioned above. Null FTP’s current version is 1.3, the setup package has 5.8 MB in size, and… I guess that’s all. Have a nice weekend, folks!

Linux System Monitor, Comin’ Up!

Codrut Nistor — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 12:03:09 +0000

As more and more people start using computers, Linux is slowly gaining market share. I don’t care about the reasons, since I could go on and on and on about them – I simply look at what’s happening and act accordingly. Leaving aside music/video players and other really popular tools, Linux system monitors also are facing an increased demand, and today we’ll take a quick look at Conky.

Why Conky? The name is funny, it’s lightweight, has support for a bunch of popular music players, IMAP/POP3, and can even be extended using Lua support or any of your own pieces of code. Sounds pretty cool, right? Sure, you may say that this is a program for experts, but that is completely wrong, since Conky works great out of the box, although you may want to take a closer look at its documentation to take full advantage of all the goodies coming in the box…

This is the free Linux system monitor I have for you today, and if you want to see more screenshots, just go to this page. That’s all, folks!

Free Audio-Video Convertors Collection

Codrut Nistor — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 15:07:13 +0000

As you probably know already, I’m more into listening music than converting it, but some of my friends are really into audio/video convertors, so every time I find something useful, I should get some beers. Unfortunately, it seems that my friends know everything already, so I may end up telling them about something they knew already. Oh, well, maybe I’ll get lucky with Free Studio…

A package almost as large as 40 MB, Free Studio contains “all free software from DVDVideoSoft to work with DVD, video and audio files,” as they describe it. All in all, you’ll get no less than 25 utilities, from YouTube to MP3 Converter to Video Flip and Rotate or Audio Dub. For the download link and detailed information, please go to this page.

At last, you should know that, while installing the package, there are two toolbars to avoid, but other than that, everything’s just great, so I’ll leave you enjoy this excellent audio-video converting tools suite. That’s all, folks!

System Rescue CD

Codrut Nistor — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 15:11:39 +0000

What’s strange with the system troubleshooting CDs is the fact that you never have enough of them. How’s that? Think about data recovery, for example – you never know which software tool will be able to revive your defective hard drive, despite the fact you did this a hundred times already, so all that you need to do is try, try, try again. Hopefully, you’ll get lucky sooner or later…

… but since everyone is looking for freebies these days, let’s move on straight to System Rescue CD (SystemRescueCD, if you want). What about it? Oh, well, you can run it from a CD or even some USB stick, as long as your system is capable of booting from such a device (if it’s not really ancient, that shouldn’t be a problem), and if you want to download the latest version, you should go here.

The official mumbo-jumbo looks like this: “SystemRescueCd is a Linux system rescue disk available as a bootable CD-ROM or USB stick for administrating or repairing your system and data after a crash. It aims to provide an easy way to carry out admin tasks on your computer, such as creating and editing the partitions of the hard disk. It comes with a lot of linux software such as system tools (parted, partimage, fstools, …) and basic tools (editors, midnight commander, network tools). It requires no installation. It can be used on linux servers, linux desktops or windows boxes. The kernel supports the important file systems (ext2/ext3/ext4, reiserfs, reiser4, btrfs, xfs, jfs, vfat, ntfs, iso9660), as well as network filesystems (samba and nfs).”

If you’re not scared of Linux, you should grab this at once. After all, you can easily troubleshoot Windows-based systems with it, and there’s plenty of documentation for beginners. Oh, yeah, and I should also remind you that we’re talking about a freebie, don’t you think? That’s all, folks, good luck!

Nero Burning ROM Problems?

Codrut Nistor — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 18:19:05 +0000

For a really long time, Nero was the most popular CD/DVD burning software I bumped into. To be honest, it was the only CD/DVD burning software used by most people I knew, and when I started burning my own discs, I started using it without giving it a second thought. After a few years, when Nero 7 appeared, I tried it, cursed a few minutes, then got back to my old 6.x version I was using before that. In the months to follow, I slowly started to use various other CD/DVD burning tools, some for testing purposes only, other on a regular basis…

… and this takes us to the question I had in mind when I started writing this article: what kind of Nero Burning ROM problems can make one user switch to some other piece of code? In my case, it was the fact that Nero got bulkier and bulkier with each version, adding useless features with each new update, so from a nice CD/DVD burning tool with all the features most users needed, it grew to a ~1GB monster sporting a bunch of useless things. Sure, this happened with other programs and even operating systems (Norton Utilities, Windows Vista, anyone?), but Nero shouldn’t have changed. Oh, well, we must move on!

How can we move on and overcome those Nero Burning ROM problems, no matter their nature? The answer is simple – get your hands on an alternative! There are countless CD/DVD burning tools, some of them absolutely free, others available as commercial products, and I must say that I currently use Ashampoo Burning Studio Free (version 6), ImgBurn and a few other ones, and if I ever get bored or feel the need to change my gear… I can take a look here and get something else. In the end, that’s what I also recommend you to do – don’t get stuck with that old mammoth, move on and see how beautiful the software world can be!

Image Search Awesomeness With Ginipic

Codrut Nistor — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 08:55:29 +0000

For a few years, I avoided applications that did nothing more but search stuff on the Internet and deliver it to my desktop. Even now, I can’t say I am crazy about desktop search programs, but Ginipic seems like a worthy piece of code, especially since I am really disappointed by Google’s Image Search… and if I can get search results from various sites like Flickr all in one place, that’s awesome!

To make a longer story short, I will only say that Ginipic can search images on Flickr, Google, deviantART, Photobucket, Picasa, and a few others, but it gets even better than that – you can also add some of your local folders as source! Once you get your results, you can easily set them as wallpapers, download them, print, post to your blog or share via a bunch of services like Mixx, Facebook, Reddit, and so on.

While playing with it, Ginipic only used about 10MB of memory, and results came up pretty fast. Sure, its speed may depend more on the speed of your Internet connection that that of your computer, but still… this surely looks like a nicely optimized piece of code (Windows only, unfortunately, and it also requires Microsoft’s .NET Framework 3.5 SP1), if you ask me!

That’s all, folks! I really enjoyed messing with this little piece of code, and I can only hope you’ll also like Ginipic and find it useful. Speaking for myself, I can only say that this one will surely remain in use on my computer for a really long time…

Replace That Silly Windows Explorer!

Codrut Nistor — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 09:17:10 +0000

I am tired of trying to change people’s habits, so I started to try help them just shifting it all a bit. For example, let’s think about file managers – most people stuck with Windows Explorer won’t ever accept something completely different, so why not feed them a better Windows Explorer? Since this isn’t actually a program to review, I’ll quickly recommend Explorer++ to those who want a better Windows Explorer, but nothing more than that (“alien things” like Total Commander or Frigate, for example!).

What’s great about this program? Well, Explorer++ is free and open source, and it has versions for both 32- and 64-bit Windows systems. While sharing the same major layout elements with that completely outdated Windows Explorer, it has his own strong points, especially multiple tabs, support for multiple keyboard shortcuts, full drag and drop support with other apps, including the original Windows Explorer, as well as various advanced file operations such as splitting or merging. The best of all? It’s completely portable and works great with Vista and 7!

Since nothing’s perfect, let me say that Explorer++ doesn’t bring enough improvements over the original Windows Explorer to make it interesting, at least to me. Anyway, I am sure that programmers who think this project is interesting can take the code and improve it. What to start with? My suggestion (I know I’m silly with this one): before anything else, turn it into a two pane file manager!

winPenPack Portable Apps Package

Codrut Nistor — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 16:10:37 +0000

I hate installing applications, especially when I install the same thing three or four times in a week. Why do I have to do that? Think about two friends asking me to reinstall their OS and setup everything as needed, think about me having to install some program on my desktop and laptop. Fortunately, it doesn’t happen more than once or twice in a year, but it’s still too much for me. Soon, I think I’ll switch to something like winPenPack…

Coming from Italy, but also available in English, winPenPack is described by the people behind it as “a project that aims at collecting the most frequently used and most popular open source and free applications made portable, so that they can be executed without installation from any USB Flash Drive or Hard Disk” and freely available to all those who need to work on multiple Windows-based computers or… simply want to carry all their favorite apps and their settings in the pocket!

The already built packages available are these: 2 Gb, Essential, Game, School, Web and then another one, but the last is also a bit different. Why different? Well, the Personal package can be customized to perfectly suit your needs. Just take a look here and see how can this be done.

Since I don’t want to waste my time and yours by dropping a list of programs available in winPenPack, just get this PDF file and see for yourselves how many tools you’ll get in the 2 Gb version. That’s all, folks, enjoy this find and have a nice weekend!

FreeMind – Open Source Mind Mapping Software

Codrut Nistor — Fri, 28 May 2010 08:07:56 +0000

When it comes to mind mapping software, there’s a big void in my mind. I know, it sounds a bit strange, and it’s also a fact that I’m not proud of at all. Even more, I played with a few programs from this category so far, but never got to use one for my own needs. I know it may be because my mind needs some management, before mapping… but let’s cut all this and take a closer look at the free mind mapping software I got for you today, namely FreeMind!

According to various sources, the mind mapping technique can improve learning/study effectiveness up to 15% over classic note taking. Sure, I don’t say that’s not possible, but as far as I can tell, it will also take more time… much more. Since I may be wrong, I suggest that you get your hands on FreeMind and play with it for a while, see how well it can help you get the job done.

What you need to know is that FreeMind is a free program, covered by the terms of the GPL license, and since it’s written in Java, it works on all popular platforms. While it does not offer online editing or realtime collaboration and its last version is 0.9RC, FreeMind looks and feels pretty solid. That’s all, folks! Enjoy FreeMind and be sure to drop your comments below, maybe you’ll make me turn back to this one and start using it on a regular basis…

Need More Than YouTube Downloader?

Codrut Nistor — Mon, 10 May 2010 09:33:48 +0000

While today’s software goodie deserves a full review, I decided to give you a quick hint, as I usually do here. The reason? Oh, well, I guess that most people who are looking for a free program able to download YouTube videos aren’t exactly interesting in reading a review, but in downloading YouTube videos, right? To make it even more interesting, today’s program can help you download videos from a few dozens of video services, not to mention its additional features!

Available for all popular platforms (Windows, Linux and Mac OS X), xVideoServiceThief is an amazing product, developed by XESC & TECHNOLOGY and released under the terms of GNU License. To be honest, I can tell you that no commercial product from this category can beat it, and I can only wish they find the resources to keep an eye on all services currently supported and update the program as often as possible. The reason? Oh, well… I can’t say I managed to download all the files that I tried, since I wasn’t able to get a single video from MySpace and GameSpot.

Currently, the last version is 2.4, supports 17 languages, allows you to convert downloaded videos, schedule downloads, and even block support for adult websites (YouPorn, RedTube, PornoTube and others), protecting this feature with a password, while its video search capabilities are really impressive. Awesome, I tell you, pure awesomeness!!!

To close this with the most precious piece of info for video freaks, let me just add that this version I have installed on my computer has support for 77 services! Even if we suppose that about a dozen are not working properly (I didn’t manage to test each of them), there’s still a serious amount of video at your disposal. Now, if only your connection would be fast enough to handle it… and your hard drive large enough to store such huge amounts of content!