CCleaner

CCleaner is a free junk cleaner. It cleans out broken DLLs, invalid files, registry problems, etc.
It also fixes “issues”, which I find very helpful.
It can fix/clean the following things:
* Internet Explorer
- Temporary File Cache.
- URL History.
- Cookies.
- Hidden Index.dat files.
- Last download file location.
* Firefox
- Temporary File Cache.
- URL History.
- Cookies.
- Download manager.
* Recycle Bin
* Clipboard
* Windows Temporary files
* Windows Log files.
* Recent Documents (on the Start Menu).
* Run history (on the Start Menu).
* Windows XP Search Assistant history.
* Windows XP old Prefetch data.
* Windows memory dumps after crashes.
* Chkdsk file fragments.

Advanced Options allow cleaning of:

* Menu Order cache
* Tray Notifications Cache
* Window Size and Location Cache
* User Assist history
* IIS Log Files
* Custom Folders

Application Cleaning:
As well as cleaning up old files and settings left by standard Windows components, CCleaner also cleans temporary files and recent file lists for many applications. Including:

* Firefox, Opera, Media Player, eMule, Kazaa, Google Toolbar, Netscape, Office XP, Nero, Adobe Acrobat, WinRAR, WinAce, WinZip and more… (I do not reccomend you download any of the P2P programs as they are illegal…. At least where I am)

Registry Issue Cleaning:
CCleaner uses an advanced Registry to check for problems and inconsistencies in your registry. It can check the following:

* File Extensions
* ActiveX Controls
* ClassIDs
* ProgIDs
* Uninstallers
* Shared DLLs
* Fonts
* Help File references
* Application Paths
* Icons
* Invalid Shortcuts and more…

File Erasing:
CCleaner offers secure file erasing by overwriting the files, then deleting them. Making it literally impossible to recover the data so be careful!

Multiple Languages:
Thanks to the translators, CCleaner is available in 31 different languages:

English, Albanian, Arabic, Catalan, Chinese (Simp), Chinese (Trad), Czech/Slovak, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Portuguese (Brazilian), Romanian, Russian, Serbian Cyrillic, Serbian Latin, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish.

Summary: CCleaner is a great, fairly small program, that runs fast, and works well on Vista.

Overall I rate CCleaner 4/5
Speed 5/5
Design 4/5
Name 1/5
Download Size 5/5
Program Size 5/5

Gabe Morris

Windows Live Writer Beta

Windows Live Writer is designed to enable bloggers of any blogging service, be it blogger, wordpress, spaces etc. to update their blog, add new posts and edit posts quickly and simply from a small WYSISYG application rather than having to go into the dashboard and add a new post.

There are also more options that may well not be available on your blog posting area, such as font colours and bulleting and numbering. You can add links, pictures, keywords. tags and maps into your post as well as change the post’s properties (allow commenting etc.). You can edit your images and add filters as well as change fonts, font colours and bulleting and numbering and even spell check your post. You can save a draft and publish it all from one simple window.

Editing your previous posts is simple, you just have to click Open Post on the File menu and choose the post you want to change, once finished editing simply click Publish. You can save your post as a draft and come back to it later by clicking the title in the Draft’s section on the sidebar which give you links to some of he main features of the program.

You can add a category (if your blogging service uses them) to your post by choosing the appropriate category from a drop down menu. You can also add tags from the most popular tag providers including ‘43 Things’ and ‘del.icio.us’.

You can add effects to your image and align them to the left, right or inline. You can add a drop shadow or photopaper effect as well as filters like ‘black and white’ and ’sharpening’. You can also define what size you want it either by inputting the pixel size or choosing from small, medium, large or original. You can change link and alternative text.

The application is perfect for bloggers of any size, whether you have one blog or 20 blogs (you have support for multiple blogs), it can save you masses of time and you can add extra options that are not available by your blogging service. You can download it now from http://windowslivewriter.spaces.live.com/.

Simon North, 28th January 2007

Bandwidth Monitor

A lot of people have broadband nowadays, but a lot of broadband services cap the data bandwidth you can have. What this means is that you can only download and upload the amount you are capped at. I use BT Broadband Option 1, this enables me just 2GB of bandwidth a month, this normally provides you with about 4 hours browsing. If you go over your limit some services may charge you for it, normally per GB, so it is important that you are aware how much you are downloading.

Bandwidth Monitor measures how much you are downloading and uploading on a daily basis, this means that you’d have to set a limit for each day and try and keep under that limit. The application sits in your system tray and you can launch the Log by right clicking the icon and clicking ‘Logs’.

The other great feature of this program is the ability to measure the speeds of downloading and uploading. The application itself is small, doesn’t impose too much on your system resources and is a perfect tool to ensure that you keep under your bandwidth limit.

You can download it for free from www.rokario.com.

Simon North, 26th January 2007