oteotd

Software Reviews by oteotd

The reviews and opinions below are posted by SnapFiles visitors. They do not necessarily reflect our opinion, and they are solely based upon the experience of individual users.

TrayStatus

Almost perfect

This is one of my go to apps. Free for personal. I usually only use the Numlock and Caplock settings. This is great for keyboards that have no indicator lights built into the keyboard. Even if they are there you do not have to move you hands to see the status of the keyboard settings. Many laptops also do not have these indicators so this is a great help. Just make sure to set the icons to always show on the notifications area. The only thing that would make this better as far as I am concerned would be if the CD Rom if you still have one could be monitored. Price: Free

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HDD Guardian

Yep

Tried this app today when got S.M.A.R.T. warning on Windows 7. Go figure, in 15 years that is the first time I ever got a hard disc warning from Windows. Anyway the warning as vague, ran the HD diagnostic tool from mfg and not much better just a fail notice. Now comes HDD Guardian. Shows me the failure, shows me what is wrong with a description of the failure and what the reliability of the drive is. I know snapfiles did not have a screen shot like that probably due to all good drives. Perfect app to show someone that they really have a bad drive and not just suspect. Only thing is I wish it could print a report. I recommend this to anyone wishing to verify disc failure. PS. Snapfiles if you would like a screen shot with errors just contact me at registered email. Feel free to remove this paragraph. Price: Free

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Macrorit Partition Expert Free

Works well

First I have not had time to totally test all the features of this application. What I downloaded it for was to create a fat32 partition on a 2TB external drive to use on Playstation. This app did that with no problems. I even noticed that aside from the fact Microsoft only lets Windows create a 32GB fat32 after creating and formatting the drive with this app Windows was able to read the entire drive even though it was a 2TB fat32. Now on a side note, this app has been updated since SnapFiles reviewed it. When you download directly from the applications home page you get a zip file with both an installable and portable version included. I used the portable version and it worked very well. Price: Free

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Clover

Time saver

This app is something that should be included as a default in Windows. I guess it is not because MS figures it is not that useful. I find this very useful. You can now for example switch between two different flash drives without changing windows. I would have rated a 5 if it was easier to find the settings menu. The icon should not be a wrench, it should be a clover with a gear inside of it, this way it would bring more attention that this icon is settings for clover. Please note that due to the changes in your computer, your explorer will most likely crash during install. This is due to the changes clover makes. Not a big deal. Just click the restart option and you are good to go. Price: Free

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Duplicate Cleaner Free

My one and only.

I have tried many of these in the past. This program does everything you may need or need and don't know it. Example I am cleaning up a machine that has 100's of thousands of files on it. I know there are more dupes than most programs find correctly. With this program you can run one set of criteria then another to come up with different results. Example is run a total match with strong hash and other strong rules. This rids you of a lot of dupes easily and you know they are identical. Now you can relax your criteria and scan different ways. to find files with same names, content etc. This will clear out more files but you need to be a little more cautious with less stringent criteria. Needless to say this was a long challenging job for me especially since many of the files were still on floppy. ( I know ) but not my computer. Anyway this program is just the ticket to make your job less painful but not a total no brainier before deleting dupes. I liked this program enough that as soon as I finish this review I will purchase the Pro version. Just wish it was a little cheaper. Price: Free

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Avast Free Antivirus

Take care during install with version 9.

With the newest version of avast I went through a lot of problems. Installed on a clean Windows 7 machine and that is where the problem started. First I was not sure if the issue was avast, the website or the IE. I thought IE because Chrome did not have same issues. All HTTPs sites were rendered broken and I worked for a long time working this out as I did not try any of them before installing avast. Tried turning off the shields but that did not help. Finally I figured out that if you turn off the avast browser add-on's it fixes everything. This only effected IE not Chrome (which I hate). Of course I know how to deal with this now but for the general non techie how would they ever figure it out. The webpages all had different issues. Some logged you out, some would not display certain things and others just would not work at all. To stop this from happening to anyone else I would highly suggest when installing this version of avast to make sure to do a custom install not the standard install. When you get to the screen that shows the items to be installed uncheck the option to install "Browser Protection". avast will now be installed without the browser add-ons and you will not encounter this issue. You will also not accidentally turn the option on again if you turn it off. avast should warn about this issue during install but they do not. Lots of time wasted but if this helps someone else great. I almost walked away from avast over this. Faster browser now also. Price: Free

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SoftPerfect Network Scanner

Works well

Been using this program for years. Simple to use but gives fast easy to understand information. Easy way to see the IP address of all devices on your network. Faster than using network places because it shows all workgroups in same window. The program also has many other valuable uses. Price: Free Trial ($29.00)

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File Shredder

Uses as insurance policy.

Ok say you are going on vacation. You do not want to do a full DOD wipe and rebuild your computer. Use this tool before you start your trip to wipe the blank space. Now you have a little insurance that if your laptop gets lost or stolen that you have taken the extra steps to keep your past data private by making it unusable and minimizing your exposure. Just run the program over night while sleeping. Every traveler should use this before each trip. There are many other uses as well this is a program worth having. Price: Free

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Zback

High hopes dashed

I had hi hopes for this product. I simply wanted a program that would show me changes from one directory to another and let me apply changes if I wanted. This will do that but is a little quirky. For starters when it shows you the preview it is not really explanatory. You can figure it out but it is not worth the extra effort. On my first attempt I used one of the simple modes. I expected to see a duplicate directory matching the original. Ultimately this did happen but in a weird way. What happened? I had a test folder on my desktop(XP). Wanted to create a simple backup which should have copied an identical directory other than the name on my desktop. I expected to see New Folder with the same files. What I got was a folder full of sub folders that you would have to navigate through. I should have simply opened the New Folder directory and seen my files. I guess you could tweak the program to fix this but should not have to. Second issue. I used the manual backup mode. Tried to use mirror mode. My original directory had a briefcase. The backup created a briefcase file but with a standard icon not the brief case icon. If I manually copy the brief case the icon stays correct. From what I see there are enough issues for me to find another portable program that I can trust or upgrade current program to include a portable version for a small fee. Price: Free

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Snappy

Ok but comes up short

I downloaded this program because it is portable. What I find is that it will save me time by capturing a web page instead of making several shots and manually blending them together. I wish that the program had a way to capture the web page directly. Having to open the web capture utility then enter the website seems a bit much. There should be a way to at the least copy the url from the current active web browser window to the utility automatically. Since this program uses its own window for web page capture I am guessing there is no way to tell it what browser engine to use to render the page. For example a web page may look different between IE, Firefox and Chrome. Would be nice if you could copy each version to compare the differences between browsers. Would also be nice to be able to capture the web page without opening another window. There just seems to be too many steps to accomplish this task. This is why the 3 stars for Interface and Ease of Use. I can see this program getting better as time goes by and the developer learns how people may want to use it through reviews. I can find uses for this program but it just does not do exactly what I had expected. Price: Free

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Keyboard LEDs

Does the job.

Installed this on a friends machine that did not have any Cap or Num lock indicators on the keyboard. When trying to type in passwords and having trouble they never knew what the issues were for sure. Since installing this program those issues are gone. The program does not do a lot but what it does is take the frustration out of daily life. Would give 5 stars if it was a little easier to read such as having different icons for each item such as an A with up arrow for Cap Locks and a number or just N with arrow up for Num locks, that would be easier to read than just colored bars. Price: Free

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Cyber-D Autodelete

Was worth the install.

I recently started using Comodo Dragon (Google Chrome Clone) The one thing I did not like about the Chromium browser was the way it handled .jnlp files. These are files that get downloaded when you run a java jre program from the internet. I in Chromium browsers you can set them to ask where to download files on each download so you can control where the files go, however if you need a website to run a file automatically you need to tell the browser to always allow that file type. Once you do you no longer have a choice where the file is downloaded to. This is where Cyber-D Autodelete comes in to play. Simply add your download folder to the folder list. Set the filters to delete only jnlp files or what ever you need deleted. Then set the age the file needs to be to be deleted. On every start up the program will delete those files to the recycle bin or another folder if you so choose. This is a really nice way to keep your download folder clean of all the junk you do not need and make it easier to actually find any downloads that you save to that folder especially if you did not change the options and all files get downloaded there. When Cyber-D runs it only deletes the files then the program closes and ends the process's, the program does not run in the background. If you prefer not to run at start up you can make a shortcut to run the program when you wish our simply use windows task scheduler to schedule Cyber-D on your preferred schedule. Limited help but easy setup. Price: Free

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RIOT

Does a great job.

This little program is not loaded with features but does a good job for what it is designed to do. Basically you can use this to resample the images and reduce the overall file size keeping the original dimensions of the image. You can see the changes live in a dual pane window before you save the changes. You can also set the output to a different file type if you want to say convert to png from gif. What I use this for is when I have to upload images to places where they will resize the images for you during upload such as facebook, why not just batch resize all at once which is very quick and then your upload time will be much shorter as you have less data to be sent. The program is also portable so you can take it with you on usb drive. Price: Free

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NirLauncher

Always good to have around.

The other reviewers have said just about everything that can be said in the space allowed about the application. To try to tell you what this set of tools is capable of would be a daunting task to say the least. I am just going to add a few things that I do not see in the other reviews. There are so many tools included that the average user will never use half of them. On that note though you never know what tool you will need and when so why not download the launcher package and have them all instead of trying to find each one as you need it. One thing that has not been said by others is you can also download an additional file from the Nirsoft web site which will allow you to integrate the Sysinternals Suite into the same launcher. Snapfiles has some of the Sysinternals applications listed but they do not list the suite. Between these two application suites you will have so many diagnostic utilities that you will have to look through the list from time to time just to remember what all you have. No this tool does not have a fancy interface but if you are knowledgeable enough to use the tools included you will not worry about that. Fact is you do not really need the launcher. just downloading the package gives you all the tools you need and they can all be launched from the application file of each application. The launcher is basically the equivalent of the windows start menu to aid in finding the programs easier when you are ready to use one. Price: Free

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ClickOff

Works great.

I know this program may not work for every little window you may encounter however it works for what I need. One website I log-on to will log you out after 30 minutes if you have no activity. You do get a popup box with a button. This program can find that popup and close it. I no-longer have to sign in every 30 minutes to stay logged in, great when watching things on the internet that you don't necessarily need to follow 100 of the time. If you walk away or take a nap you will still be logged in when you return. The program has several advanced options on how to handle each window. The advanced settings are available once a window is assigned. This program can be downloaded from the publishers site in a zipped version which can be run as a portable application. The settings are stored in a config file in your profile application data folder if you use the installer version of the program. The zip version of the program will save the config files in the same folder as the one you unzipped to. No registry entries. The only real issue is setting the language. If you should somehow not set the language correctly when installing easy to skip, you will get the default language. To change simply right click the icon in the notification area and choose the second item down (settings). In the box that pops up find the drop-down and choose your language. I put the program into my start up folder. If I choose not to use it the program can be closed from the notification area. Price: Free

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Comodo Dragon

Almost perfect (but a bit short)

For the past few days I have read all of the reviews on Snapfiles about their listed browsers. I found a few that interested me so I decided to do additional research to see what I thought I would like to try. I even came up with a couple that were not listed here. What I wanted to do was have a second browser on my XPPro Machine. I still use the machine because it just works and I have some office software that I do not want to repurchase for no reason at all that is buggy on Win7 and up. The reason I needed a new browser was for those sites that just don't work with IE8 any longer. So I finally settled on Comodo. I am quite happy with my selection, the browser has almost everything I need out of the box. One nice thing is built in spell check. The only two things I would like to see is a more robust download manager that can place certain files such as java plugins into a temp folder and the others somewhere else. For example I use a stock ticker that downloads the new file every time. My download folder fills up with those downloads. On the same subject you can tell Comodo to always run a file of a certain type. I would like to see that as an exception to only allow that type from the allowed site. These issues fixed it would get 5 stars. I found at least one extension that I would like to try that refreshes the page automatically but not sure I want to trust extensions based on the limited available info. At this time I don't think I could have made a better choice. Price: Free

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iWebAlbum

Very nice

This is a very easy to use program. It does not have a ton of bells and whistles but does a fine job. If you have any knowledge of html you can easily change the thumbnail backgrounds and main backgrounds of the final coded web album. I changed my thumbnail backgrounds to fit my needs and also changed the main background to match my website. The program works well for my needs. Price: Free

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MobaPhoto

Ok for basic web album.

This program is easy enough to use. It works fine as well. However if you wish to size the images that are shown on the web you have little control. I tried all possible combinations of options when creating the album but not matter what I tried the album always made the images the size it wanted to create. If you do not care the finished size of the slideshow images this program is fine. If you want a custom size you need to find something else. Price: Free

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Homedale

Useful to monitor wi-fi signal strength.

If you travel and stop at places with Outdoor Wi-Fi systems there are usually more than one access point. With this program you can monitor and see the history of each of those access points simultaneously. By doing this you can choose the best access point to connect to. I would like to see the ability to change colors of the monitor graph. You can choose two different graph color combinations however when you have more than 4 monitors going the colors either duplicate or are so close it is hard to tell which one you are looking at. I also would like to see the graph show from 0 to -100 so you do not have a graph sitting on the base of the image. So the graph stays the current size the graph could be made to be able to scroll vertically. I would rate this one star higher if the minor changes were made. By the way I am using version 1.31 which Snapfiles has not listed yet. Price: Free

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Nassau

Quick and easy

If you have this on a portable drive it can save time getting all of the adapter ip addresses with one click. A bit easier than going through the extra mouse clicks getting to control panel or command prompt. I also agree that a way to copy or save the info to a file would be nice. The program runs in the system tray. I feel once you have the info you do not need it again. Instead of loading to system tray I would like to simply see the report open then when you close the information box the entire program closes. Price: Free

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AllDup

Minor bugs

This is an update to my original review. In that review I gave this program only 2 start because it was not doing things it should which could have caused a problem. After testing several other programs to do this job for me I have to admit even with the bugs, this program is still better than all of the others I tested. The issues about not giving a warning when deleting all files from the same group (noted in my original post) resolved it self the next day, not sure why but hey after the date changed that issue was gone. I am going to raise my score on this program to 3 stars because there are still some odd issues such as when a lot of files are in the list of dupes sometimes clicking on the group with the preview on does not show the images of the items in the group. Moving down the list to the first file in the group and making that image show then going back up to the group main list will cause all files to appear in the preview. All that said, I will send in my findings of things that need corrected and if these things happen I would consider the paid version and bumping up the rating to 4 stars. I won't give it 5 stars unless the interface gets less cumbersome, it is a little odd to use. Price: Free

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Toolwiz Time Freeze

Worth using

This program works well. I used it on a computer I was getting ready to rebuild for a new purpose. I did this to protect my main machine. Simply enough installed the program. Then added some files, deleted some files, installed some programs and changed some settings. Rebooted computer and all changes gone and deleted files still there. I think this would be great to use if you browse websites recklessly or want to protect you machine when visitors want to use your system. Please note, this program has no instructions, however anyone who would even consider using it should have no problems figuring it out. Basically there is only one screen with a few options. That's why 4 stars. Price: Free

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GetWindowText

Simple in what it does but does it just fine

This is a nice portable program. It is simple in what it does but does it just fine. I downloaded this puppy so I could see if it was possible to extract the text from error and other notification dialog boxes that windows pops up sometimes. This tool did just that. Now if I am working on a computer and have an issue I need to google or research some other way I can run this tool and then copy the results to the clipboard, then to notepad or what ever. No more trying retype the information from the dialog box. I rated the interface very good so I could give this a 4 star rating. I would have given it a 5 except for one little issue. When I first tried to use it, it took me longer than expected (not long though). Where the issue came in was the way they have the instructions written (no help file)in the program window. For some reason I did not relate to the less than characters as an arrow pointing to the icon to the left. The way the words are written I was under the impression you clicked in the dialog box and drug the pointer to the window you needed to copy. After a couple tries I figured out the less than characters are actually pointing to the logo button to the left. Left click that and hold. Drag to where you want. You can see the text in the box change as you pass areas. If they would rewrite that bit of guidance I would give this 5 stars. The reason I want that re-written is for people that would just download and give up when it don't work on first try. Price: Free

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Web Forum Reader

Useless for me.

I downloaded this program hoping to be able to navigate through Microsoft Answers much easier. I used to use Microsoft News Groups but those have been closed in favor of the Forums. This program disappointed me as it was unable to set up for that site. The program may work just fine on traditional forums but not Microsoft. The problem arrises when you try to set it up. The program wants you to sign in to the forum from a window built into the program. Microsoft forces you to sign in from a pop-up window. I also tried to set it up without success by telling it sign in anonymously hoping I could edit the settings later. Still issues as it wanted me to click options that did not exist. I would have spent more time with this program and tried to figure out a work around, however I choose not to because the program asked me to install a smiley program during install. I did have the option to opt out but from the best of my recollection there was no mention of the smiley program in the EULA. Price: Free

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Screen Calipers

Never without

I have used this program since 2002 and still use it all of the time. This is much better than any type of on screen ruler. With changeable colors the calipers will adapt to any background color so you can see them. I use them to measure things on a website so it stays consistent. This says free trial then you must pay. That is a yes and a no. You do not have to pay once the 30 days are over. There are a couple of features you get extra when you do pay but nothing that I have ever needed. (I did pay though because this is an awesome program) If you don't pay you can still use them but you must click a register later box each time you open the program. The only bad part is the register and no thanks button changes between two different positions each time you open the program. As for Version 3 and Version 4 I would rather use Version 2. Nothing wrong with the other versions but I do not need the 360 degree rotation so using version 2 keeps that out of my face. This program will lock out a lot of memory at first it is a small amount but the longer you use it the more resources it takes but it release the memory as soon as it is shut down. Just something to keep in mind if things seem to get a little sluggish. If it was not for this memory issue this would get 5 stars. Price: Free Trial ($29.50)

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myPortablePIM

Over bloated

I find that this program goes beyond a PIM. There are many things that could be eliminated to make this truly a portable PIM. Let me start with the one good thing that I found in the program. I did like the fact that it has what they call a Tracker. This nice little feature lets you keep a record of your time when you are working for others. You can start and stop the timer, not sure if you can move it from machine to machine or not but you can always edit your time. It will also export the totals to a csv file. I have tested stand alone time clocks and yet to find one that will export the totals to csv. This could be a useful feature as it goes along with client information. Now for the not so good. This program is nearly 40mb. Other portable PIM's I have tested and use are under 10mb and usually in the single digits. The program also runs slower than other portable PIM's. This program comes with the following unneeded features for a PIM. Program Launcher. If I wanted a program launcher I would get a dedicated one. Web Search. Why, almost every browser has built in web search now. Image Viewer. Really? In a PIM? Weather. Not only can you get weather from any browser which will be better and faster and you choose the site you want. The weather this program uses is powered by Weather Bug like it or not. One last thing, why is the mail limited to Gmail? Why not any POP/SMTP mail? If you do not use Gmail this feature is also a waste. Price: Free

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Xenu Link Sleuth

I use it all the time.

I don't know why I did not review this program before. Maybe it was not on Snapfiles when I first started using it(2002). If you want to make sure your website links are correct this is the one. This is not just a so called link checker that tests your external links to make sure they work. It will test every link on your site such as links to images in folders and other content. There are some limitations on checking java based links, but the website explains all of that. Also you can work around the issue by having a test page with links to all of the items normally called from java. If they work you know everything still exists and is in the correct directory. Price: Free

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TimeStamp

Waste of time. (revised)

What good is a time clock that does not list totals on the report? Editor: The totals can be included if exporting to Excel instead of text format. -- Updated Review. I have decided to upgrade this review based on the fact provided by the editor that the time totals can be included in an Excel Report. I don't use Excel I use another brand of office software that is not Excel compatible. I use it because I started with it years ago and have so many spread sheets already with it. That is why I did not try the Excel export. I will try the clock again in the future and see if it will report the time in a csv file format. That would be compatible with any spread sheet program. If that works I may bump up the rating to good instead of fair. Price: Free

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PeaZip

It's ok.

I have tried Peazip and another portable zip tool that I actually use the installed version of. I find that Pzip is fine to do a quick zip or unzip of file types that Windows does not support, however I will only use it if for some reason my other portable zip program I found here on Snapfiles does not do the job. Maybe I am overlooking something but my issue with this program is, if you choose to make your compressed file self extracting it always wants to extract to the current folder the file is located in similar to Windows compressed folder. I have tried several different ways to force this to follow the path that I give it without any success. The other portable zip program I use I believe supports as many or more file types and when I make an self extracting file with it, it will default to the location I tell it to if I give it a path for the files. It will even extract different files to different paths. So unless Peazip corrects this issue I will recommend it for basic functions but prefer the other program much better. Price: Free

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RegShot

Worked for me.

I just spent a day downloading and creating my own special USB Utility Flash Drive. I included a portable drive start menu found here on Snapfiles. I then went to a computer with Steady State installed(same as Deep Freeze) to test the portable drive. I ran each and every tool, but before each tool was run I used Regshot then again after it was run. I found most portable tools left little in the registry but some left a bit. With this tool you can know what reg keys to clean up after you use your portable tool. The only thing I was lost on at first was a few keys that I did not understand why they were created. They ended up being just temp keys that windows uses. I finally figured out that the keys I was questioning actually were written over by the next tool I tested. In the end with this program and another reg scanner tool I tested when all was said and done I only had 29 keys added to the registry after running nearly 200 utilities. Price: Free

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EssentialPIM Free

Very nice

This program works better than others I have tried. A couple of things I like is the fact it has a spell checker for notes and email. I also like the fact that you can turn off any modules you do not use to keep them out of your face. Example if you do not want to use the "To Do" List you can turn it off. This program writes nothing to the registry and is simple enough to backup just by copying a folder from your flash drive back to another location. I have not found any issues with the program yet but and have not tried every feature but if I find issues later I will update my review. Please note that the first time you run the program it may take a couple of minutes as it has to create the initial database. Subsequent runs are much faster. You can also have more than one data base for different things. Price: Free

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SUPERAntiSpyware Free

Always good.

The new version of this program has some improvements. The biggest differences noticeable is you can actually see what the program finds as it finds it and the updates are much faster. Once you get past the interface changes most of the settings are the same. As for the program finding more stuff than before who knows. The old version found things other than just cookies, I know this from helping friends that were infected. No matter what you still need more than one spywaremalware scanner as there is no one program that will catch everything. Price: Free

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Cyberduck

Did the job.

I use Rackspace cloud files. I uploaded some mp4 videos through the web interface. The files had the wrong attributes. I was recommended to use this program by support to reupload the files. Everything went as planned and all is well. Works similar to an FTP Uploader for your website. Price: Free

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CodySafe

Good but needs a bit of work.

As a portable app user I sometimes keep several versions of the same program on my flash drive. That is usually not an issue as the different versions are in different folders. Seems that Codysafe does not care about folder names (sort of), if the program has the same file name for different versions only the last one setup in Codysafe will actually show up. You must rename the exe files to work around this issue. Hopefully that will be fixed in the future. Other than that a good program so far. Price: Free

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AM-DeadLink

Nice program

This program works well if installed. I however will always choose to use a portable version when ever possible so I can keep my machine clean. While using the portable version of AM Deadlink 4.4 I do not get an option to download the favicons. The button for this feature is grayed out. Other than that, like other reviews a good program. Have a support ticket in to maybe get this fixed. Price: Free

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EasyFLV Streaming Video

Very dissappointed

Don't waste your time and money. This software should be freeware. In fact there is freeware that does a better job. For my use I could not use any of the freeware. As far as the software goes this software does work, however it produces a poor playback of your videos when streamed. At first I though my issues were due to poor conversion programs. I was converting wmv to mp4. I noticed in my first video that there was distortion and other impurities in my video. Putting a video on a business site this was not acceptable. I took a lot of time trying different conversion programs thinking they were the issue. Turns out I tried a different streamer and copied the video from this player into the other streamer and the video that looked bad now looked good. This player also has two versions. A version to show only one video and a version for multi videos. If you buy the single video version you need to upgrade later to a multi player if you want one player to show more than one video. The multi player requires two videos to run according to the support department. Anyway the replacement player was about 25 more cost but can be used as single or multi player with much better playback and more and easier options. Do your self a favor and look elsewhere. I would mention the player I got in this review but that is not allowed here on SnapFiles so just try others out. Price: Free Trial ($49.00)

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VLC Media Player

Great player and converter

I downloaded and installed the zipped version of this program. It runs well and easy to uninstall. I got this program to convert wmv videos to mp4 videos. I had a lot of issues making my video look good when running on the website in a web player. I was disappointed. Thought my issue was with the converters I was using (VLC Lan and others). Had nothing to do with them. VLC Lan did a great job in the conversion. I found my issue to be the streaming video player it self. Never though that the issue could be there but out of frustration I checked it out. I had downloaded a streaming program and the video played was not as good quality as expected. That is why I thought the converters was causing issues. Anyway I decided to download a different streamer and it looked 10 times better. At this point I was not sure if the streamer it self changed the video some how when bringing it into the program. Next test I manually extracted the video that looked bad in one streamer and injected it into the other streamer manually and lo and behold the video that looked bad now looked good as expected. Bottom line, if you think VLC Lan is not doing a good conversion be sure to check the video in different players first. VLC Lan is great as it will play many codecs not native to Windows. This program is in my tool box for a long time to come. Price: Free

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Kurlo

Not impressed

I was looking forward to using this program. I installed it to flash drive so I could have my address book with me everywhere and do a simple print to envelope. I should not have to go through so many steps to print a single envelope. Simply stated you should be able to highlight one contact and click print then get an envelope out of your printer. Also the version I downloaded has some mapping issues. Every way I tried to import an address book things would go into the wrong place. I finally manually created a single contact and then exported it. Checked out the exported file to find out that email 1 was saved as ICQ and email 2 was saved as AIM. Was able to import my emails by telling them to import as ICQ and AIM which did put them in the correct place. This program is just not worth the hassle. Can't give a program with this types of issues an excellent price. Even free is not worth the trouble. Price: Free

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Recuva

It just works.

I downloaded this program hoping it would work. I had a different program years ago that worked but wanted something newer that worked on NTFS. I knew before trying that not all files would be recoverable this program did the trick, did not get all but got many of what I wanted. Recovered some pictures for a friend that was not recreatable. Price: Free

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USBDeview

Very nice

This is a great little program. It does not require to be installed, and does not write to the registry. Great little stand alone app that can be used on a flash drive. This tool will let you view the records of every device ever plugged into your USB Port. It will also let you remove products you no longer own. One of the best features of this program is sometimes in Windows XP for some reason the safely remove icon in the system tray just goes away. With this program you can disconnect your drive with the click of a button. Much better than rebooting to get the safely remove back. Price: Free

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NetSetMan

It's alright but I need more.

I downloaded this program hoping it would do what my current product does but be more stable. I already have a network manager but sometimes the icon does not appear on boot. Some kind of bug in the program I guess but it works non the less. I was hoping to replace it with this product possibly even the paid version but this product lacks a feature my other program has and without that feature I will just keep what I have. What is missing is an option to either allow or disallow the exceptions in Windows Firewall. I would like my network manager to either allow file and printer sharing or not depending on the connection I am currently connected to. If this program had that feature (even if only in the paid version) I would consider trying it again. Price: Free

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avast! Professional Edition

Better than before

Back in Oct 2004 I tested Avast (free). Only difference between free/pro is a couple of features. Features aside overall operations of both are about the same. When I blasted this program is was because I had a computer that was in the lower end of the then current products. Avast was slower than a glacier, it would not run well. 6 years later I find this to be one of the faster programs (except for full scan). In 2004 I would not recommend this program. In 2010 I would have to say it is much improved and a worthy product for many people. I will recommend the Free versions to those that don't want to pay and for those that need or want the Pro this is not a bad deal when they have specials on their website. I did however find that the Product did not fit my needs due to the lack of a better update schedule. I need to set exact times for the updates and this program only allows to set a certain amount of minutes. That is why 4* I had to choose a different product. Price: Free Trial ($39.95)

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VIPRE Antivirus

Not for slow internet.

I really wanted to recommend this product, I did. I like it very much except for the way it updates. It has no incremental updates, you must download the entire definition file each time. 50mb to 60mb. On top of that if you ask it to scan it checks for updates before it will do the scan. Should be a way to turn that action off. Bottom line here is this. Great Program Horrible updates. If you are on the slow end of the ISP world such as Dial Up, Aircard or Satellite, or if you have bandwidth limits, I think this program should be avoided. I would have given this excellent all the way except for features due to the updates, but I had to lower everything to give it only 3 stars. Price: Free Trial ($79.99)

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BullZip PDF Printer

Worked great

Needed a PDF Creator that could make an image file into a pdf file. Of course my office program can make pdf documents but not from a bmp image. Price: Free

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Steganos LockNote

Nice program

I have been using this program for a while. The program works well but there is a bug you should know when using it. If you use it correctly the bug won't be an issue. I have reported the bug to the developers and they have responded saying they were able to recreate the issue and sent the info to the development team to correct in a future release. How the bug works. With this program you get an exe file that you can open and change the text then click save as and you will be asked for a name to save the file as and a password. The program will save a new file with the new name and password. Where the bug comes in, you only want to save a new file with the save as using the original unpassworded exe file. If you try to use save as from a file you want to keep you will loose the original contents because it will save both old and new file with the same info. So please either create files from the original file or if using a created file make a copy, rename, edit then save. Price: Free

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Nesox Link Checker Free Edition

Not worth the effort.

This program is useless. In my opinion it is a waste of time. First it does not tell you much about the links it finds. It only tells you they are good or bad. It does not tell you where they come from (which page). In my test I had to run each page twice because the first time it finds the main pages but not all and does not give any details. The second run the other pages show up and you get the details but they are of little use to me at least. There are more link checkers out there that do a much better job. Not giving any names the one I like best can be found on this site in the following category. FreewareWeb Authoring Site Management. Price: Free

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UnFREEz

Great for basic animated gifs.

Been using this program since 2001. If you simply want to make a quick animated gif and don't need to have different frame rate delays for each image or other special features this this will work great for you. The program is smart enough to maintain any transparent colors you have on your original gif files. The program does not have a help file with it but you should not need it. Just drag the icon of each of the images you want into the window choose the rate speed, choose if you want it to loop(repeat), click make animated gif. Leave the program open and test your new gif. If it is too slow or too fast just change the speed and click make animated gif again. When you have the correct speed then close the program. Price: Free

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System Spec

Did what was needed.

If you need a tool that gathers all of the basic information in one place this can do it. All of the information this collects is available through various areas of the operating system it is easier for someone that don't know where to look to get what they need. The only thing I need it for is I work at a place that has wireless internet. We sometimes deny access to certain MAC Addresses. Now when someone complains that they can not get on I can tell them to download this program that does not need installed run it tell me their MAC Address and I can tell them if and why I blocked them. Much easier than walking them through the steps to find the information through the system. Price: Free

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SyncBack Free

Just what was needed.

I personally do not need backup software. I manually create backups from my computer monthly on CD and daily to my flash drive. One person I help at their company needs a little help backing up across the network. This program was just the ticket. After installing, setting up and tweaking the profiles to their needs they now are willing to do a backup each time they run the accounting software. For them it is now a simple 3 clicks to do an entire backup, better yet the program is set to email me to let me know they did a backup and what the backup did. I will now know without asking when they do a major backup and I can go to the office machine and burn a cd for them. I will also know if they made a mistake. This program has many features some are not visible until you go to the expert mode, more than I can list here. This has to be for me at least the best backup program I have used. Last but not least this program is allowed for free for commercial use. Price: Free

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