These days the internet has transformed itself into a large source of media content (apart from other things), be it video, audio or images. However with so many media formats, it often becomes necessary to be able to convert from one type to the other.
FormatFactory is one such tool that can assist you in most of your media conversion needs.
FormatFactory is a multifunctional media converter that supports:
Audio Conversion:
From all formats to MP3/WMA/MMF/AMR/OGG/M4A/WAV.
Back in January I treated myself to a new laptop, a mobile workstation. Compared to my old laptop, the new machine was operating at the speed of light. However, with all the software that came and went over the months, and despite regular system maintenance, some minor but annoying bugs had crept in along with the performance slowly declining. At some point reinstalling your machine simply is inevitable. Although my system was not at that point yet, I decided it was time to clear the battlefield last weekend.
Slow, cluttered up, lots of dangling shortcuts, invalid registry entries, long startup times, these are all common problems for Windows users. Keeping track of everything and performing maintenance tasks can get cumbersome sometimes but not if you use “Glary Utilities”.
Glary Utilities presents you with a bundle of tools to take care of these common problems and makes system maintenance a breeze! It’s an approx 6MB file which you can download from here. Install and fire it up and you get a host of utilities that help you take care of the most common problems.
Macs, like Windows machines, will eventually bog down after a while. The major problem on Windows is disk fragmentation — in layman’s terms, that’s when bits and pieces of your files are scattered all over your hard disk so your operating system has to work harder to find them. Mac OS X runs on a different file system (HFS, as opposed to Window’s NTFS) that automatically defragments and optimizes itself. So if you’re a Mac user, chances are you would never need to defragment your hard disk, thanks to Apple. However fragmentation is only one of the many problems we face regarding system optimization.
Microsoft is offering their users a piece of free magic software, called SteadyState. We have all been there late at night and our virtual guard is down. Maybe you hopped on an unsecured network and decided to browse some hardcore porn sites bit torrent trackers um er let’s just say some not so reputable sites. Either way you have exposed your machine to a potentially bad neighborhood and if your protection on your machine isn’t up to snuff then who knows what could have happened already!
What is your nastiest experience with viruses and/or other malware? The other day just before presentations my friend came to me with his laptop and showed me the havoc that had reigned on it! He had burnt some discs for others, using data from their USB drive and in the process got infected. Now he was unable to run Powerpoint, nor was he able to scan with the anti-virus as it won’t start a scan due to the infections (see the irony). Just the splash screens and boom - nothing seemed to run.
So how many coasters do you have that started life as critical backup CD/DVD’s? Or the CD/DVD’s that you entrusted to store a lifetime of photo memories? Well if you’re like most of us, you may have more than one.
As a long term file storage medium, CD/DVD’s are, in effect, all-purpose, durable and generally inexpensive. The difficulty in relying on this storage medium however is they aren’t always as reliable as we sometimes seem to think.
| Several times I’ve been called upon at a moment’s notice to troubleshoot a misbehaving PC system either at work or at a friend’s or relative’s home. Being the “go to” guy for these sorts of problems is both a curse and a blessing, but I guess that is besides the point.
One tool that I have found to be valuable beyond compare is the Ultimate Boot CD (UBCD). This compilation of software has just about everything you need to diagnose hard to find low level problems, and also some other tools that every PC technician should have available. |
Have you ever received an error message when trying to open a Microsoft Word document? Was it an important file for work or school? Whatever the case may be, it is very frustrating to not be able to open a file for no reason. However, this post will show you how to repair such files for FREE!
Repair MyWord is a free program that will recover corrupt Microsoft Word files. It will recover Microsoft Word 6.0, Word 95, 97, 2000, XP, and 2003 files. Repair MyWord is an small executable file that requires no installation, which makes it a great utility to keep on a flash drive. Repair MyWord is available for nearly all versions of Windows. It has also been tested in Linux using Wine.
Last time, I wrote about Live CDs and how you can make your own custom one. Live CDs are great, but let’s face it, sometimes even a CD is just too big to carry around. You male geeks probably have no idea what I’m talking about, but the other ladies can testify that the pockets on our clothes are just too small to carry around anything bigger than a small cell phone. CDs also have the magic ability to go from pristine to horribly scratched about 5 minutes before you need them and, since they’re CDs, don’t save changes.
While going through most popular software stats on Download.com, I decided to pull out top 10 most downloaded FREE security AND Windows optimization programs. Not surprisingly, I ended up with 10 excellent FREE programs. Check them out below, most of them seem to be really good. (Note: Program popularity was measured by the total number of downloads during the last week)
TOP 5: Free Security Programs (Antivirus, Spyware Removal, etc.)
(1) AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition Memory-friendly free antivirus program that comes with lifetime free access to virus definition updates. Highlights include automatic update, real-time protection, free virus database updates, and some more. With nearly 1 mil. downloads (926,832) last week alone, this gotta be a good tool.
On October25′th I have written about Microsoft Powertoys a free software package for Win XP users. Package included ClearType Tuner on which I shortly commented following:
ClearType Tuner: by using ClearType technology this tool can make it easier to read text on your screen. I installed it and the difference in the quality of text is remarkable. For now I am quite satisfied with it, but I wonder how will I feel about it in a week, will keep you updated on it.
Trend Micro HouseCall is a free online virus and spyware SCAN and REMOVAL tool. In case you do not have any spyware removal software installed on your system this can be a good alternative. Once in a while, I get spyware that goes undected (or detected but failed to be removed) through my current Anti-Spyware programs, usually when this happens TrendMicro does a good job at removing it.
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