Computer Tips and Guides

Archive for the ‘Software’ Category

LightShot is a Lightweight and Fast Screenshot Capture Tool

Windows standalone or Firefox/Chrome/IE: If you’re looking for a snappy screenshot tool, LightShot is lightweight, fast, featured packed, and available as a stand alone application or a browser add-on.

LightShot is a lightweight screenshot tool available for Windows or as an add-on for Firefox, Chrome, and IE. You can capture screenshots in a variety of ways including uploading them to the internet via ImageShack, dumping the sreenshot to your clipboard, opening ..read more

Firefox Tab Candy Organizes Your Tabs in Groups, Looks Excellent

Windows/Mac/Linux: Firefox Tab Candy is a new tab management feature for Firefox that organizes tabs into groups to help you keep your tabs grouped by task. Not only does it offer incredibly handy features, but it looks beautiful.

Watch the video above, by Mozilla’s excellent interface designer Aza Raskin, for a quick overview. The idea is sort of like the new app folders in iOS 4, or like a better ..read more

What is CD Burning Software?

CD Burning or CD Writing software is essential for anyone wanting to backup their computer data to CD or DVD. The software usually allow you to save data on CD or DVD, as well as creating audio CD’s from MP3, WAV, WMA, and other types of files.

Windows XP comes with built-in software to burn to CDs or DVDs, but the features are limited. So in many cases, computer owners have other software they use to burn ..read more

LAN Speed Test Measures the Speed of Your Home Network

Windows only: You’ve probably tested your internet connection speed (I’ve always preferred Speakeasy’s Speed Test) and have a pretty good idea of your broadband speed, but free Windows app LAN Speed Test measures the speed of data transfers on your home network.

If you’re sharing files or streaming videos over your local network, your network speed is a pretty important factor to keep an eye on, and if you feel like your ..read more

When you open up Task Manager in Windows XP , there is no title bar, menu bar, or program tabs showing. Only the running applications,  End Task, Switch To, and New Task buttons show up.

This problem is easy to fix, the Task Manager is running in “tiny footprint mode”. To correct this, simply double-click on the border around the window and it will return to its normal state. To place task manager back in “tiny footprint mode” again, double click again ..read more

Many times when trying to remove an unwanted program, especially a piece of adware or spyware, you may run across a file that is undeletable by any normal method. When you try to remove it you’ll receive the error message shown below telling you “access denied” and explaining the file may be in use.  You may also receive one of the following messages.

Cannot delete file: Access is denied There has been a sharing violation. The source or destination file may be in ..read more

Preme Adds Unique Shortcuts to Windows 7

Windows only: Preme is a Windows 7 shortcut utility that adds new and unique keyboard and mouse shortcuts, including a handful of useful ways to interact with windows using your mouse’s scroll wheel.

For example, hold your mouse over any window’s title bar and scroll down on your mouse wheel to minimize that window; middle-clicking the same title bar area (or just tapping the Escape key twice) will close the active window. The utility aims ..read more

KeepNote Organizes Your Notes on Any Platform

Windows/Mac/Linux: Portable, cross-platform note-taking application KeepNote stores your notes, thoughts, outlines, and more in a simple hierarchical format, complete with rich-text formatting, images, attachments, and even plugins.The application itself is simple enough to use: just add “Pages” on the left-hand pane, and then write or paste anything into the note itself—but you can organize the tree menu with icons, folders, and add new nodes easily from the keyboard.

Since the notes are each stored in ..read more

How to Make Gmail Play Nicely with Your Desktop Email Client

If you use Gmail as your email backend but prefer a good old-fashioned desktop email client for handling your day-to-day email, you’re probably aware that many clients—like Outlook or Mail.app—don’t play that nice with Gmail. Here’s how to fix that.While Thunderbird no longer needs any extra work to become the ultimate Gmail IMAP client, mail clients, such as Mail.app or Outlook, do not exhibit normal behavior when using Gmail’s servers.

Gmail ..read more

Chrome Notepad Syncs Notes Across Multiple Computers

Google Chrome: Chrome Notepad is an effective extension that syncs notes and even the last place you left off in your document across multiple computers, using Chrome’s built-in bookmark sync functionality.

There’s not many note-syncing extensions that remember the last caret position you left off on, but Chrome Notepad will sync that information across any Chrome installation.

The size of the notepad is configurable. In order to enable syncing, you’ll need to turn on bookmark syncing ..read more