Ten Utilities You May Need

Utility applications are typically single-purpose programs that are designed to perform a task that the operating system doesn't do or doesn't do well. Whenever I set up a new computer, I install some utilities right away because I know that I'll need them. In some cases, these are specific applications and, in others, there are choices to be made within a given type of application.

My list doesn't include antivirus programs, backup programs, or other similar applications because these are no longer optional. If you operate a computer without protection and without backup, you will regret that decision someday. So I assume that you have those in place but sometimes you wish that the computer could do something it doesn't do.

The good news is that somebody else has probably already thought of it and has probably created a utility to perform the task. In many cases, utilities are offered for free; other times, they're free but donations are requested; and still others are distributed as shareware that you need to pay for after 15 or 30 days.

1. Windows Explorer Replacement: Q-Dir & Nexus File

The Windows Explorer really isn't very good and it never has been. Copying files from one directory to another is harder than it should be because Windows Explorer has only a single column of files. Starting with Windows 7, it's possible to open 2 instances of Explorer and make each fill half of the screen but at best that's a workaround.

Nexus File and Q-Dir both provide at least 2 simultaneous directories (Q-Dir can display up to 4!) so copying or moving files is easy.

I thought that I'd found the perfect replacement last year with Nexus File, but a recent accidental discovery led me to Q-Dir.

The first thing you'll see when you open Nexus File is that there's a lot of information to see!

You'll find icons in the upper left corner for common locations such as Desktop, Documents, Pictures, Music, Videos, and Favorites. These will take you to the Windows defaults unless you change them. That's right: You can change them. I have Pictures take me to the "DIGITAL CAMERAS" directory on drive D, for example. And Music takes me to "F:\Itunes_WFB\iTunes Media\Music".

Another key feature is the list of all drives on the system and an indication of how much space remains on the drive. This is visible regardless of which drives or directories you have selected in either the right or left panel.

The left and right panels make it easy to drag and drop files from one location to another. The inability to do this is one of the major shortcomings on the Windows Explorer.

Selecting a different disk drive for either the right or left panel is as easy as clicking the icon in the upper left corner of each panel and selecting the drive from the drop-down list. From there, you can easily drill down to any directory.

Q-Dir has been around for a while (since 2006) and somehow I managed to avoid finding it until 2013. Better late than never. Q-Dir comes with what appears to be a well earned caution: "WARNING: Once Q-Dir, always Q-Dir."

And indeed that seems to be the case. I thought Nexus File had a lot of options but Q-Dir goes far beyond.

For example, you can set up many "favorites". I have one favorite that shows 4 directories that I often use together. Another favorite that shows website development directories from drive D on the left and website production directories from drive E on the right. You can choose the colors that Q-Dir uses for different kinds of files.

And this is a free program, although the author does offer an option to make a donation.

Links for NEXUS and Q-DIR.

2. Keeping Time: DS Clock, Focus Booster, & Countdown Timer

You can display the current time in the Windows Notification Area (or Tray). It shows only hours and minutes unless you expand the Task Bar to be more than a single layer deep. With a taller Task Bar, Windows will also display the name of the day and the date but still no seconds.

The Windows display with a 1-line Task Bar.

The Windows display with a multi-line Task Bar.

The free DS Clock, which Duality Software uses to promote its other applications, displays time and date information the way you want it. I prefer the 24-hour format and, in addition to the local time, I like to keep an eye on Greenwich Mean Time (or, depending on your frame of reference, Zulu or UTC)—the time zone that's used as a reference for all other time zones.

Because I have a second monitor, I stick the DS Clock readout in the upper left corner of the second monitor, where it's easy to see but out of the way. You can choose whether the display is transparent or enclosed in an opaque box, the color of the display, and the size and typeface used. DS Clock can automatically synchronize with a time service such as the National Institute of Technology and Standards (NIST); this functionality is also built in to more recent versions of Windows, so you'll probably want just one or the other to be responsible.

There's also a sound option: DS Clock can play a rendition of Westminster Chimes (or, if you prefer, Cambridge Chimes) every quarter hour. This is the first thing I turn off.

In addition to knowing what time it is, some of us find it helpful to know how long we have to complete something. Here's an idea: When a boring or unpleasant task is at hand, give yourself a set period of time during which you'll concentrate entirely on that specific task. Set a timer so that you'll know how much time remains.

This is a psychological trick but it works. When working against the clock, most people concentrate on getting the job done. The period has to be relatively short, though—15 to 30 minutes. You won't finish your tax return in 30 minutes but concentrating on the task for 30 minutes will move things along much further than if you just tinker with the process for an hour or two.

You could buy a kitchen timer to accomplish this or use a free utility such as Focus Booster or Countdown Timer.

Countdown Timer

There's not much to this little application, which is neither good nor bad. After all, how many bells and whistles does a timer need? Set it to sound an alarm after any number of minutes and click the start button.

You can specify the type of alarm, minimize it to the Tray, and change various other settings. If you don't like any of the default alarm sounds, you can add your own; or, if you don't want any sounds (maybe you're using it in the office), specify a pop-up message instead.

Focus Booster

Focus Booster has more features and a more attractive interface. It's also built using Adobe AIR, which is what's responsible for the better look and feel.

Focus Booster is a bit more formal and the default uses what's called the Pomodoro Method that sets 25-minute work segments with 5-minute breaks. The result is that you're encouraged to take a brief break twice an hour and supporters say that this improves both alertness and focus.

During the work part of the session, you'll see a progress bar that begins as green, transitions to yellow, and becomes red near the end of the period. When you're supposed to start your break, Focus Booster sounds an alarm and begins the break countdown. At the end of the break, another work session begins.

I used this at the office when I needed to remember to get up and walk around to exercise a stiff and painful knee. After using it for that, I've started using it as a reminder not to sit in place for hours at a time.

This is one you should try!

Oh ... by the way, pomodoro is Italian for tomato. Why is the technique called "tomato"? Apparently the guy who invented the method once owned a kitchen timer that looked like a tomato.

Links for DS CLOCK, SNAP TIMER, and FOCUS BOOSTER

3. Portable Connection Protection: Hotspot Shield VPN

You know that you shouldn't use one of those public Wi-Fi spots in a coffee shop or airport for connections to important sites but what can you do? Cross your fingers and hope for the best? There's a better way.

The dangers are obvious. Crooks sitting nearby may be watching everything you send or receive. They might even insert themselves between you and the Wi-Fi hotspot so that they can grab user names and passwords.

Instead of just hoping for the best, install the free Hotspot Shield (making sure that you decline all additional tool bars offered) and all communications from your computer will be encrypted.

The free version, which is all that a casual user of public Wi-Fi hotspots needs, does serve a certain amount of advertising. So if you spend a lot of time on the road, you might want to pay $30 for the paid version.

Link for HOTSPOT SHIELD

4. Boot Improver: Startup Delayer

At boot time, Windows starts a lot of processes and services and some of the applications you've installed might start additional processes that run in the tray or simply exist quietly in the background. Each of these takes a certain amount of time to start. And, when Windows tries to start them all simultaneously, there's a considerable amount of contention between the various processes and, as a result, the boot process quickly becomes disk bound.

Because of the uncommonly large number of applications that I prefer to have running, the computer could be all but unusable for 15 minutes or more. Two options exist for correcting this problem: Add yet another startup process (Startup Delayer) or install a solid-state disk drive (SSD) as the computer's boot device.

Installing an SSD will speed the process so much that Startup Delayer probably won't be necessary. I expected a faster boot process but I expected that I would still need Startup Delayer. That has not proved to be the case.

The older, slower office computer has a standard disk drive, less memory, and it's a 32-bit system instead of a 64-bit system so Startup Delayer is still a requirement there.

You can specify which programs start and when the start. Delay times can be set to a few seconds, several minutes, or more than an hour.

Link for STARTUP DELAYER

5. Text Editor: UltraEdit & Notepad ++

If you write code of any sort, you need a text editor. Applications such as Adobe Dreamweaver include a code view but you may want more features than code view offers. Maybe the ability to have multiple documents open simultaneously. Perhaps the ability to create your own macros or scripts that work within the text editor. Or maybe you just want to use the same application to work with text regardless of what you're working on.

UltraEdit and UltraEditStudio, which includes some additional power-user features, are available from IDM and neither is free. Both are available as shareware and both may be installed on "all" of the computers you own as long as only one instance is running at any given time. (I placed "all" in quotation marks because the default limit is 2 computers and IDM begins to push back if you ask for permission to install on more than about 5 computers. Still, that's enough for most people.)

The typeface shown here isn't UltraEditStudio's default but it is one that I feel makes text somewhat more readable. Users can choose whatever monospace typeface they prefer.

Notepad++ is a free alternative to UltraEdit or UltraEditStudio and it offers many of the powerful features that IDM does with its applications. J-Edit is another good choice that's free. Because J-Edit is written in Java, it runs equally well on Windows, Apple, Linux, or Unix computers.

Links for ULTRAEDIT, NOTEPAD ++, and J-EDIT

6. Decompression Time: 7Zip

Compressed files are everywhere and, although later versions of Windows can treat zip files much like a directory, it's still better to have a zip utility installed and 7Zip is the best.

As the name implies, 7Zip has its own (7Z) proprietary format, which offers tighter compression and better security than standard zip files. But because you can't count on most people to have 7Zip, sticking with the standard zip format is wise when you create compressed files.

7Zip can handle any compressed files, including docx (yes, Microsoft office files are really just zip archives). The utility can create and extract files from 7z, xz, bzip2, gzip, tar, zip, and wim archives and it can also be used to extract files from arj, cab, chm, cpio, CramFS, deb, dmg, fat, hfs, iso, lzh, lzma, mbr, msi, nsis, ntfs, rar, rpm, SquashFS, udf, vhd, wim, xar, and z archives.

Although compression ratios depend on the type data being compressed, 7-Zip compresses to 7z format 30-70% better than to zip format and, even if you stick with the standard zip format, 7Zip will provide slightly better compression—around 2% to 10%.

Link for 7-ZIP

7. Getting Graphic: JR Ruler & Irfan View or FastStone

An on-screen ruler is admittedly something that not too many people need but just about everyone needs an image viewer. The image viewer that's included with Windows isn't very exciting.

ThumbsPlus (described last week) is flexible and powerful, but it may also be too much for those who need only to click an occasional image and have it appear on screen. For that, either IrfanView or FastStone would be an excellent choice.

IrfanView

IrfanView is more than just a viewer. It also has support for scanners (using TWAIN), it can create slide shows and take screen shots. It will even play music and video files.

And it's free.

IrfanView can resize, convert formats, crop, and flip images. Although it's not Photoshop, there are functions to correct color, remove red-eye, sharpen images, and even create "negatives". IrfanView can open in what I consider to be "single-view" mode, in which you select an image file to view it, and "thumbnails-view", in which you see a screen of smaller images and select one to open in IrfanView.

If you choose IrfanView, be sure to download both the installation file and the plug-ins installation file.

FastStone

FastStone is also more than just a viewer. As with IrfanView, it includes a variety of basic editing functions. Unlike IrfanView, it always starts in thumbnail-view mode.

The applications provides for rotating, resizing, and adding text to images. You can adjust colors and add some effects filters. And, of course, there's slideshow option.

JR Ruler

If you're a website designer, an on-screen ruler is nearly indispensable. Otherwise, unless you're curious about the dimensions of objects on a website, it's probably of little interest to you.

Links for IRFANVIEW, FASTSTONE, and JR RULER

8. Be Where You're Not: LogMeIn

LogMeIn provides a variety of applications that make it possible to provide support as well as to log on to your own computer from a remote location. There's even a free version.

The free version of LogMeIn is all that most people need but a pro version ($200 per year for access to 5 computers) provides more features that frequent users might want. Let's say that you intended to bring a file home from the office so that you could work on it over the weekend. You get up Saturday morning, turn on the computer, and realize that you didn't bring the file home. What now? Drive back to the office?

Not if your company allows the use of LogMeIn. Not all companies do, by the way. But if yours does, all you need to do is connect to the LogMeIn website, log on, select your office computer, and log on to it.

Depending on the browser you're using, LogMeIn may need to install a plug-in that serves to operate the emulator that displays your office computer's screen on your home PC.

LogMeIn Free includes 256-bit SSL encryption and requires 2 passwords—one when you log on to the LogMeIn site and the other when you log on to the remote PC.

If you have a relatively slow Internet connection, you can drop the image quality back to improve performance as I've done here. A further reduction would change the desktop image to monochrome.

What's missing in the free version? The ability to transfer files, for one. So how does the little scenario I've set up work in that case? While you're logged on to the office PC, you could just mail the file to your home address or, if you have an FTP client (see Filezilla, below), place the file on your company's external FTP server.

On the other hand, if you have a fast Internet connection, you can choose maximum quality for better readability.

LogMeIn's control panel is where you go to add or change settings for each computer.

Link for LOGMEIN

9. Close Stuck Files: Unlocker

"Cannot delete file: Access is denied." Ever see that? How about "File is in use by another process"? All you want to do is delete a file that you no longer need, but you can't. You try closing every application and still you can't delete the file. Finally, you reboot the computer. Then you can delete the file. It doesn't have to be this way.

Sometimes a file lock remains even after an application has released the file. In other cases, there may be a legitimate need to delete a file even though it is still in use by an application. When Unlocker is running, you can delete stuck files without having to restart the computer.

When Unlocker is running, it's one of the options you'll see when you right-click a file.

Select Unlocker and you'll see which program has locked it. In this case, it's Microsoft Word. I'm being offered options to delete, rename, move, or copy the file. Once you select an action, you specify whether you want to terminate the process that has locked the file or just to unlock the file.

And Unlocker takes care of it.

Link for UNLOCKER

10. Move Files from Here to There or Vice Versa: Filezilla

File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is one of the most under-used protocols on the Internet. It's true that any modern Web browser can handle FTP for file downloads but Filezilla is handy if you need to make a large file available for someone to pick up.

For example, I needed to provide an audio file for a friend in Cleveland this week. The audio file was short but it had been recorded for maximum fidelity so it was also nearly 30MB large. My friend uses AOL and I knew that I couldn't send her a file that large. Even compressed, it would have been a large file.

So I used FTP to create a directory on my website, uploaded the file with Filezilla, and sent her a link that she could use with her browser to download it. Yes, I could have used a service such as YouSendIt, but why?

An FTP client is a necessity for anyone who performs any website development tasks, but it's a good tool to have around even if you don't.

Link for FILEZILLA

Are Tablets Catching On?

Microsoft seems to have released its tablet computers in exactly the wrong order. First came the underpowered Surface RT that looks like it's running a standard version of Windows 8 but cannot run standard desktop applications. Now the company has released the Surface Windows 8 Pro. This is the one that should have been released first.

The RT version isn't usable in a business setting and really has little appeal for most people because of its severe limitations. Manufacturers other than Microsoft have already released tablet computers that run the full standard version of Windows. After a slightly rough start with my Acer Iconia, the new-hardware issues have been resolved and I spend several hours with the tablet every day.

The time spent with the tablet usually includes reading a book with the Amazon Kindle application, reading the New York Times using Firefox, responding to e-mail messages when the answer is short enough to be dealt with using the on-screen keyboard, reading Newsweek with the Barnes and Noble Nook reader (which is now almost usable), and even watching a French movie with subtitles.

The Surface Pro will have similar capabilities. The model shown at the right has an optional Type Cover. The Pro became available for purchase on 9 Feb. The Surface Pro starts at $900 ($899 according to Microsoft). It is available in 64 GB and 128 GB versions and includes the Surface Pen.

Because Microsoft's release of the Pro version was so late, it is behind the pack of other Windows tablets, which are overall behind Apple's Ipads. But Microsoft has played catch-up before. Microsoft still largely owns the desktop and notebook market and Microsoft is betting on the desire by people who use those kinds of machines to have a tablet that runs the applications they're used to.

That would be a Windows tablet, whether from Microsoft or Lenovo or Acer or Dell or any of the other manufacturers.

I have not said, and have no intention of saying, that a tablet computer will replace desktop or notebook computers. Tablets have big advantages in portability and in making it easy to view data (along with words and pictures) while on the go. They have limitations when it comes to processes that require the use of a keyboard or large amounts of data storage.

As much as I like the tablet, and I like it a lot, you'll still find two notebook computers at the office (in addition to a desktop system) and at home you'll see a notebook and a desktop computer coexisting quite nicely with the Acer tablet and with a now less-used Android tablet.

Relatively speaking, full tablets are thick and heavy. Tablets that includes a keyboard (making them essentially a transformable notebook) are thicker and heavier still. But the screen is huge, at least by the standards of hand-held devices, and much of the weight comes from the Gorilla Glass that's used for the screen.

The Microsoft Surface Pro includes some hardware that other manufacturers don't provide: A digital pen, for example. Those who have seen this in operation say that the pen works exceedingly well.

How Powerful Are These Tablet Computers?

You might be surprised. The Acer Iconia that I bought is a 64-bit system with 4GB of RAM. This compares favorably with my notebook computer and nearly equals it in performance.

Notice how close the tablet is in performance to a full-featured laptop. The laptop has 50% more RAM than the tablet and wins there but both devices are nearly equal on most of the other measures. The tablet, however, soundly defeats the notebook on disk performance because it has a solid-state drive.

Tablets aren't for everyone and they're certainly not suitable for every task. But they are exactly the right tool for some jobs.

Short Circuits

Sales Results: It Was a Very Merry Christmas for Apple

If you consider the Ipad to be a computer, Apple won the holiday shopping season hands down. If you think of tablets such as the Ipad as computing devices but not full computers, then the story is mixed.

If you include tablets, worldwide PC shipments were up 12% in the final quarter of 2012 compared to the same period last year and Apple led with just under 23 million Ipads sold along with 4 million computers. Apple is the only manufacturer of Apple products while PCs are made by several large companies, hundreds of medium-size companies, and thousands of small operations. Some people even build their own from parts.

So it's still a Windows-based market. Lenovo alone shipped nearly 15 million computers in the 4th quarter.

The study was released by Canalys Channels Forum, a market analysis company and the results seem to indicate that increasingly people are embracing tablets for some tasks.

Dell Stock Owner Tries to Halt the Leveraged Buyout

You've no doubt already heard about the plan by Michael Dell, Microsoft, and the investment firm Silver Lake to take Dell's computer company private for $24.4 billion. But a stockholder has filed a lawsuit to stop the deal.

Filed on Wednesday, the lawsuit charges that the Dell's leaders aren't trying to save the company but to save the company's cash for themselves and to acquire ownership for far less than the company is worth. The price set for the buyout is $13.65 per share.

In announcing plans for the LBO, Dell's board provided a 45-day period during which other prospective buyers may submit bids.

Big Fraud Day

I seem to have hit the jackpot one day this week when every fraudster in the known world decided to send a spam for my close attention. The level of quality varies remarkably as you'll see from the following images.

ADP is a large company that writes a lot of payroll checks for tens of thousands of businesses all around the world. ADP does not send messages such as this one so I simply ignored it.

The FFIEC is the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council. I'm reasonably certain that they don't send messages such as this one.

Besides that, it's clearly not a subpoena.

"Click on this link please" the message says. It's not from anyone I know. Why would any sane person click on such a link?

At first glance, I thought this was one of those Russian porn messages but then I looked a little closer. Instead it's a classic Nigerian scam with a new face.

A "merchant" claims to be offering me a loan. Anyone who bites will probably be asked for just enough information that the spammer can extract funds from the victim's bank account.

No, thanks.

Here's one from a spam fraudster who resides near the very bottom of the slime barrel. His message invites me to examine the attachment.

Surprise: There is no attachment.

The message is entirely harmless but amazingly stupid.

I've received two or three of these every week for the past several weeks. I presume that the person whose account they come from has simply abandoned his Twitter account.

This one had an easy solution: Report the account for spam and the messages stopped immediately.

Restoring the TechByter Sound

Two weeks ago, you may have wondered why the podcast didn't sound very good. As it turns out, the bad sound was the result of an improvement in audio gear. An improvement that didn't work exactly as intended.

For the past two years, I have recorded the podcast on a Tascam DR07 digital recorder and then copied the file to the hard drive. That's because the audio subsystem in my desktop computer isn't sufficient to work with Adobe Audition. In January, I acquired a Focusrite Sapphire 6 USB audio interface that does work with Audition. Unfortunately, as I found out 2 weeks ago, it didn't work very well with my Cascade FatHead ribbon microphone. What I had forgotten is that ribbon mics have extremely low audio output.

To obtain even marginally acceptable levels, I had to run the Focusrite audio interface with the gain wide open and then boost the signal by about 20dB once Audition had the WAV file. All that gain introduced an unacceptable amount of electronic noise.

I was able to attenuate the noise but doing so introduced what sounded to some listeners like an echo.

So last week, I switched back to the old standby AKG microphone. It sounds good but the Cascade mic sounds better and I wanted to use it for the podcast. That led me to talk with B&H Photo in New York, where I bought both the microphone and the Focusrite audio interface and then to talk with Cascade Microphones in Olympia, Washington. They reminded me of what I had forgotten: That ribbon microphones have inherently low output. The recommendation was to add a Cloudlifter CL-1 Mic Activator by Cloud Microphones. This is a device that fits between the microphone and the Focusrite audio interface. It uses the phantom power provided by the Focusrite device and introduces up to 25dB of clean gain.

Ahhhhhhh. Much better now.