Most readers would agree that it’s a pain to resize images. It’s pretty easy to do so when you use a tool such as Photoshop, but consider the system resources used just to resize an image. A simple tool such as MS Paint or Gimp can be used to resize images too, provided you have the time to do it manually. However, the Image Resizer Powertoy can make it even simpler and more efficient to resize images.
With the Microsoft Image Resizer Powertoy, all you need to do to resize an image is to right click the file and click on “resize pictures”. You will then be presented with a window where you can choose from a set of predefined and commonly used resolutions, or you can enter your own resolution into the custom box. The program will automatically resize the image to the given resolution, keeping the ratio so the image does not appear stretched or compressed.
Download the Microsoft Image Resizer Powertoy, a small 521 KB application.
Keeping a secure password is vital to protect your identity and privacy. A secure password usually includes a combination of various numbers, alphabets and special characters. Remembering them can be quite tricky.
We’ve reviewed Sxipper, a Firefox plugin that saved the user’s information including passwords and usernames which could later be used to login using a single click. For Windows however, we have a portable open source password manager called KeePass.
KeePass is a free portable utility to manage all your passwords in a secure way. You can put all your passwords into one secure database and give it a master password. Or if you find it convenient to use a key file, you can choose a key file only you know of to unlock the database.
KeePass uses the AES and Twofish encryption algorithms for security. As an added security precaution, KeePass automatically clears the clipboard in ten seconds after you have used it to copy a password.
KeePass can be installed either on Windows or on a flash drive.
Since it is an open source software, you have access to the full source code.
Download KeePass.
We all copy a lot of text and images, and we sometimes forget to paste or save them. To avoid such situations, we’ve already reviewed Cl.ickable, a Firefox plugin that allows you to save snippets of text to an online clipboard. But what about monitoring your Windows clipboard?
Sure Cl.ickable can do a very good job when you’re online, but for offline usage, we use an advanced clipboard manager called ClipboardCC.
ClipboardCC monitors your clipboard and saves text and images you have copied as files. In other words, you can save the entire content of your clipboard as text or images. You can select between several formats. Text can be saved as plain text (txt), html, and rich text format (rtf).
Quite convenient. =)
Download ClipboardCC for Windows Vista and XP (requires Microsoft .NET Redistributable v2 or higher).
Windows Media Player 11 (WMP 11) is an excellent music application for Windows XP. It has some lovely features in the form of an excellent media library management, a snappy control panel when you minimize it, and many more. The option to have a mini-control panel when minimized is pretty cool and handy. The only problem would be that it takes a lot of space on the taskbar. How would you like to minimize the window to the system tray and yet have all the features and total control that the small control panel gives when minimized?
Windows Media Bonus Pack for Windows XP contains a nifty tool that allows you to do all that from the system tray icon. It’s called the Windows Media Player for Windows XP Tray Control. The little icon runs in the system tray and provides “quick and simple access to your most common tasks in Windows Media Player such as volume and mute control, next track, play, and pause functionality with a single click.”
Once the Tray Control application is started, you can right-click on the icon and select “Hide Media Player”. This will actively hide the main application window from view. You can then pause/play a track by clicking on the icon among other options, effectively controlling the media player from the system tray icon.
That’s one less open window and more space on your taskbar. Pretty cool huh? =) [direct download]
Want to have an offline copy of an entire website? Don’t know how to do it? PageNest is all that you need.
PageNest can copy an entire site and save it offline on your computer, providing you an exact copy of the online website. You can download as much as forty files at once. It can save exactly what you see in your browser including images, HTML, CSS and the likes. All this in a simple, easy to use interface that takes a second to learn.
You can access the saved website or webpage from either the built-in browser that PageNest has, or from any other browser since the files are stored in the regular .html format.
Download PageNest (v.3.11) for Windows Vista, and XP.
What we used:
What you need to do:
Everything else after downloading the required software is fairly simple. Extract the theme files to C:\Windows\Resources\Themes\ and change the theme via desktop Properties -> Appearance. Install Object Dock and set it up to your liking.
To get the taskbar at the top, just right-click on it, uncheck the ‘Lock the Taskbar’ option, and then drag the taskbar to the top of your screen. Lock it again if you like.
You could further make your Windows look like Ubuntu by:
Over the course of normal usage of a Windows system, it is fairly common that the data written to the registry is scattered within the registry file. When this information is deleted from the registry, holes are left which fragment the data within the registry, just like in the case of a hard disk. This may tend to cause the system to slow down, as well as unnecessarily use space that is no longer required. This is where Registry Defrag comes along.
On my newly installed Windows XP, Registry Defrag saved up around 1.5 MB after compacting.
Download Registry Defrag v2.35 (468 KB)
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