Computer Tips and Guides

Posts Tagged ‘Free Windows’

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

Alt+Tab Tuner Makes Windows 7’s Task Switcher Thumbnails Larger and Much More

Windows 7 only: System tweaking utility Alt+Tab Tuner customizes everything about the Windows 7 Alt-Tab dialog, from setting the transparency to increasing the size of the thumbnails.To customize the settings, all you have to do is unzip and launch the utility, drag the sliders to suit your preferences, and click the Apply button. You can even use the utility to switch back to the old XP-style Alt+Tab dialog if ..read more

Taskbar Meters Monitor Your Windows 7 Hardware in the Taskbar

Windows 7 only: If you’re not into Windows desktop gadgets, there is another way to easily monitor your computer’s CPU and RAM: Taskbar Meters puts simple, attractive resource monitors right on your Windows 7 Taskbar.

Taskbar Meters contains two programs that you can pin to your taskbar—one that monitors CPU, one that monitors RAM. Each has a colored bar that shows how much of that resource you are using, complete with color ..read more

AVG 9 Free Now Available for Download

Windows only: AVG 9 Free—one of the most popular free antivirus apps on the market—is now available for download.

A couple weeks back, the popular antivirus maker AVG released AVG 9 with performance improvements and other updates, but on launch only the commercial version of AVG 9 was available. The fact of the matter is that most AVG users are probably using AVG Free, the freeware version of the app, so if that’s the case ..read more

Microsoft Office Web Apps Will Be Available to Everyone

Microsoft offered up a Technical Preview of its web-based Office offerings yesterday, but the invites are long since gone. The good news is that anyone who can get a Windows Live sign-in will eventually have access to stripped-down office apps.

ReadWriteWeb notes that a limited preview is being offered to “partners” at the moment, with greater beta availability coming this fall. In the preview, Word documents are read-only, but can be shared and ..read more

SimplyIcon Makes Icon Creation a Snap

Windows: If you don’t want to spend time micro-designing an icon and you’ve already got a source image, SimplyIcon makes creating your buttons and icons a drag-and-drop matter.

Download the SimplyIcon package, extract the executable and DLL file to a folder, run the program, and you’re presented with a simple dialogue box and the instructions to drag and drop an image onto it. Once you drag and drop the image, SimplyIcon creates a variety of icon ..read more