Alex Feinman’s ISO Recorder allows you to burn CD/DVD ISO images under Windows XP/2003/Vista without the need for a dedicated CD burning application. Lucersoft’s LC ISO Creator enables you to do the process in reverse, i.e. create an ISO image from a physical CD/DVD.
Edit: Alex’s ISO Recorder now supports image creation, removing the need for an external tool such as LC ISO Creator.
TeraCopy speeds up Windows file copy operations as well as adding a few much-needed features such as smart error recovery and a pause button. It integrates with the Windows shell completely so you don’t need to run a separate program to reap the benefits. It’s a free download for home users; the Pro version is $19.95 (about £10). Highly recommended!
I don’t doubt that AbiWord is an excellent free word processor in its own right, but it saved my sanity earlier when I was stuck using a crashy version of Word. The Windows version is a 5MB download (20MB installed) and there’s also a portable version available. It’s able to open, edit and save Microsoft Word, XHTML, Rich Text Format and plain text files as well as its native ABW/AWT format, and while I’m sure it lacks many of Microsoft Word’s advanced features, it’s lean and mean and has handled all the documents I’ve thrown at it. Plus you can’t argue with the price…
AbiWord is also available for Linux and Mac OS, and being truly free software, the source code is of course also offered for download.
There are a number of product key recovery utilities for Windows – Magical Jellybean Keyfinder is the first one that comes to mind, possibly because of the name – but ProduKey is the first I’ve seen that will recover keys from other installations, for example via a local area network or from slave hard drives. It also recovers keys for Office and SQL Server, and at a diminutive 31KB, deserves a place on any technician’s USB drive. It is one of a number of freeware utilities available from the NirSoft website.
Edit: Actually the new version of Magical Jelly Bean has similar functionality, although it’s still in beta at the moment.
Today I needed to recover one of my FTP account passwords from FileZilla. If you find yourself in the same situation, there is a free tool available here which does the trick nicely, along with password removal/recovery tools for a whole host of other programs.
For anyone who repairs computers for a living or likes to tweak their own system, the PC Repair System is a must-have. It’s a collection of portable utilities for Windows PCs, complete with its own menu system and designed to fit on pretty much any USB stick you have lying around.
Head on over to Daily Cup Of Tech for the free download.
Mozilla has released the second beta version of Firefox 2. The usual warnings about beta software apply, but if you’re brave and would like a sneak peek of what’s to come, give it a spin.
If you’re not enamoured with the close buttons on every tab, or the tab bar scrolling feature, there are a couple of hidden about:config options that can be changed to disable the new features. See this Lifehacker comment for details.
Firefox 2 is slated for release in October of this year, with version 3 of the browser expected to appear at some point in 2007.
I stumbled across the Code2000 font while typing up some revision notes which required “outline brackets” (Unicode characters 27E6 and 27E7). None of the the fonts on my computer seemed to include the symbols I needed.
If you’re ever in a similar position, you can download the font from James Kass. It includes most Unicode characters, so chances are that if a symbol exists, you’ll find it. It’s a TrueType font, which means it should work on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.
Code2000 is a shareware product, which means that if you like it, you should pay the registration fee (currently $5 which works out as around £2.90) – a bargain, methinks.
I’m a diehard fan of Firefox, but I’m still interested in trying out the alternatives. Opera, once a commercial product, has been free since version 8.5, and the beta version of Opera 9 is now available for download. It promises the fastest, most secure browsing experience ever, and includes several new features including widgets (small Web applications, similar to Konfabulator, Windows Vista Sidebar and the Mac OS X Dock), a built-in BitTorrent client, customisable ad blocking and more. Compatibility-wise, I’ve had no problems viewing any of my usual sites, and it does seem fairly speedy. So far, my only complaint is that the interface isn’t as light as that of Firefox, but switching the skin to Windows Native has made things a little easier on the eyes.
You can download the beta from the Opera website.
Really Slick Screensavers is a collection of particularly nice-looking screensavers for Windows. There are also ports available for Mac OS X and Linux users. My favourite, pictured above, is SolarWinds (apparently no connection to the network monitoring software of the same name).
Unfortunately there seems to be a bug in Ubuntu Linux 5.10 (Breezy Badger) which prevents the Linux port of RSS from functioning correctly (the screensavers don’t appear in XScreensaver), so my Linux box is running Fireflies which is just as nice and also available for Windows and OS X. For Ubuntu users it should be as simple as downloading the Debian package and running sudo dpkg -i fireflies_2.05-1_i386.deb to install.
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