Virtual Desktop from Microsoft

Second useful desktop utility from Microsoft that is better in User Interface and simplicity is the Microsoft Virtual Desktop Manager (MSVDM). This allows 4 virtual desktop screens to group your Windows. It allows you to configure different wallpaper for each virtual desktop. It is easy to switch between virtual desktops. To go to second (top right) desktop just type keys “Win+2”. Typing “Win+W” will show all 4 desktops, like below.

Another option is to have access to this as part of taskbar. You can get single icon for switching to all screen mode or you can additionally get desktop numbers displayed in the taskbar. That will allow you to click on the number with mouse and go to that desktop.

   

SyncToy from Microsoft

There are few freeware from Microsoft that are really good as Desktop utilities, one of them is the SyncToy. Compared to other freeware, I settled on this tool for the simplicity of the UI. You will find this tool useful if you what to sync-up directories  and files between say Computer and external USB hard disk or Computer and your mobile. Then this tool is very handy.

The tool lets you choose multiple profiles, which is set of source and destination drives or folders. Then in each profile, you can have set of devices to sync. For example, in below picture you will see profile to sync between my mobile SD Card and computers. This is mainly to sync-up songs. Button ‘Preview’ will let you get list of differences between folders/devices. Clicking on ‘Run’ will actually perform the sync operation. The operation I found it to be fast. For around 3 GB data, it got sync-ed in around 25 minutes.

Analog Clock in Taskbar

An essential freeware for those who prefer Analog clocks over the digital. This small and handy tool sits in corner of the taskbar where the digital clock is displayed in Windows. This application also has options to sync-up automatically and manually with Atomic Clock servers. 

There are few configuration options to change GUI settings, like display seconds hand, skins, days of another month.

Windows Live Writer

This freeware is from Microsoft. One of the good software from the company. This makes it very easy to post the blog to any site – Windows Live Spaces, Blogger, WordPress, TypePad, etc. I always use this to write all my blogs.

Some good features are, you do not need to login to net or any blog page to write your article. It is very simple like opening Microsoft Word. You will feel you are writing a document in MS Word. Features like inserting an image, hyperlink, table, video are all possible with this WYSIWYG editor. After you are done with drafting, just click ‘Publish’. The software takes your login credentials one time. All posts can be sent to blog server with a single click.

Another important feature is storing the blogs locally. Many time you may not complete an article in one sitting. Then this software saves as draft.

Windows Liver Writer lets you manage multiple blog accounts from single software. For switching from one blog to another, you just need to select the blog from drop down – right top corner.

Third important feature is the backup of your articles. I realized this feature and its importance recently. Some reason I saw all my articles previously written vanished online (Blogger). Fortunately, I had all articles in my local computer as part of this software.

Essential Freeware

 

Essential Freeware are set of software that you will find useful for various tasks. Though I prefer Open Source software, these applications listed here may or may not be open source.

Opera Browser

The most innovative browser and the most neglected freeware is the Opera Browser. We will not discuss much on why it does not gain market share, what went wrong, blah..blah… that does not matter in this blog. There are many to discuss those.

Opera 10.53

Major reasons to use the browser:

• Most secure browser – Recommend this browser at least for banking and other financial / confidential transactions on net
• Built-in Email client (POP3 and IMAP) – Easy configuration and multi accounts support. If you are worried about accessing Yahoo mail and  your account (like .com domain) does not support POP3 in free Yahoo, use the freeware freePOPs.
• Leader in innovation – Many features that other browsers have copied are initially from Opera. So you get to experience the good and the bad features first, before others see it.
• Multi-device (computer, mobile) browser – Allows you to keep your bookmarks, notes, history in central location on opera home page.  You can access all this information, either on office Laptop, home desktop or mobile phone.
• Opera Unite is a great feature to share content like pictures, video, songs online. Simply put, the browser acts as a HTTP server too. You can also host a chat server and post-it wall for people to drop a line for you (on fridge).
• Form Filling feature lets you enter your personal details one time in the browser. It will prompt you every time you are filling a form online – to create any account – say twitter, blogger, etc.
• Auto Fill login password details. When you allow browser to store passwords, browser will hint you about it next time you visit the same page. It will display the fields with yellow border. Just enter CTRL-ENTER. This is equal entering login password and clicking on submit button.
• Block content – like videos and images. Some web designers add lot of animation with flashy images to grab attention. At times that is annoying. Also you will find some sites that start a video (Ad) as soon as page loads. This can be annoyance and also consume bandwidth. Opera has capability to block images or video from other sites.
• Custom search engine – lets you add a search engine using the URL. For example, CUIL is another search engine that has good grouping of Internet search results. To add this search engine to my Opera search bar, I need to add this URL http://www.cuil.com/search?q=%s. The last “%s” is replaced by word I give it in the search field. If you have not tried CUIL earlier, it is worth using.
• Visual tabs – lets you view all open tabs in miniature version top of the browser.
• Speed dial – makes it easy to access frequently browsed sites like your favourite newspaper, Internet email, stock market page, etc.
• Opera Turbo features makes web page access faster for low speed connections. It has cool features of compressing the images that makes data transfer lower and hence making it faster.
• Search word in a a page. All browsers have this feature. But the cool UI of search is worth the mention. In a page, when you search for a string (say “Internet”), the whole page is greyed out and the ‘search word’ is highlighted in special font and background.
• Fit width feature lets web pages with tables or page width more than screen size to shrink to fit to your window size.
• Opera Link is a great little feature that makes Opera data available across computers and devices. Opera as you might be aware, is a desktop browser and also a mobile browser. Opera link gives you space in Opera server to store your bookmarks, speed dial, notes, history on net. You login into browser once and your data is synced to be available on any other computer or device. Where I use it mostly is for notes. I store lot of information like interesting excerpts from web pages and also links. If you are working on project / thesis, you can make use of this notes feature to collect all information in one place. I access my bookmarks on my mobile phone using Opera Mobile 10.0 version.
• Opera widgets are not as extensive as other browsers like Firefox, but they do have some good extensions like Google Calendar, Stock charts, timer (reminder), clocks, etc. Since the browser has rich features in-built, I do not see lack of extensions as a handicap.
• Address book – If you are using Opera as your email client, it lets you store addresses as part of your browser. Some cool aspect of the address book is, you can click on a contact and you will get all conversation (email) relating to that person.
• Dragonfly – I have not used this feature much. This is essentially for web page developers. They can dissect the web pages and find issues in compliance and also debug.
• Bookmark search – in the left panel you get to access bookmarks, mail, history, Unite, Notes, downloads, Address book. In the left panel, you can search your complete bookmarks by typing a word. You will give filtered list of bookmarks matching the word.
• Feeds – essentially RSS feeds from net. This is part of your mail panel. When you see an RSS icon in the address bar, you can make the feed as part of your monitor list to track updates (like news, score, etc).
• Download manager is integrated with the browser. It will allow multiple downloads to be tracked, paused, restarted, stop.
• Torrents – Opera is capable of downloading torrent content. I never was successful in downloading content using Opera. But possible due to restrictions on ports or service provider.
• Themes – Opera has capability to modify skins to change look and feel.
• Newserver – along with email you can subscribe to news servers.
• Print preview feature in Opera is good. Press CTRL-SHIFT-P.

Memento

memento is another freeware utility, very small and quick note taker. Install it. Then type Ctrl-Alt-N to type a new note. Click on ‘X’ button to close it. All these notes get listed in your system tray, when you right click on the small ‘post-it’ icon.