One Tip A Day » utilities

How To Change OEM Details In Windows 7

Tony Williams — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 16:18:45 +0000

Windows 7 is one of the fastest selling operating systems ever, and rather than buying a fresh copy many users have opted to upgrade their PC instead and get a free bundled copy of Windows 7. However, if you do buy a OEM PC from the likes of Dell or Toshiba they tend to add their branding all over the PC. If you want to remove their logos and replace it with your own then it’s easy to do with the OEM Info Tool.

The OEM Info Tool needs to be run as an administrator because it makes registry changes. Once running you can see what OEM information has already been added to your copy of Windows and you can modify it easily:

OEM Info Tool is available for free and works on both Windows 7 and Windows Vista.

How to Split and Merge Files Faster

Umar — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:50:48 +0000

Splitting large files into smaller files can prove to be highly convenient while transferring them. For instance your instant messaging software doesn’t allow the transfer of files greater than 5 MB; you walk around this restriction by splitting any file greater than 5 MB into smaller pieces and then sending them to the receiver. The receiver can then compile them and see what you’ve sent.

While facilitating, users usually find this method of compressions quite difficult. Other problems also occur with the splitting and merging of files namely, the compatibility of your compressions software. A file spanned out into smaller files with a particular software might not be extractable by some other software.

The complete solution to both these problems is Winmend File Splitter.

Winmend File Splitter is a compression freeware which doesn’t span out your selected file into ZIP, RAR, or 7ZIP archives; instead it uses a format familiar to windows i.e. you can extract the files simply using Windows and no other third party software.

Winmend requires no registration; the 1.5 MB setup file can be instantly downloaded and installed. The interface is self-explanatory and makes usage extremely simple:

After you select a file, you can choose the method the file is spanned out: you can either choose the total number of files over which your file will be spanned out, or you can specify the size of each file yourself.

Winmend’s speed to span out files is remarkably high and it gets the job done before you even know it.

A wonderfully useful freeware, Winmend is one application you should try out right away.

Create Labels Easily With Worldlabel.com

Tony Williams — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 08:18:46 +0000

I recently got engaged and we’re trying to keep costs down, and one area that seemed unnecessarily expensive was sending out invitations, so we decided to do our own. To make our invitations that little bit extra we decided to create some professional looking labels using Worldlabel.Com, who have just launched free autofill pdf labels.

Worldlabel.com have put together an easy-to-use label system for creating basic formatted labels that you control and that give outstanding visual quality and clarity. The system can also be used to create business cards. All you have to do is fill in your information, and the sytem takes over and automatically fills all label fields on each sheet. Once you’re labels are complete, just print! To ensure that you don’t make mistakes, there’s a very visual guide that walks you through creating labels.

The benefits over other label printing methods are huge, particularly if you print your labels manually. No longer will you have to copy and paste information into each label cell, as well as making sure that if an image is included it is aligned properly.

There are several templates available that are suitable for many applications, including wedding invites. labels templates are also available for the popular Avery labels. All that is needed to use the service is a browser and a PDF Reader. There are some compatibility issues for advanced PDF templates between different PDF readers, so for best performance, Acrobat 9 is recommended. The service is OS independent, so you can use it on yout Mac or Linux machine.

LogMeIn Pro: Free Remote PC Access

Tony Williams — Wed, 14 May 2008 11:22:40 +0000

There are many Remote Access applications that allow you to remotely connect to your PC from any other computer with an internet connection, but there aren’t many good free ones. The free edition of LogMeIn is one of the few decent free RAS services out there, that lets you connect remotely to your PC and Mac.

Full list of featues for LogMeIn Free:

Access from any browser
Access from a wireless PDA
Remote control and desktop viewing
Sync
Chat
Reboot/reconnect
Multiple user access
Encryption
No firewall config needed

More: LogMeIn Free

Backup Platinum: Insurance For Your PC

Tony Williams — Mon, 05 May 2008 20:11:45 +0000

I don’t have a backup routine for my PC, which is bad, really bad. Even though it’s very unlikely that my apartment will burn down, there are no guarantees that my hard drive won’t fail or that I won’t do something silly like spilling a cup of coffee down my machine or deleting a vital file.

There are many backup programs out there, and Backup Platinum have asked me to review theirs in a sponsored review. Backup Platinum costs $67 for a single PC licence which I feel is a bit on the pricey side, but in return you get a backup program that can make a copy of your data to an external drive or other media, or to a FTP server or LAN if you have one available.

Backup Platinum works with all Windows OSs beyond Windows 95 and a 30 day free trial version is available, which is what I used for testing. The client is under 5MB, and while it was downloading I checked out the online help section which was fairly clear and set out well. The instructions were laid out with clear instructions on how to choose which folders and files to backup, and then how to choose which location to back the files up to. One very nice feature is the ability to add MS outlooks and Outlook Express files, which is handy as not many users know which files to backup if they want to protect their emails.

There’s even a scheduler function that allows you to automatically back up files. Control over whether multiple versions of files or just the latest version is also available. This is a very handy feature and isn’t always available with backup software, as it allows you to restore older versions of files that might not have certain errors included.

What the service really does lack in my view is an online backup service. Unless you drive your backed up discs to a neighbours every night, then backing up to an external drive won’t protect you from theft, fire, flood etc. I know this may seem like overkill, but just imagine losing those irreplaceable holiday or wedding snaps…..

All in all, Backup Platinum seems to be a respectable backup program with some nifty features, but at $67 it just seems too pricey to me.

Startup Delayer: Speedup Windows BootTimes

Tony Williams — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 20:04:25 +0000

Do you have applications that startup when you boot windows? You probably have some that do various things in the background without you realising. The time taken for every one of these applications to start and do their thing adds vital seconds to your PC boot times, which can make it unresponsive while your PC waits for them to stop.

You can make your PC startup faster by installing Startup Delayer. This great free app allows you get your PC up and running faster, by allowing you to delay when these programs start e.g. you can delay them by one min, two mins etc. You can even stagger the start time for each app. If you can’t be bothered to set custom times, there’s even an automatic mode.

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TweakNow: Tweak Your XP Or Vista Machine Safely

Tony Williams — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 00:51:35 +0000

Many PC tweaking utilities can be risky to use as they present you with dozens of options at a time, and when you change a dozen things at once something is bound to go wrong. The problem in this situation normally is, how do you roll back so many changes?

TweakNow may finally make tweaking Vista and XP machines even safer for novices. Not only does it provide quick access to some useful PC tweaks, but it also keeps a record of your previous settings so that rollbacks can be performed quickly and safely. Within TweakNow you can edit:

Applications
Control Panel
Desktop
Miscellaneous
Network & Internet
OEM Info
Special Folders
Start Menu
User Accounts
Windows Core
Windows Explorer

More: TweakNow

Use The CharMap To Add Special Characters To Documents

Tony Williams — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 21:42:05 +0000

A colleague of mine asked me today how to add special characters like ticks to her presentation. It made me realise that telling readers about CharMap would make a great tip.

The Character Map, or CharMap, is a often forgotten part of Windows that allows you to add symbols and characters that aren’t on your keyboard to documents. To start CharMap:

go to Start/Run and type in ‘CharMap’
Then select the font you want to use (Wingdings is one of my favs) select the character you want to use, and the press ‘Copy’
Then go to wherever you want to display the special character and paste it in. Remember to get the character to display properly, you have to change the font to match the one you selected in CharMap

Load Firefox Faster With A Preloader

Tony Williams — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 07:33:34 +0000

Firefox is the king of browsers, allowing almost unlimited customisation through the numerous addons. But, Firefox can take an eternity to start.

One good way to speedup Firefox launch times is to install Firefox Preloader. Once installed, this program will run as soon as your PC is turned on and it will make sure that Firefox is ready to go whenever you need it.

More: Firefox Preloader

Remove Duplicate Files With DoubleKiller

Tony Williams — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 21:39:30 +0000

One of the problems of downloading lots of music or poor file management, is that you can end up with lots of duplicate files. Not only does this waste space on your hard drive, it can also make your iTunes library look messy, and even slow your machine down.

Removing duplicates manually can be a pain, but with DoubleKiller you can remove duplicate files automatically.

Key Features:

Scans directories, complete drives or computers in your Network Neighborhood for duplicate files
Freely combinable comparison criteria (file name, size, date and content)
You can exclude files based on their name, file type, attributes or size
Presents a list of all identical files so you can decide which ones to remove
Deletes the files you chose or moves them to another directory
Allows to export the result list to a text file

Duplicate files are found by comparing the name, size, date, and CRC32-checksum of your files. If you are worried about DoubleKiller deleting files by mistake, there’s an inbuilt safety mechanism which allows you to recover files if this occurs.

Thanks to Connected Internet

Freeup Memory In One Click With Instant Memory Cleaner

Tony Williams — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 17:37:04 +0000

Managing PC memory isn’t as big an issue as it used to be, but freeing up memory can still provide benefits. Rather than spending a lot of time closing old processes, installing Instant Memory Cleaner is a quick solution.

Once installed, this tiny app (and it really is tiny at 1.8MB) sits in your system tray and if you hover your mouse, it will tell you how much memory is available. To free up memory all you have to do is right click on the icon and select ‘Clean Memory’. Within seconds your PC will have more memory available, which will make all those resource hungry apps you run, move along that little bit faster.

More: Instant Memory Cleaner

BootSkin: Customize Your Windows Boot Screen

Tony Williams — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 14:43:21 +0000

If you want to give your Windows boot screen (XP and 2000 only) that personal touch, then you can customize it with BootSkin. This free app allows you to replace your boring Windows Splash screen with another image of your choice. A good source for other Windows splash screens is WinCustomize.

More: BootSkin

Thanks to Brown Thoughts for the great tip.

Use ClickZap To Double Right-Click

Tony Williams — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 20:59:57 +0000

I’ve just stumbled across an amazing new application that adds a very simple function to a mouse, that is extremely useful. ClickZap allows you to assign certain functions to a double right click on a mouse, in the same way as a double left click.

It may not sound very exciting, but just imagine assigning a function that you use regularly. Just think about how much time you can save. Functions that can be assigned to a double right click by ClickZap are:

Lock the computer
Logoff the computer
Shutdown the computer
Minimize active window
Minimize all windows
Close active window
Close all windows
Mute the sound

More: ClickZap

Automatically Add Lyrics To MP3s

Tony Williams — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 15:40:51 +0000

iTunes and iPods allow you to add lyrics to mp3 tags. However, songs purchased from the iTunes Music Store don’t come with lyrics added.

A quick way to add lyrics to mp3 tags is to use EvilLyrics, which can automatically add lyrics to mp3s automatically as you play them.

Once EvilLyrics is installed, all you have to do is go to Evillyrics’ Preferences menu and then Advanced > Other settings > Add lyrics tag in iTunes. Now run EvilLyrics along with iTunes. Whenever a song is played, EvilLyrics will automatically write the lyrics into the MP3. You can view lyrics either directly from the EvilLyrics window, or from iTunes or iPod.

Thanks to TechBuzz for the tip.

Remove Duplicate Files And MP3 Files

Tony Williams — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 21:13:51 +0000

I’ve just discovered another good duplicate file remover. The imaginatively title Duplicate Cleaner can remove duplicate files based upon a number of parameters e.g. size, date, type etc. It can even search within the metadata of mp3 files – handy if you’ve bulk downloaded a lot of mp3 files and you’ve ended up with multiple copies of the same song.

More: Duplicate Cleaner

Delete Empty Folders With Remove Empty Directory

Tony Williams — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 14:16:43 +0000

Sometimes things that are free are so good, you feel guilty not paying. Take Remove Empty Directory (RED) that I discovered via TechBuzz. This free program finds all the empty folders on your PC and deletes them.

This may not sound very useful as empty folders don’t take up any Hard Drive space, but over time when you add and remove programs or move stuff around, you can get left with a lot of empty folders.

Through the use of wildcards you can make Remove Empty Directory even more powerful. For instance I created a rule to remove folders that only contained Album Art, that were left behind after iTunes deleted or moved the mp3 tracks but left the artwork behind. RED found and removed 600 such folders, making my music collection a lot tidier.

More: Remove Empty Directories

Tweak Windows With XdN Tweaker

Tony Williams — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 19:56:41 +0000

There are many 3rd party utilities out there that let you tweak Windows, but XdN Tweaker, which works with Windows XP, Vista and 2003, is a bit different as it focused on those tweaks that aren’t that well known. For instance, Martin from gHacks discovered that the following tweaks were available:

Disable and Enable ‘SendTo’ right-click menu
Add/Remove “Take Ownership” to right-click menus under Vista
Changes “Delete” to “Search…” on Recycle Bin
Remove/Restore hidden ASPNET user that prevents auto login

If you’re an obsessive Windows tweaker, then you might want to give XdN Tweaker a quick whirl.

More: XdN Tweaker

Free Online Video Conversion

Tony Williams — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 00:01:23 +0000

Movavi is a cool website that allows you to convert your videos online to other formats for free. Very useful if you’re on the move and you want to watch a video quickly, or at work and can’t watch certain formats.

Videos up to 10 minutes long or 100MB in size can be converted, and up to 5 videos at a time. Once you’ve chosen your output format (Flash, MOV, MPEG etc), then Movavi will convert the video for you and send a link to the finished video to your email inbox.

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Improve Your Typing Speed And Accuracy With Fingerjig

Tony Williams — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 20:54:57 +0000

If you are one of those people who can never quite master touchtyping, then this fun flash game might be for you.

Fingerjig is flash based game that can help you improve your typing speed and accuracy. There’s a typing speed test that has various difficulty levels that displays your score based upon words per min and letters typed after each level.

If you’re looking for another tool then try Typefaster, a free typing tutor.

Optimize Windows Vista With TweakVI

Tony Williams — Sat, 05 May 2007 16:40:02 +0000

TweakVI is a freeware program that claims to be the first to both both tweak and optimize Windows Vista. The free Basic version of TweakVI comes with 13 plugins that perform various functions. Other plugins are available, but they have to be paid for.

The TweakVI feature I like the sound of the most is the settings transfer, which allows you to transfer your Vista tweaks between machines, which will be handy if you building a new machine or even just rebuilding your current one.

Other Key features of TweakVI include:

Activate hundreds of hidden Windows Vista settings
clean your registry
activate system and software restrictions
display detailed system information
create a 256MB RAM drive
protect your privacy
clean your harddrive
manage TrueType fonts
improve your internet connection
optimize your CPU
optimize your RAM
manage system updates

To try out TweakVI click here

How To Recover Deleted Files

Tony Williams — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 23:02:38 +0000

Every now and then you will delete a file by accident and normally by the time you release, it’s too late.

Luckily the team that brought you the amazing CCleaner have also released Recuva. This cool free program scans your hard driver and will display all the deleted files in a list. This includes files emptied from the Recycle bin as well as images and other files that have been deleted from digital camera memory cards or MP3 players. It will even bring back files that have been deleted by bugs, crashes and viruses -pretty amazing!

More: Recuva

SpamAid: Spam Filter For Outlook

Tony Williams — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 00:50:33 +0000

I use Gmail as my main email client and the spam filters are pretty good. However, I need to use Outlook to synchronise my contacts and my mail with my PDA. I’ve never found Microsoft’s inbuilt spam filters to be any good, so luckily I’ve just been asked to review SpamAid by ReviewMe as a sponsored review.

SpamAid 4.0 uses Bayesian filtering technology that claims to identify about 98% of incoming spam messages. Any spam caught is placed in a spam folder. I’m a big fan of services that do this as no service is 100% effective, and it’s good to have a way to recover mistakes.

The service normally costs $29 (there’s a 30 day free trial), but luckily I was given a key to try out the service for free. Installation was simple and went without a hitch even though I’m using Outlook 2007 which wasn’t listed on the site. Once SpamAid was installed it automatically add my Inbox and Sent Items folders as the folders to be scanned.

One very nice feature SpamAid has is that it can scan emails you’ve already received, which can be handy if you didn’t have any protection previously. I had 2,065 emails in my inbox so this provided a good opportunity to test the filter. SpamAid found 60 spam messages, however 14 of these were genuine messages. This is where the Bayesian filtering comes into play because as part of the installation a toolbar is added to Outlook that allows one-click correction of mistakes. SpamAid learns from it’s mistakes so the next time I get an email from those contacts or with similar content, it won’t tag them as spam.

Overall I quite like the service and it’s way better than the Zone Alarm filters I used to use. The only quibble I have is with the price, although you don’t have to buy updates so the $29 spent should be a one-off charge. If you’re looking for a good spam solution for Outlook that actually works and learns from it’s mistakes then you should definitely consider SpamAid.