Did you know that the amount of fonts you have installed on your Windows machine has a direct impact on your boot time?  Well now you know! We have found a font manager application for Windows that will make it much easier to manage windows fonts.

You can download Font Frenzy from here.  If you are looking for a place to download fonts or how to install them without this application you can check out this older MUO post.

There is no registration required and you do not need to give your email address. When you are finished downloading and installing, follow the prompts and then launch the application.

It will look like this on the first run:

There are 5 buttons across the top of the screen that are titled: Defrenzy, FrenzySnap, Refrenzy, FrenzyMan and FrenzyInfo. Lets take a look at what they do. Before pushing any of the buttons make sure you run a FrenzySnap so that you do not lose any fonts.

Defrenzy will remove all user added fonts from your computer. This means it will DELETE all fonts that did not come with your operating system. So anything installed with any other programs or any fonts you added manually will be removed. This is a great way to start over and just load up the fonts that you need. Remember to run the FrenzySnap before running Defrenzy so you will be able to restore your fonts if need be.

To begin, click on the Defrenzy button and then click Defrenzy Now:

After hitting the button you will see a confirmation window asking you to close your other applications:

When you are finished closing your other applications click Yes. You will then see this box asking you for the font directory. Leave it as the default and hit OK.

You will be prompted to take a snapshot and name it before continuing. Please do so. Hit OK and it will save your snapshot and then remove all fonts that did not come installed with your operating system. You can view a log file of what has been removed when it is complete. If you want to reinstall your fonts you can use Refrenzy which we will cover shortly.

FrenzySnap will take a snapshot of all installed fonts on your machine. Think of this like a system restore point for your fonts. If you remove some of them you can revert back to this backup and restore all the fonts you removed. Click the Save Snapshot button to save the snapshot.

Then you will be prompted for a name of the saved set.

Hit OK and it will save your snapshot. When it is complete you will see the snapshot appear in the left pane so that you can see the points that you can restore from:

To restore from this font set we will use the ReFrenzy option which we will walk through next. This process brought me from 198 fonts to 63 fonts. ReFrenzy will allow you to selectively choose to restore fonts from your previous Frenzy Snapshots generated by Frenzy Snap.

Simply highlight the set you want to restore and then hit Restore. You will be told to close any other open applications. It will then ask you for the path to your font folders – again leave them at the default and hit OK. It will restore the fonts from this set now and you will see this when it is complete:

FrenzyMan is the actual font manager that allows you to add and remove fonts easily from your system.

Using the buttons on the left panel and selecting fonts on the right, you can perform any of the actions listed. It is very easy and intuitive.

Finally, FrenzyInfo will simply bring up the application’s information showing you pertinent links to the authors website, help and email support.

Do you have another favorite font manager to manage windows fonts? We would love to hear about it in the comments!

In the past you would open a link in a new browser window by opening the browser and browsing to the page you need to test or you could fire up a tool like Browsershots that we have previously profiled. But what if you want an easy way to tell Firefox to open that link in a different browser? Well now you can with a Firefox extension called Open With.

You can find the extension here.

When you arrive at the plug-in page you will see this:

All you need to do is click on the Add to Firefox green button. You NEED to do this from inside Firefox. This will not work in any other browser. Once you have installed the extension and restarted Firefox, you will now be able to open a link in any of your installed browsers.

For each browser that you have installed on your machine, you will have a icon for each in your context menu. When the application is first installed it scans your machine to see what browsers are installed. I have Internet Explorer and Firefox on my machine. So now when I right click on a hyperlink I now see this in my context menu:

Upon selecting the open link with Internet Explorer link it will do just that – open up the page in Internet Explorer.

Now you can do whatever you need to do from within your Internet Explorer window like Windows Updates or other sites Microsoft forces you to use IE on. When testing webpages in different browsers this makes it a breeze. I have tried other applications in the past like Corel IE Tab and the fact that you can get other browsers to work with this makes it simply awesome.

Let’s take a look at the extension’s options which you can get to by going to Tools ““> Options ““> Manage Add Ons ““> Then click options under Open With. That will bring us to this screen:

You can choose between buttons or menu items for each of the display options which is no big deal but the manual entries menu tab makes this application a lot more powerful. Some online users reported Open With having problems with browsers after they were updated. If you run into these issues drop on by here:

Browser to the browser of your choice and you will be able to name it and set how it launches your browser (you can use switches!)

To add switches or edit the command it will use to launch your browser all you need to do is highlight the browser you want to modify and hit edit command and that will allow you to modify the line.

Do you have another application that helps you easily use other browsers? We would love to hear about them in the comments!

These are applications that students can take advantage of or anybody for that matter. These are tools that help us study. The top 10 is made up of language software, dictionaries and even some religious applications. Let’s see what they have for us today:

1. WordWeb
	Using this application, we can look up definitions, synonyms and antonyms without having to open a web browser. It has a hot key so you can mouse-over the word you want to analyze and hit the key combination. This is a brilliant free application.
2. Athan (Azan) Basic
	Holding second place is a tool for Muslims to help them perform their daily prayers. The application will call you to prayer at the appropriate time of day, every day.
3. Google Earth
	Google’s atlas that allows us to look up and discover the earth. Using Google’s knowledge you can find out all sorts of interesting geographical information from your computer.
4. Rapid Typing Tutor
	Rapid typing tutor says that it can teach you to touch type or speed up your typing abilities. Download and use it regularly to improve your keyboard skills. This can help young kids new to typing as well as people who have been typing for years.
5. TypingMaster Typing Test
	Using this application, you can discover how fast you type and learn how to improve upon it. This is a great application for users who have been typing for a long time and want to improve their words per minute.

6. Ela-Salaty Another Muslim application calling you to prayer time.
7. MecaNet Want to learn to type better? MecaNet guarantees success. Their words, not mine!
8. Viper – the Anti-plagiarism Scanner Put your document through the ringer to check for plagiarism.
9. I-Doser Synchronize your brain waves to achieve the mood you are looking for.
10. Google Maps with GPS Tracker This is Google’s downloadable version of Google Maps with GPS enabled.

Do you have other educational applications that you use regularly? We would love to hear about them in the comments below!

You can see the full results after the jump.

This week we are asking you how many monitors you have in your computer setup. Personally, I have three monitors connected to my PC. Some people think that I should be a stock trader but I say that three monitors gives me three times more room to work and I can differentiate different projects by which screen they are on.

Please vote below and leave us a comment!

I will show you how it works and how to capture the text for use in your own images using a little bit of a workaround. We have to use that workaround because as of now, PilotHandwriting does not allow you to download your font. If you are looking to be able to download the font for use in your word processing application then check out 2 Free Tools To Make Your Own Text Font.

Upon arriving at their website, you will be greeted by a little flash animation which surprisingly is not over the top and compliments the site.

You will then be shown a YouTube video about how it works. When it is complete, you will see a printable chart for you to fill in. That chart is shown below:

Go ahead and hit the Print button, print out the chart and then hit the right arrow on the screen to continue on to the next step. You will then fill in each letter or number in their respective spaces on the chart. Then when you are finished, you will have a few options to get the template back to the website. You can use a webcam, a scanner or a digital camera (cell phones work fine).

Hit the button for the option you want to use and get ready to upload. If you are using the scanner or camera options, you will need to upload your image in JPG form. I chose to snap the picture with my camera phone and upload that JPG.

Here is what my template looked like when I finished it:

Note that where I was not centered or wrote over the black lines, those letters were not recognized. So like they taught you in pre-school ““ stay in the lines, kiddies! Then get ready to upload your image:

Follow the on screen instructions for your particular method of upload and continue on. The web application will suck in your template and you will see each letter flash across the screen as it is processed like this:

When it is complete, you will see something that looks like this:

Hmm looks like some of my letters were not recognized. The best thing to do is rewrite the template and re-upload. But they do give you options to fix them onscreen. The problematic letters are marked with pictures of a pencil.

Then when you are complete, they will hit you up to log in. If you do not have an account, you can create one here:

When you are finished you will be taken to a text editor where you can compose your message like this:

Type away and when you are finished, use a screen capture application to copy the text as an image and you will be able to paste it anywhere you want using your favorite graphic application like GIMP or Photoshop. When you are finished, you can also email the picture above to any email recipient by filling in the following form:

Hit that check box and they will give you a snarky message telling you to send snail mail. Does anyone really use a paper and pen anymore?

Then the message will come through with the image in the body. It will also come through with a link to view the image on their website if it did not come through properly.

Personally, I think this is great and hopefully this tool to create a font will remain free and they will add an option to download your font. Any chance of getting that application updated, PilotHandwriting guys?

My life has changed drastically over this time period and now I have the need to sync and share my notes with my significant other as well as have access to updated notes where ever I am. Using a combination of CintaNotes and DropBox, all my expectations have been realized.

I started by downloading this small 890 KB file from here. The application can be installed locally or to a USB drive. That’s right ““ it can be used as a portable app! The trick to getting it to sync using DropBox is to install it to a shared DropBox folder. This way the changes will be written back and forth as my wife or I change or add notes. CintaNotes is made so that the application does not need to be closed to copy or overwrite the data file. This means notes from my wife’s machine will show up as soon as DropBox syncs the folder.

Let’s take a look at how it works. When we first run the application we will see an error message about a configuration file missing. This is normal, click OK and we can begin.

When we first arrive inside the application our note book will be empty like you see in the screen shot above. Now to get data into the application we can either create a new note or select some text and launch our hot key to create a new note out of it.

We will begin with manually creating a new note. We can do this by going to Edit ““> New. That will open up this dialogue box:

You can add your notes in the body of the note and you can also add tags (which are searchable) as well as the link to the data you are referring to. I created a few notes as you can see below, so that I can highlight searching by data in the note, tags or URLs.

Your notes appear in chronological order by default. You can hit the date drop-down menu to change it to sort by another field.

As I start typing, CintaNotes filters out items that do not match my criteria. I started typing in the word second and immediatley CintaNotes showed me the correct note. You can hit Escape to cancel.

Now let’s check out how we can clip items from the web or from other documents. First we need to set up our hot keys which we can get to by going to Options ““> Hot Keys

Now we are on the configure hot keys screen. The hot key that we will want to set up is the first one. It is called the clip text hot key. Highlight the field and hit the key that you want to use to activate your clipping function. You can configure the show main CintaNotes window and add new note hot keys as well.

Try and use key combinations that are not in use by other applications.

Now that my hot key is set (I set mine to Control+F2), I highlighted some text from the CintaNotes website and hit the magic key combination:

And instantly, CintaNotes created a new note with the data I highlighted:

It also used the web page’s title as the note’s title and it threw the URL of the page in the link field at the bottom of the note:

The feature that we loved the most was not really mentioned in the help files or online. If you add the folders of two separate CintaNote installations (or where your data lives) to DropBox on both machines, as soon as a user adds or modifies a note, the changes will automatically be synced! The developers modified the application so you do not need to shut down the application to overwrite your data file or copy it. Very nice work guys!

And if you are looking for other ways to take quick and easy notes, check out this post here.

Using Image Spark we can display these mood boards and freely upload images and move them around. This is great in a meeting on a iPad or other touch screen computer. Users can move the images around creating timelines, banners, posters or whatever else they can imagine.

Click on the register button on the homepage to sign up for free. You will need to give them your email address but in return you will be given a free 1 gigabyte chunk of webspace and 2 mood boards. Go ahead and fill in the information, agree to their terms and we will soon be on our way to uploading our images.

When you first log in you will see a lot of empty space. Image Spark jokes that your library looks pretty bare and they will offer to help you grow it. The way you add images to your webspace is one of three methods.

The three methods that are available are the Firefox plug in, the Mac application and the classic web upload form. I wrote this article on a Windows machine that only had Internet Explorer. So I was forced to use the browser uploader. But if you were using the Firefox plug in you can right click  on any web image and automatically have it uploaded into Image Spark webspace.

If you are using the Mac application you will be able to grab images that you cannot right click on like in Flash animations or while watching a movie. PC users will have to wait for this feature.

So I was stuck using the browser uploader and for the time being that meant uploading one image at a time. I used the form below to fill in some basic information about my image and then I hit the upload button.

Note: If you want to keep your images private and away from the community’s search function you NEED to check the checkbox at the bottom of the form that says: “Make Image Private?”. Failing to do so will result in other users finding and seeing your images.

As the images are uploaded you will see them in your “My Library” section of the site. You have to go back to the image uploader to upload another image. This is a downfall of the browser uploader and hopefully will be resolved with future website upgrades.

Now I clicked on the MyMoodboards tab and this is what I saw:

I clicked to create a mood board and it opened a new window:

and here are a few created by the community:

Use your mood board as inspiration for your next project, a push towards finding direction or in a meeting as a group collaboration tool. We have also covered other group collaboration tools in the past but maybe if they are too much for you then Image Spark is the way to go.

What do you think? Do you know of other similar tools and projects?  If so, let us know in the comments!

This week we will be covering clipboard software.  These applications help us work with or enhance using the Windows clipboard. This clipboard is normally activated by highlighting something and pressing CTRL + C or choosing copy from the right click context menu. We can then paste what we copied elsewhere.

But we also have applications that allow us to add multiple items to the clipboard or strip the formatting of what you are copying. Check the applications out below and if something that you use is not on the list hit us up in the comments.

1. Screen Print & Capture 32
	This application allows you to effortlessly capture the entire screen, a portion of the screen or a user selected area with a single hot key. You can resize, add headers, footers, fade, use multiple file types and you can paste the shot into any other application. For the low price of free.
2. M8 Free Clipboard
	Have you ever had the need to copy multiple items to your clipboard without having Windows replace the last one with the new one? M8 free clipboard allows you to grab up to 25 items and save them to the clipboard to be pasted anytime and anywhere.
3. Copy/Paste Clipboard Extender
	This one is for writers or coders. You can copy multiple TEXT items to multiple clipboards. The application is 100% portable and needs no installation. You can print or paste them but you cannot save them. This is a small application and uses very little memory.
4. PureText
	Have you ever copied a chunk of text to paste into Word only to find that it is accompanied by some strange formatting or other junk? Well PureText can strip all that unsightly garbage and just give you the text. That’s right, the text and nothing but the text.
5. ClipX
	This small application will allow you to tell it how many clipboard items it should remember. Then you can easily access everything that you copied from the left click menu. You can also see other options by right clicking on it. They call it a clipboard history manager.

6. Clipomatic This program assigns different hotkeys so you can paste  items stored in the clipboard cache.
7. Flashpaste Lite Save pieces of text that can easily be accessed by their menu. It is very easy to use.
8. Ditto Open source extension to the built in Windows clipboard. Search and reuse your clips.
9. CLCL Archive all your previous clips and recall them at will.
10. CopyFilenames Copy only filenames and folder names to the clipboard from Explorer.

40% of you responded that you read it every week and it has helped you find cool new free applications.  22% of you said that you read it occasionally and think it should stay. Then 20% said that you never read it. 13% said that it sucks and you hate it.

You can see the full list below and we are waiting to hear back on if the feature will be killed off or not.

This weeks poll is how big is your USB memory stick? Almost everyone I know carries around a memory stick in their pocket, bag and some of them keep them around their necks.

Up until recently I had a 1GB memory stick crammed with all sorts of wonderful portable goodness into it. But I never had room for the documents, music or other stuff that I wanted to carry with me. So now I have dropped $14 on a 16GB memory stick and $11 for a 8GB memory stick for my Wii. Now I carry around this 16GB stick which fits on all my portable applications as well as all my documents and files that I might need.

So we are wondering ““ if you carry a USB memory stick with you ““ how big is it? Let us know below and as always drop a comment to let us know what you carry on your stick.

The terminology used below is the same for PCs and Macs and for desktops and laptops. If you have any doubts about the machine you are buying ““ don’t buy it! Go and do some research online to see if you can do better. We actually have a couple of desktop and laptop recommendations, check then out if you’re in doubt.

When you are looking to buy a computer you will hear basic computer terms like the following:

The Processor

This is the brain of your computer. It can also be referred to as the CPU. Processors come in many different varieties. Processor speed is measured in gigahertz or GHZ. The larger the number of GHZ the faster the computer.

I am now using a 3.2 GHZ Pentium Dual Core. Processors can also have dual or quad cores. This is essentially two or four processors in one respectively. The more cores the better but they will also be more expensive. We will also see terms like Core Duo, Core 2 Duo, i3, i5, and i7. It is important to know the differences between these options.

The Core Duo consists of two cores on one die but the Core 2 Duo is a more modern processor that is found in a lot of new PCs. the Core 2 Duo has two dies. Then the i3 processor is a recent release by Intel for new low end machines. Then the i5 and i7 are used with quad core processors and higher end machines. The i7 is the top of this line and obviously the most expensive.

There are different brands of processors like Intel or AMD and different levels of processors like the Pentium 4 or the Atom. The Atom processor is a much slower processor used in netbooks. Also when looking for a system you will see terms like front side bus . This is not a big yellow bus but it is the speed that data can flow from the processor to the motherboard. The higher the FSB the faster the processor can communicate with your machine. Something in the area of 266 MHz-333 MHz is fine and some faster processors sport up to 400 MHz FSB.

The RAM

The RAM or memory is what your computer uses to store information while you are using the computer. This can also be referred to as Random Access Memory. I personally would not buy a computer with less than 2 GB of RAM. Your RAM Bus speed will need to be identical to your FSB speed as to not create bottlenecks. In a pre-built system this is not something you need to worry about but if you are building your own system then you will want to get memory that matches the FSB speed divided by the number of cores that you have. For example if your system has a total FSB of 1600 and you have 4 cores (quad) then your RAM Bus speed should be 400 MHz.

Optical Drive

The optical drive in your computer should be able to read and write CDs and DVDs. If you have not purchased a computer in a while some of the newer options might seem strange to you. You can have any one of these or a combination of these formats: DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-+R, DVD-/+RW, DVD-RAM, Blu-ray, HD-DVD. A CD holds 700 MB. A CD-R can read and write to a CD. A CDRW can read write and rewrite to a CD.

If you are getting a DVD burner you should try and get a drive that writes in all formats such as +R or -R. They will all play in your computer but some other hardware might require one of these formats. A DVD can hold About 4 GB of data. A DVD burner that allows you to burn a DL or dual layer will allow for double the capacity and can fit about 8 GB of data on it. A dual layer drive is required as well as dual layered media.

Then we see the newer formats like Blu-Ray and HD-DVD that allow you to burn and watch high definition videos or store even more data. A Blu-Ray disk can hold a whopping 25 GB in a single layer and 50 GB if the disk is dual layered. HD-DVD disks can hold up to 15 GB of data but I really do not see many systems or people using this format.

Wireless Network Card

If your computer has a wireless card you will be able to access the Internet without a wire connecting you to a router/modem. Wireless cards are rated by their speed.

The lowest speed starts from A and goes up through N. You will want to buy a computer with a 802.11G or 802.11N wireless connection. 802.11g can see speeds of up to 54 Mbit/s. And with 802.11n the newest iteration of wireless we can achieve 600 Mbit/s. I am using a 802.11n router personally but most of my equipment and peripherals use 802.11g. I find this to be fine for streaming video or audio and transferring files over my home network. But if you are constantly transferring huge files or folders you might want to jump right into the 802.11n game.

Network Card

Your computer should have an Ethernet port on it. This port will allow you to physically connect to the internet or your internal network by plugging it into your router / modem.

Normally any machine you will buy now has a Gigabit connection. Gigabit is represented as 100/1000 and there are also 10/100 connections. That number is how many megabits you can transfer per second.

Operating System

This is the software that makes your computer go. You can buy a computer with the Mac OS X operating system or Windows 7 or any flavor of Ubuntu Linux as well.

You can also buy a computer without an operating system to install it yourself. This is the key part of your system as well as normally the most expensive. But, if you choose Ubuntu or another flavor of Linux then your operating system is free.

Hard Drive

This is where you will store all your files whether it be music, movies or word documents. You will need a hard drive to store them on.

Hard drives are rated by size and speed. A typical new computer will come with a 7200 RPM SATA 100GB drive. This will hold approximately 28,560 digital photos or up to 25,000 songs (MP3).

If you need more space you should get a bigger drive or you can buy a portable USB hard drive to attach to your computer.

Video Card

This is the part of your computer that allows you to show what you are doing. Without a video card you would not be able to see what you are doing on your monitor.

Different video cards have different abilities like the option to use multiple monitors, have a HDMI output or even the ability to watch HD movies on your computer. This has never been important to me and I always take whatever is available. Some examples of good video card brands are MSI, XFX, Asus, Gigabyte (thanks JLT!).

Your video card does have to connect to your monitor so make sure they have a VGA, DVI or HDMI port in common.

There are also computer components like the monitor, keyboard and mouse but we’re pretty sure that you’re familiar with those basic computer terms.

Now, you have a basic knowledge of what you are looking for start shopping around. The best deals are found online and it is a fact that a PC is much cheaper than a Mac unless you are building a Hackintosh! You could also build your own PC if you are feeling confident enough.

** UPDATE 01 July 2010 ** Based on reader comments, we have updated and reworded some of the article.