1-Minute Roundup – 2nd March 2009

Today, I take a look at 3 freebies – a note-taking program, a tool to monitor changes to your system, and a useful windows manager.

CintaNotes

 

A new beta of this lightweight note-taking program has just been released early this month. Changes include an silent clipping option, xml import, as well as more powerful options to manage tags.

CintaNotes sits in the tray, until you select some text and press a configurable hotkey to add the selected text as a note. It remembers the website you copied the text from, and you can use the "Browse Link" option to jump to the original source.  Browsers supported include Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Chrome, and Safari 4. Website/ window titles are automatically added, and you can assign tags to notes.

The search function worked well, you can start typing in the window to filter notes.

CintaNotes does not aim to compete with the likes of Evernote, the developers want to keep it light and uncluttered. Having tested previous betas, I’m quite impressed with the progress this program is making.

Cintanotes.com

SpyMe Tools

 

SpyMe Tools is a system monitor that tracks changes made to your system. Perhaps you would like to know what registry key that “system tweak” is actually editing. It offers a registry and a file/ folder mode, and also includes a real-time registry monitor.

Scanning times are quite fast, though not as fast as Regshot, another free program that helps you find changes made to your system.

Spymetools (via ghacks.net)

Pitaschio

 

Pitaschio is a small program whose interface you won’t need to see often. In fact, I have it running in the background with not even its tray icon displayed. Pitaschio  allows you to manage your windows using your mouse, such as minimising them to tray by right-clicking the minimise button, changing their transparency by scrolling your mouse over the title bar, making them appear on top of other windows or rolling them up to leave only the title bar. You can assign different key+mouse combinations to certain actions.

Extras include a smart rename option for Windows XP users that mimics Vista’s renaming behaviour (only the filename part is selected when you press F2), and keyboard/ mouse disablers – handy when you need to clean your keyboard or mouse halfway through work. You can also set the Windows desktop to use small icons, similar to Explorer’s list view.

Pitaschio

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1-Minute Roundups – 28 Feb 09

Sometimes, I don’t really have time to write full articles, and that’s why I’m starting a series of “One-Minute Roundups” - articles that take under a minute to read (though much more time for me to research and write). Usually they will feature interesting software and news I gather from my favourite sites. Here’s today’s roundup to kick things off:

SearchMyFiles

This tiny (39,424 bytes!), portable program lets you search through your files and folders. You can filter files based on their attributes and absolute/ relative times. I would still use Everything most of the time though, but this would come in handy for more specific searches.

Nirsoft.com ,via Softpedia

Little Registry Cleaner

Yet another program to remove invalid registry entries. Scanning was quick, and the entries found seem safe to delete. Automatic backups means restoring changes is a snap. I’ve some problems viewing selected entries in the registry editor though.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/littlecleaner/ , via Lifehacker

PC Tools ThreatFire

Offers behaviour-based threat detection in real-time. I installed it with Comodo Firewall, and have experienced no problems running both at the same time. The program also allows you to perform an on-demand scan for rootkits. Takes up less than 10 Mb of memory running in the background.

PC Tools ThreatFire

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Giveaway of the Day Review - Quicksys RegCleaner 2009

Today’s giveaway is Quicksys RegCleaner 2009, another program which aims to help you clear your registry of invalid entries and other junk.

Installation

Install and run the program, then enter the name and registration number provided.

Ease of Use

Scanning of errors was done with minimum fuss. As with other similar programs however, deleting of registry entries should be done only if you know what you’re doing. Many of the errors reported were related to deleted files and uninstalled programs, so I deleted them without much hesitation. Those who are afraid of deleting something critical would appreciate the “Quick Scan” option, which clears mainly history lists and is a lot safer based on the errors it reports.

Features

Quicksys RegCleaner 2009 did a thorough sweep of my registry, finding more than 2000 invalid entries. TuneUp Utilities’ and Glary Utilities’ Registry Cleaners found a third of that, though absolute numbers are in no way an accurate measure of a program’s ability to find errors – what’s important is that no “false-positives” are reported.

On this aspect, Quicksys RegCleaner 2009 reported many registry keys with missing or invalid paths. As I’m no expert myself, I wasn’t too comfortable deleting some of the keys which with meaningless names, especially those under HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT. Quicksys RegCleaner did report many invalid references created by Stardock Fences to deleted/ moved desktop files, that were missed by both TuneUp Utilities and Glary Utilities.

The window listing all the errors found could do with some improvements. You can’t sort the entries listed, and there is no “invert selection” option. Missing is an option to exclude certain errors from future scans. You need to manually add paths to ignore under the program’s settings. The program does allow you to jump quickly to the selected entries and quickly check/ uncheck large groups of entries via the right click menu.

The scanning process was quick, and the program allows you to tweak how many threads to use to further speed up the process. On the default settings, a full scan took around 40s, comparable to the other two registry cleaners mentioned above.

The program creates backups of the changes it makes, and restoring them was a quick and straightforward process.

Summary

To sum things up, Quicksys RegCleaner 2009 does a good job of scanning your registry for errors. The “Quick Scan” option finds entries that are safe to delete, and I would recommend you choose this over the complete scan. I’m divided over the purpose of registry cleaners, but if you are the type of person who likes things spick and span, I would recommend you get today’s offer.

Rating: 3.5/ 5

Givewayoftheday.com

Free Alternatives

CCleaner – Fast scanning process, deletes browser/ program histories also.

Glary Utilities – A complete utility suite that also contains a disk cleaner, shortcut fixer and duplicate files finder. Highly recommended.

TuneUp Utilities 2007 – I reviewed it previously, also another highly recommended set of tools. This is the free version available, the program is actually now into version 2009.

Argente Registry Cleaner – Specialises in cleaning your registry. Has 3 levels of scanning, and an option to add entries to exclusion lists.

Comodo System Cleaner

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TuneUp Utilities 2007

I have previously tested earlier versions of the TuneUp Utilities suite, and has been impressed with the quality of the tools included.

The 2007 version of TuneUp Utilities was recently made available for free. What you'll get is a nice package which includes a settings tweaker, startup manager, disk cleaner, hard disk scanner, disk space usage analyser, registry cleaner, and file recovery tool to get back deleted documents.

The tools work as described, with simple, intuitive interfaces. The registry cleaner reported a total of 729 "problems" on my system. However, as with all registry cleaners, care is to be taken before clicking the "Start Cleaning" button. It turned out that most of the problems reported were linked to uninstalled software anddeleted/moved documents. The RescueCentre backs up changes made to your system in case of any problems.

If you need an integrated solution to perform some tuning and cleaning up of your PC, you won't go wrong with this excellent piece of software. 

Also check out the 2009 version, which adds a drive defragmenter and other improvements.

Download

Homepage

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Paragon Hard Disk Manager 8.5

I got a tip from raymond.cc on how to get Paragon Hard Disk Manager (normally worth worth about £21) for free. Following the instructions on downloading and registering the product was a breeze.

The software itself was straightforward to use, and I tried combining two partitions I had on my hard drive. The process took less than a minute and required no reboot.

Paragon Hard Disk Manager allows you to create a bootable recovery disk which you can use to do repairs in case you render your system unbootable. 

As the name may suggest, Paragon Hard Disk Manager is more than a partitioning tool. It actually allows you to create images of entire partitions and disks. Compression, password protection and backup of locked partitions are all supported.

Instructions and download

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