SpeedFan

SpeedFan allows you to have a deeper view of the status of your computer. Almost every computer includes support for hardware monitoring. Accessing digital temperature sensors is really useful. If you are trying to figure out why your pc hangs when under heavy load or after some hours of usage, SpeedFan might help you to find the real cause.

Very often it is a poor power supply, or an improperly installed heatsink that lead to behaviours that we tend to associate with errors from the operating system, but that are not. SpeedFan automatically searches your computer for interesting chips: the hardware monitor chips. SpeedFan can expose voltages, fan speeds and temperatures.

On rare occasions, the BIOS doesn’t activate such features. SpeedFan tries to enable them as long as this is a safe thing to do. Not only the motherboard is searched, but also some video cards and almost every recent hard disk.

SpeedFan can access status info from EIDE, SATA and even SCSI drives, showing, in a consistent way, internal data that can be used to diagnose current and future hard disk failures. This is known as S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology). At the lowest level, SpeedFan is a hardware monitor software that can access digital temperature sensors, but its main feature is that it can control fan speeds according to the temperatures inside your pc, thus reducing noise.

Screenshot:
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March 31, 2008. Tags: , , . System Utilities. No Comments.

Core Temp

Core Temp is a compact, no fuss, small footprint program to monitor CPU temperature.

The uniqueness of it is that it shows the temperature of each individual core in a each processor in your system! You can see in real time how the CPU temperature varies when you load your CPU. It’s also completely motherboard independant.

Intel and AMD recently published detailed, public information about the “DTS” (Digital Thermal Sensor), which provides much higher accuracy and more relevant temperature reading than the standard thermal diode sensors do. This feature is supported on all Intel Core and Core 2 based processors as well as the whole AMD’s Athlon64 line of CPUs.

Core Temp also has a logging feature, allowing a user to easily record the temperature of his processor(s) over any period of time, then the data can be easily transfered into an excel datasheet for easy graphing.

Core Temp works on Windows 2000, XP, 2003 and Vista (both 32bit and 64bit versions).

Screenshot:
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March 31, 2008. Tags: , , . System Utilities. No Comments.

HD Tune

HD Tune is a Hard Disk utility which has the following features:

  • Benchmark: measures the raw performance
  • Transfer Rate
  • Access Time
  • CPU Usage
  • Burst Rate
  • Hard Disk information which includes firmware version, serial number, disk capacity, buffer size, transfer mode
  • Hard Disk Health
  • S.M.A.R.T. Information (Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology)
  • Temperature
  • Power On Time
  • Copy text to clipboard
  • Copy screenshot to clipboard

Screenshot:
hdtune.gif

March 31, 2008. Tags: , , , . Benchmarking, Hard Disk Utilities, System Utilities. No Comments.

PageDefrag

One of the limitations of the Windows NT/2000 defragmentation interface is that it is not possible to defragment files that are open for exclusive access. Thus, standard defragmentation programs can neither show you how fragmented your paging files or Registry hives are, nor defragment them. Paging and Registry file fragmentation can be one of the leading causes of performance degradation related to file fragmentation in a system.

PageDefrag uses advanced techniques to provide you what commercial defragmenters cannot: the ability for you to see how fragmented your paging files and Registry hives are, and to defragment them. In addition, it defragments event log files and Windows 2000/XP hibernation files (where system memory is saved when you hibernate a laptop).

PageDefrag works on Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Server 2003.

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March 31, 2008. Tags: , , , , , . Disk Defragmenter, System Utilities. No Comments.

JpegBook

JpegBook is a great little utility to convert a text file into a Jpeg, allowing you to view books, manuals or any other text document on your PSP.

Screenshot:
jpegbook.jpg

March 31, 2008. Tags: , , . PSP Tools. No Comments.

Foxit Reader

Foxit Reader is a free PDF document viewer and printer, with incredible small size (only 2.1 M download size), breezing-fast launch speed and rich feature set. Foxit Reader supports Windows 98/Me/2000/XP/2003/Vista. Its core function is compatible with PDF Standard 1.7.

  • Incredibly small: The download size of Foxit Reader is only 2.1 M which is a fraction of Acrobat Reader 20 M size.
  • Breezing-fast: When you run Foxit Reader, it launches instantly without any delay. You are not forced to view an annoying splash window displaying company logo, author names, etc.
  • Annotation tool: Have you ever wished to annotate (or comment on) a PDF document when you are reading it? Foxit Reader allows you to draw graphics, highlight text, type text and make notes on a PDF document and then print out or save the annotated document.
  • Text converter: You may convert the whole PDF document into a simple text file.
  • High security and privacy: Foxit Reader highly respects the security and privacy of users and will never connect to the Internet without users’ permission. While other PDF readers often silently connect to the Internet in the background. Foxit PDF Reader does not contain any spyware.

Screenshot:

March 30, 2008. Tags: , . Office Tools. No Comments.

Defraggler

Defraggler differs from other defrag tools on the market, by enabling you to quickly and simply defrag the files you want to, without having to process the whole drive. Simply launch Defraggler, select the file or folder and defragment it in just a few seconds. No more struggling with the Windows defragmentation tool!

Features:

  • Defrag Individual Files

Most defragmentation tools only let you defrag the whole drive. Defraggler gives you the power to select individual files and folders to defrag. So you can get the job done in seconds, rather than waiting for the whole drive to complete. Of course if you want to defrag the whole drive Defraggler will let you do that too.

  • Compact and Portable

Defraggler was written in the same compact architecture as other Piriform products (CCleaner and Recuva). This results in a compact single EXE application, which can be copied to a thumbdrive and then used whenever you need it, without a complex installation process. The EXE itself is less than 1MB!

  • Vista Support

Defraggler supports all OSs released since Windows 2000, this includes Windows 2000, 2003, XP and Vista. Although 64-bit support is not included in this version, we are working on compatibility, so it will be available soon! Additionally Defraggler supports both NTFS and FAT32 file systems.

  • Locate Files on the Drive

After analysis Defraggler lists all the fragmented files on the drive. Selecting one or many will highlight their location on the disk. Allowing you to visually see the location of files on the disk.

Screenshot:
defraggler.png

March 30, 2008. Tags: , , , . Disk Defragmenter, System Utilities. No Comments.

Adobe® Reader®

Adobe® Reader® software is the global standard for electronic document sharing. It is the only PDF viewer that can open and interact with all PDF documents. Use Adobe Reader to view, search, digitally sign, verify, print, and collaborate on Adobe PDF files.

Screenshot:
adobe-reader.png

March 30, 2008. Tags: , , . Office Tools. No Comments.

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