Irritated

Software Reviews by Irritated

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.

Freemake Video Converter

One word ...

Awesome! Price: Free Trial ($19.95)

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Nitro PDF Reader has a beautiful interface - the second-best amongst PDF software I've tried, second only to the cleaner but more bloated Adobe X. Psyched with my new PDF toy I quickly found that it doesn't work that well. A number of functions don't work consistently or correctly, including copy-and-paste and find. To my shock I found that it doesn't support transparency! A basic function of the PDF format and it is not supported, which means that many PDFs do not render correctly when opened, including those with transparent graphics or any transparency layers such as handwriting overlays. The commercial version, Nitro Pro also has this defect. It is mentioned in their customer help forum numerous times. Dealbreaker! Price: Free

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PTFB Pro

Useful

My first review of PTFB was not great--I had some significant trouble with this program. However after following up on a reply to my review from the developer all problems were solved. The developer has demonstrated motivation to provide good support for this product and interest in improving it. Good enough for me! Price: Free Trial ($39.99)

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FileMenu Tools

Indespensible

Agree with the other reviewers--this is EXCELLENT. Replaces multiple file-management related tools, and puts its interface where it is most relevant--on the context menu. Easy to configure, flexible, its presence is nearly transparent but adds so much power. Not only is the package as a whole excellent, but all of the individual tools do exactly what they promise to do and they do it well. Why isn't this gem installed on every Windows machine? Freeware worthy of buying a license for. Price: Free Trial ($11.00)

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ArsClip

Very, very good

Out of many similar tools, this is the software I use. It is not perfect--it could use some simplification of the options interface--but that is just picking nits. It is very stable on older systems up to Win 7-64, and is competitive with its class in terms of memory usage. Complaining about small items like interface busy-ness ... ungratefulness from me I suppose. Being able to access a history of clipboard items at any time through an extended right-click? PRICELESS! My thanks to Jackass JoeJoe. Price: Free

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ManicTime Free

Impressive (but not perfect)

This software is elegant and easy to use. It gets the job done ... it seems like it still has a ways to mature--for example, the simplified interface is appreciated, but errs a bit on the side of being too simple. I would appreciate easier "off the record" options, being able to exclude certain apps or activities from tracking. The only flaw of the software is the inability to easily delete old tracking data. Impressive for v.1.x software! Although I don't need the extra features available in the paid version, I will be buying a license to help further the development of this valuable tool. Price: Free

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7-Zip

Slim and effective

Simple, minimalist interface (a little too clinical and minimal for some tastes I imagine), solid reliable performance, 7-zip does its one task--compressing and decompressing files--quickly and efficiently. Bloat-free! Very wide compatibility with different archive formats including a number of settings that default for ZIP files. For example, the context menu options always give a choice of ZIP format and whatever format you choose as the default. That gives it the ability to make easy use of the excellent 7Z archive format while allowing smooth workflows for the most common compressed archives. Price: Free

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Free Download Manager

Great choice for a download manager.

Works as advertised. After trying many similar tools for years, always switching due to various irritants or missing features, I have been satisfied with FDM for some time. Stable and relatively easy on resources it is configurable enough to work with even non-standard browsers like Chromium. The interface can be a little busy, and all the options can be intimidating for novice users, but most people will be more than satisfied with its performance on default as-installed settings. Also worthy to note is Orbit Downloader--although FDM is the software I use. Price: Free

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ShellExView

Super useful

Great deep-configuration tool for Windows. NOT FOR THE CASUAL USER! Your teenager will kill your Windows installation in about five minutes with this tool. For the advanced user or IT professionals it can be an extremely simple way to solve some otherwise tedious problems. The author, Nirsoft, makes a wide variety of other unique, single-use power tools--many of which end up in my portable USB toolkit. Price: Free

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Recuva

Works well

There are many "undeleters" out there ... is Recuva the best? I don't know, but I do know that it has worked well for me for some time. Easy to use, light on resources, and effective. Good enough for me! Price: Free

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NetWorx

Get it!

After trying many similar tools, Networx is clearly the class leader. Light on resources, both easy to use out-of-the-box and highly configurable for the geeks among us, it even has a portable version! Price: Free Trial ($49.00)

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VirtualBox

Lots of promise

...but not ready for real-world usage yet. My experience with Virtualbox was full of hope, but in the end disappointing. It is pretty buggy, and I was spending more time hunting down errors and obscure error messages than I was working. For example, the USB connect functions don't work on 64-bit host OSes. This latest release has reduced slightly the number of as-yet-unresolved critical bugs, but is still not as stable as MS Virtual PC (which is limited to Windows guest OSes). If the engineers behind VirtualBox keep going it can be a great product ... worth following up on as it matures. The good news is the the VMware Player is also free, super stable, and can now make virtual machines as well as play them. It lacks the "snapshot features" of VirtualBox, but is a lot more stable. Price: Free

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Software Reviews by Irritated

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