HitsGarden

I have to say that if you feel the need to install this little application on your PC, then you probably need a larger hard disc drive. Tray DisK Free sits in the System Tray – next to the Windows clock — and it does just one thing, it displays the amount of free space left on your disc drive. If you hover your mouse over the icon there’s a more detailed analysis. Nominally it’s set for your main drive (usually C:) but it can be set to monitor any drive on your PC. The menu option lets you change how frequently the program checks the drive, and if you want to have a fiddle with some command line switches, you can change the display and text colour.

Kodak, once the leading light in the photography biz were famously caught by surprise by the speed at which digital photography took. Despite launching some useful digicams, it has never really come close to regaining its former status. Now, however, they’re leading the way once again, this time with the world’s first consumer photo frame using OLED or Organic Light Emitting Diode technology.

OLEDs, in case you didn’t know, are super thin, and unlike LCDs, do not rely on a backlight. They also offer superior contrast ratios and although not a factor in this application, can be made to be flexible. The display used in this frame is 7.6 inches (measured diagonally); it’s a widescreen format with 800 x 480 pixel resolution and it boasts a contrast ratio of 30,000:1. The viewing angle – another OLED advantage – is 180 degrees. Read the rest of this entry »

Microsoft Word is still the only game in town when it comes to word processing, though on a personal note I have to say that most recent versions are horrible and until MS comes up with something better I’m going to stick to my trusty W2000. Which is just as well because otherwise I wouldn’t be able to use Repair My Word, a freeware program that only works with older versions, up to W2003. Basically it’s a data recovery program dedicated to Word document files. It’s the sort of thing you’d wished you had when you last saw the dreaded message ‘Word cannot open the document’ or ‘The document name or path is not valid’, or worst of all, all you see is a screen full of garbage. Simply run the application, navigate to the iffy file, open it and the program will do its best to sort it out, and if it succeeds it can be re-saved as a bone-fide Word document. Read the rest of this entry »

As you know Windows Explorer (aka My Computer, Explorer etc.) lets you see what’s stored on your computer, move files around and so on, and it works reasonably well, but it could be so much better.

Over the years we’ve looked at several Explorer alternatives, but this one, called Explorer ++ is definitely one of the best. It does pretty well everything standard Windows Explorer does but its main claim to fame is a multi-tab display, so you can quickly switch between folders. There’s also a file details and thumbnail preview pane at the bottom (it has all of the usual Explorer type ‘Views’ as well), Permanent file delete, it’s highly customisable and it supports advanced operations, like file merging and splitting. Read the rest of this entry »

As you may know you can make icons manually out of ordinary JPEG and bitmap images, by fiddling around with the size and format. It’s easy enough, just a bit time-consuming but why bother? Here’s a simple one-click solution, called Easy PictureIcon. Just select your image and it is automatically converted to the three commonest sizes (16 x 16, 32 x 32 and 48 x 48 pixels). All you have to do is decide if you want to compress trim or fit, select background transparency, and where to save it. Go on, give your desktop a makeover, and don’t forget, you can change the icons in most applications simply by replacing them with one of your choosing, providing it’s the same size and has the same filename.