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Introduction
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| In these days of MP3 libraries and vast collections of digital images, many of us have faced the necessity of renaming our files for organizational purposes. If you’ve come here looking for a solution we have some good news. There are great (and free!) programs to suit your needs.
There are many different methods to achieve the desired result, from laboriously renaming files one at a time using Windows Explorer, to bulk renaming utilities that can pull out metadata or execute powerful Perl based regular expressions. Some programs focus on simplicity and others are designed for power users. Most of the renamers support a basic set of features such as crop, insert, remove, replace, case changes, and auto number. And some renamers have more powerful features that others don’t. Because the programs reviewed here are designed for different purposes, there isn’t a renamer that is vastly better overall but there is a renamer that is best for certain situations. These differences make it easy to find which file rename utility is right for you. |
Don’t let a one-time project derail your career. IT consultant Robert A. Ryan shares tips on how to successfully manage a “once-in-a-career” event.
The CIO informs you that you’ve been selected to lead a special project that will impact your IT organization. When the CIO reveals the focus of the special project, you realize that you have no knowledge or experience related to the project. Everyone is watching, and many of your colleagues are not on board with the new direction that your project will take your IT organization. To avoid derailing your career, here are five ways to tackle the project.
Windows Server 2008 R2 offers numerous improvements that should make life easier for a lot of admins. Brien Posey runs down the key features.
Windows Server 2008 R2 brings some powerful tools and features that may be good news for your budget, your service levels, and the flexibility of your IT department. Here are some of the most significant changes and enhancements.
1: Better support for the latest server hardware
Windows Server 2008 R2 is the first version of Windows Server to completely abandon the 32-bit architecture. Along with the move to a 64-bit only architecture, Microsoft has designed Windows Server 2008 R2 to support up to 256 logical processors. Similarly, Microsoft has redesigned Hyper-V so that it can support up to 32 logical processors. The original version of Hyper-V was limited to using 16 logical processors.
Windows Server 2008 R2 has also been designed to manage memory better than its predecessor did. Microsoft has accomplished this by providing support for the enhanced page tables features found in the latest processors. Specifically, this means that Windows now supports Second Level Translation (AMD) and Nested Page Tables (Intel).
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Introduction
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| Hello and welcome to Best Free Music Creation Software. First off, I’m not a tech wizard, I’m just a musician who loves music, guitars and cool technology. I could not tell you what a LumiBatch Object is, nor could I tell you what ST transform and Quantile normalization means, but I can tell you about good freeware to make music with and hey, that’s what matters right? Anyway, what I’m going to do is tell you about three applications that I’ve found and tested and I’m going to review them in terms of: Ease of use, Functionality and Overall Performance, and I will do it in plain English. Each application in this section must be “pick up and playable” without the user needing to install third party hardware drivers or use extra external hardware. These apps (except Jackbeat) do provide a full MIDI working environment, but that’s a different topic. |
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Introduction
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| All of the PDF writers in this review are programs that function by creating a pseudo printer on your system. When you want to create a PDF document from pretty much any application you just choose to print it to the PDF printer and it creates a PDF document. The thing that distinguishes one product from another is the number of options and flexibility available. The one problem with this approach is that you need to have a program that will open the file on your system. If someone sends you a file created with a program you do not have and you can’t open the file then you can’t print it and if you can’t print it then you can’t convert it to a pdf using a pseudo printer technique. The two online products do not suffer from this problem but are limited only by the file formats recognized by the online vendor.
After eliminating those PDF Writers suggested by readers that were not free, were limited time trials, and basically adware (the product was free but forced the user to endure various ads as a punishment for using it), there were only six candidates left. These were (alphabetically) Bullzip PDF Writer, CutePDF, doPDF, PDFCreator, PrimoPDF, and TinyPDF. Which one of these is best? That really depends on the options you need. |
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Introduction
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| This section is dedicated to software specifically targeting Windows Vista. These are mainly tools and utilities offering ways to make life with Vista easier, more effective or are providing extended possibilities for individual customization. Considering the variety of functionalities I am not trying to compare or rank them here but will offer a selection of what I found useful and valuable. |
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Discussion
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 Vista Sidebar – With Windows Vista Microsoft introduced the Windows Sidebar. Even though I did not like it at first, after investing some time in configuring it and even develop some of my own Gadgets I wouldn’t want to live without it anymore. The Windows Sidebar is a metering and info platform, similar to Sysmetrix or Rainlendar. It displays a wide variety of information through so-called Gadgets. You can add, remove and arrange such Gadgets to your liking. Some basic Gadgets come with the Sidebar but there are hundreds more out there from many different authors. I found it worthwhile to browse through the immense collection that Microsoft is providing to the Sidebar users (see Download link). And if you are not too unfamiliar with XML, HTML and some image work you can easily modify each Gadget to your liking or create your own. You will find documenation about that there as well. All Gadgets are free. The downside of the Sidebar, more precisely each Gadget, is its footprint in your memory. If you have enough of the latter you probably don’t have to worry about that but it is useful to check when adding a new Gadget how much space it eats up. The Vista Sidebar works just as well with 64 bit Vista as it does with the 32 bit version.
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Introduction
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Network analysis tools enable diagnosis of problems or allow exploration of all hardware on a computer network. They generally fall into three categories :
Packet analyzers allow capture and display of individual messages being processed by your computers network card. Port scanners are designed to probe other computers or network devices on a network and report interesting information. Hardware scanners investigate what is on the network and report back what it finds. The key difference between what a port scanner does versus a hardware scanner is the area it is scanning. Port scanners only focus on ports that are open and they sometimes attempt to see what is listening to that port on that device. Hardware scanners on the other hand are more intelligent and look at the bigger picture of what the purpose of that device is and how it is interacting on the network. All of these tools are invaluable for those wanting to learn about networking or just want to investigate what is on their network and what each device is doing. |
Linux, occasionally referred to as GNU/Linux, is an open source and free operating system predominantly known for its use in servers, but has increasingly become commonplace in the desktop, notebook and netbook computers in recent years after newer and enhanced versions of Linux distributions, Ubuntu for example, are developed and offered free to users.
While you can get the Linux system and use it for free, you can also run on the system a wide range of free applications such as well-known and commonly-used software including Firefox web browser and the OpenOffice application suite.
Among various free applications, here you might find the best free software for Linux, including those products reviewed and recommended by our editors in the various sections.
Other programs that work as potential alternatives to Windows applications or even perform better than them are also listed here for the benefits of users who migrate from Windows to Linux or run dual systems on their computers.
more…
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Introduction
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| Whether or not you do a full system backup, it’s a good idea to backup your windows drivers. It provides an easy way to protect you when testing new drivers and recovering if a driver is mistakenly deleted or corrupted.You can also improve performance by removing outdated or conflicting drivers and you can restore them if it turns out they were needed. It is suggested that before backing up it’s a good idea to use Windows Device Manager to check that all your drivers are working properly. |
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Discussion
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 There are a number of free solutions. My favorite is DriverMax. It has a nice clear GUI, lets you backup, restore, generate reports that include if there is a newer version available and even gives you the option of storing your backup in a zip file.
Recently updated to support Vista, they are working on updates that will allow you to quickly find updates for your drivers. Note it does require free registration to get full access to all of its features. |
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Introduction
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| Remote Access Software (RAS) allows a user to remotely administer another computer through a GUI (Graphical User Interface). RAS software usually falls into three categories: attended (someone must be present on the remote machine), unattended, and self-hosted RPC proxy servers (middleware for accessing firewall-protected networks). In this review, we are interested in the first and second categories. |
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Discussion
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| RAS software usually works by installing a program to act as a server on the host (remote) machine, and then running a client application on your local machine to handle the connection, authentication, and any encryption to the remote PC. One of the original RAS programs was AT&T’s “VNC” and many of the programs available today are derivations of that. more… |