Quickly Save Screenshots With PrtScr

Taking screenshots on a Windows OS can be done in many ways. You can use 3^rd party software such as Shutter, Greenshot, or Screenshot Utility. The simplest default way, unfortunately, is to press the PrtScn button on the keyboard, open the Paint program, paste it, and then save it as an image. This is unnecessary and can take a lot of time depending on the amount of screenshots you’re taking. To avoid this hassle and breeze right through your captures, consider using FiaStarta’s program PrtScr.

PrtScr allows dead simple and super quick options for saving screenshots. After install and upon its first run, access the default settings by right-clicking the icon in the taskbar and choosing Show settings.

Freeware: FileHippo Update Checker

The FileHippo Update Checker will scan your computer for installed software, check the versions and then send this information to FileHippo.com to see if there are any newer releases. These are then neatly displayed in your browser for you to download.

There are a small number of settings to better customize the update results. 

Choosing the default browser, displaying beta versions, adding program directories for scans, proxy connections, and a couple advanced options.

(Download) Full version.
(Download) Standalone version.
(via FileHippo.com)

Freeware: Paste As File

Paste As File is an app to paste the contents of the clipboard to a new file in the current folder via the context menu windows explorer background. It can paste as a text file or image file based on the contents of the clipboard. Supported image formats are jpg, pcx, png, bmp, tga, gif and tif.

(Download)

(via starpunch.net)

Quickly Record System Audio With FairStars Recorder

It may come up that you'll need to record your system audio. Maybe you're in a rush, listening to a podcast, or watching the news online and figure you may as well record the audio of whatever is happening.

FairStars Recorder makes this very fast and extremely simple.

Follow the steps below to quickly start recording the audio playing through your speakers.

Find & Download Movie Subtitles With Sublight

Sublight is a free windows application for searching and downloading movie subtitles.

After the default settings are set via the installation setup file, simply follow these steps to quickly find and download a suitable subtitle file.

Download

Impove Speed, Performance, & Privacy With JetClean

JetClean gives you that fresh, new PC feeling again! Light-weight and easy to use, it removes system junk files and it protects your privacy.


 DOWNLOAD

We will outline most of the options and show how to scan and repair a system using JetClean.

Change The Windows 7 Logon Background

Normally, we would be stuck with the default background before we logon to Windows - the boring, plain, over-used image.

A nice and simple background changer called Windows 7 Logon Background Changer does just as the name assumes, and can change that default image to whatever you please, and with a very easy-to-use user interface.

DOWNLOAD

Search Windows Instantly With 'Everything' Search

Everything search engine by voidtools allows instant search for files and folders in Windows (from 2000 - 7).

Once it indexes all your drives and prioritizes the files and folders, it becomes significantly faster than the default, built-in Windows search.

DOWNLOAD

Convert Video Files To Various Formats Using Freemake's Free Video Converter

Freemake offers a free, easy-to-use, piece of software called Free Video Converter that's capable of converting video files to many, many, different formats. Some popular ones include AVI, MP4, MKV, WMV, MPG, 3GP, 3G2, SWF, FLV, TOD, AVCHD, MOV, DV, RM, QT, TS, and MTS.

Watch a video tutorial here.

After you download and open Free Video Converter, follow these steps:

1)

Compare Two Text Files With Notepad ++

Notepad ++ is an advanced, free, text editor. There is a built in compare plugin that's great for comparing two text files very quickly.

Download here.

1)

Open two text files in Notepad++ to create two tabs.

aeroFS - File Sync Without Servers

I ran across quit an intriguing website recently called aeroFS. It's simply a 'peer-to-peer filesystem' so that 'any two or more devices can talk to each other directly, without a middleman server, and regardless of whether you're on a corporate LAN, on the Internet, or in any other network'.

It's listed features and security information can be found here, but here's a little info about them:

Print To PDF Instead Of Paper Using doPDF

doPDF installs itself as a virtual PDF printer driver so after a successful installation will appear in your Printers and Faxes list and also in the list of All Programs. Using doPDF you can convert to PDF in two ways:

1. Print to PDF via the virtual printer driver doPDF. You would do this exactly as you print to a regular printer, just the result will be a PDF file, not a printed piece of paper.
2. Using the doPDF Startup window. doPDF has an executable file (accessible from the start program group) that you can run in order to start a conversion wizard.

Direct Download

(doPDF is a free PDF converter, it is not a PDF reader. To read PDF files you will need the free Adobe Reader, as with doPDF you can only print to PDF. Furthermore, doPDF doesn't convert from PDF to a different format (i.e. from PDF to Word) nor does it allow editing PDF files.)

(via dopdf.com)

Very Useful Piriform Products

What is it?
Piriform hosts software to make your computer faster, more secure and have greater privacy.


Why use it?
Whether you're cleaning out files on your system with CCleaner, defragging your hard drive with Defraggler, analyzing your hardware with Speccy, or recovering deleted files with Recuva, we've got you covered.


How?

Speed Up PC with "Free Registry Defrag"

What is it?
This program is called "Free Registry Defrag". It is used to defrag your registry, just like defragging a HDD.

Why use it?
Registry compacting improves speed and performance for you system. It is highly recommended to perform this on slow computers for a good chance of improving said issues.

How?

Resize Images With Image Resizer Powertoy

A simple tool that lets you resize images straight from the right-click menu:

Image Resizer Powertoy

(image taken from imageresizer's website)

Best Portable Apps Launcher

USB drives are amazing. With them, it's possible to have multiple applications installed. With all these apps, though, comes the possible to become unorganized.

Codyssey is, simply put, your amazing solution!

All your apps can be easily accessed through the automated menu that is the heart and soul of this software.

Anyone with lots of programs installed on their flash drives and who wants them all organized should check this program out. I highly recommend it.

Keep Track of Recently, Frequently Used Apps

Ever wonder how many times you've run Firefox, Photoshop, or another program on your Windows machine? Windows actually keeps track of that data, but doesn't make it easy to find. XP Run Count Editor (direct link) is a light weight, portable utility, that lets you see how many times you've run programs on your computer.



As the name suggests, XP Run Count Editor also lets you edit the Windows registry keys for the run count of each program. And while you might think that's just a good way of letting you pretend you've been doing more work and less gaming on your PC than you really have, there's another practical reason to adjust the run counts. The Windows Recently Used Program list ranks programs based on their run count. If you want to move an application to the top of the list to make it easier to find, just modify its run count.

You can also delete your entire run history and start over from scratch.

Backup Web Browsers

"FavBackup is a simple solution for you to backup and restore web browser settings and other data on Windows 7/Vista/XP/2000 systems. No installation required."

FavBackup makes it considerably smooth for me to "backup and restore [my] web browser" whenever I want.