Mac the Knife
26th Mar 2002, 01:59
Here's a list of the essential utilities that help me through the week. Some are free, some cost a few bucks. All of then either do something much better than M$ or something that M$ can't do at all. I've tried other programs that are supposed to do the same/similar things but these work best for me. All are stable and install/deinstall cleanly or they wouldn't be listed. All the non-free stuff offers good support/update notifications in return for registration/purchase.. .. .Any more for any more? No junk or cutesy-poo trash please.. .. .WinZip <a href="http://www.winzip.com" target="_blank">http://www.winzip.com</a> shareware + discreet nag. .'Nuff said. One day I'll pay and get the whole megillah.. .. .Treesize from <a href="http://www.jam-software.com" target="_blank">http://www.jam-software.com</a> free. .Graphic display of what's taking up space on your HDD. Good for identifying garbage that can be deleted/archived. The Pro version is even cleverer but you have to pay.. .. .OpenExpert from <a href="http://www.baxbex.com/products.html" target="_blank">http://www.baxbex.com/products.html</a> free. .Explorer shell extension. Lets you open anything with anything. Big timesaver - very configurable. Really neat.. .. .Folderbox from <a href="http://www.baxbex.com/products.html" target="_blank">http://www.baxbex.com/products.html</a> free. .Explorer shell extension. Adds a third pane to Explorer. Very extremely useful. Best solution that I've found [yes, I know about PowerDesk 4 (free) and 5 (pricey) but haven't used either].. .. .Directory Toolkit from <a href="http://www.funduc.com" target="_blank">http://www.funduc.com</a> is the Swiss Army knife of file/folder managers.. .Synchronise/compare files across drives/network and a whole lot more besides. Wins big prize for fast friendly support that is worth paying for. CLI script files and free script generator. Zip, encrypt, Zip to .exe, etc., etc.. .. .Pad (not WordPad or EditPad) from Hesky-Data Software <a href="http://www.hds-pad.com/" target="_blank">http://www.hds-pad.com/</a>. .Superb multi-document text/RTF editor. Brilliant for scripts (Python/Perl/etc.) Has it's own script language. Can act as an IDE if your app. has a console window. Many many many features. Best of the several serious text editors I've tried (using it now). No spellchecker yet, but less intrusive and much faster loading than EditPad Pro.. .. .Acrobat Reader from <a href="http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html" target="_blank">http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html</a> free. .Indispensable. So is PDFWriter if you can find it (often bundled). Otherwise try Ghostscript for generating PDF files. Acrobat Distiller is too expensive for amateurs. Or you can generate 5 free PDF files online for your login at <a href="https://createpdf.adobe.com/" target="_blank">https://createpdf.adobe.com/</a>. .. .Irfanview from <a href="http://www.irfanview.com" target="_blank">http://www.irfanview.com</a> free. .The best multi-format image viewer of all. Handles almost every image format known to man (OK, women too!). Can save/convert to most of these as well. The only animated GIF viewer I know. Pick up all the plugins at the same time and play movies, send emails and lots more. Mature and stable. Use with:. .. .Irfanview Shell extensions from <a href="http://www.baxbex.com/products.html" target="_blank">http://www.baxbex.com/products.html</a> free. .Allows quick opening/browsing of image files from Explorer. Needs Irfanview. A must if you work with images a lot.. .. .Icon Extractor <a href="http://members.ozemail.com.au/~jaesenj/software/software.html" target="_blank">http://members.ozemail.com.au/~jaesenj/software/software.html</a> free. .Seen a nice icon in an application? Wanna use it? Icon extractor rips 'em out of executables, libraries and DLLs and saves then in BMP or ICO format.. .. .Andrew Phillips' Hexedit 1.0 <a href="http://expertcomsoft.com/" target="_blank">http://expertcomsoft.com/</a>. .Simply the best hexadecimal editor ever made. A labour of love and it shows. A heavy duty professional app. you can also use for a little light hacking. HexEdit 1.0 binary was free and you may still be able to find it somewhere on the Web. HexEdit 2.1 is shareware, but 1.1 sourcecode is free(compile it yourself).. .. .Resource Hacker from <a href="http://rpi.net.au/~ajohnson/resourcehacker/" target="_blank">http://rpi.net.au/~ajohnson/resourcehacker/</a> free. .View, modify, rename, add, delete and extract resources in 32bit Windows executables and resource files (*.res). It incorporates an internal resource script compiler and decompiler and works on Win95, Win98, WinME, WinNT, Win2000 and WinXP operating systems. Brilliant. Don't cut yourself. You do have a backup of that file don't you?. .. .eCleaner 2.1 from <a href="http://members.tripod.com/schin26/index.htm" target="_blank">http://members.tripod.com/schin26/index.htm</a> free. .Steve Chin's eCleaner is excellent for cleaning the HTML rubbish out of documents/e-mails. .. .LP Ripper and LP Recorder from <a href="http://cfbsoftware.com.au" target="_blank">http://cfbsoftware.com.au</a> shareware. .For recording/editing Vinyl - does just one thing and that very well indeed. Also a pretty good general purpose sound recorder. Use with the free BladeEnc MP3 encoder found at <a href="http://bladeenc.mp3.no/" target="_blank">http://bladeenc.mp3.no/</a>. .. .Atomtime from <a href="http://www.atomtime.com/" target="_blank">http://www.atomtime.com/</a>. .Bruce Adelsman's Atomtime is now at v2.2 and has an updated list of atomic clock servers. Now has command line options as well as the clean interface.. .. .Bitstream Font Navigator. .Mine is an old version that came bundled with something I bought but it works very nicely at housekeeping my fonts and making sure I have a minimal set loaded normally but any special ones on-tap if I need them. Should be easy to find but if you want the latest version (now called Font Reserve) it's at <a href="http://www.bitstream.com/categories/products/fontmanagers/fontnav/" target="_blank">http://www.bitstream.com/categories/products/fontmanagers/fontnav/</a>. .. .Adobe Type Manager. .I don't use Postscript fonts that much but I have an old freebie version of ATM that works just fine. You can download the new ATM Light free from <a href="http://www.adobe.com/products/atmlight/main.html" target="_blank">http://www.adobe.com/products/atmlight/main.html</a> or buy the full story.. .. .Icon Wizard 1.0 or 1.1 free. .Give your Explorer folders customised icons for easy navigation. Harmless and useful fun that doesn't f--k up your system. Christian Feichner's website seems to have fallen off the edge of the world but there are lots of copies on the Web. I found it one at <a href="http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file_description/0,fid,5659,00.asp" target="_blank">http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file_description/0,fid,5659,00.asp</a>. .. .DeDupe 1.2/1.3 from <a href="http://www.simtel.net/pub/oth/583.html" target="_blank">http://www.simtel.net/pub/oth/583.html</a> free. .Ever wanted to combine two similar text files and then had to laboriously pick through them to remove duplicate lines? Or extract unique lines? John Augustine's DeDupe is a DOS interface app. running under Windows that'll do it in a flash.. .. .Transparent at <a href="http://www.pobox.com/~jayguerette/transparent" target="_blank">http://www.pobox.com/~jayguerette/transparent</a> free. .Find those stupid blocks of colour behind the Icon names on the Desktop irritating? Transparent just makes them transparent and you can choose the text colour. Smart, well coded freeware by Jay Guerette.. .. .XXcopy from <a href="http://www.xxcopy.com/index.html" target="_blank">http://www.xxcopy.com/index.html</a>. .A 32-bit Xcopy on steroids. Command line. Zillions of confusing switches. Do almost anything. Good for cloning drives, synching folders and a lot more besides. Read the f*&^%ing manual.