Software

Microsoft Power Toys

HanaDaddy 1 Comment

Well, these goodies do not come with the default Windows XP. They are created by the developers and they are free. That’s why there is no support from Microsoft for these products. By the way, according to the link, these will only work with Windows XP, not Vista.

There are several great useful utilities that can be downloaded and setup separately. I think some of them are very useful.

Here are the ones that I like

1. Tweak UI. As the name of the program explains, you can tweak many default properties of your Windows system. (Default user UI, Explorer Settings, Logon – Auto logon, Desktop Icons, Mouse Settings.) It is very useful.

Tweak UI

2. Alt-Tab Replacement.
It is a wonderful replacement of traditional ALT-TAB Taskswitcher, indeed. Small preview image appears in the left side when you move onto the next application.The background color is depend on the Desktop Color defined in the Display option of the Control panel.
TaskSwitch in Action
Download TaskswitchPowertoySetup.exe

Some more of the interests are

  • ClearType Tuner : When installed, it will help to display the fonts in more distinct and clear way. It is a great help for the people who use labtop with small screens.
  • Virtual Desktop Manager: When you have at least 10 or more applications running at the same time, you do feel that your screen is very small and tight and hoping for a larger monitor. But you can solve the limited desktop space by using the Virtual Desktop Manager. You can have several desktops and you can switch each desktop easily. Later in the upcoming blog entry, I will discuss more about the other Virtual Desktop applications that I have used. PowerToy’s Virtual Desktop Manager is nice, but not the best.
  • Image Resizer: This is a very useful and simple utility to resize images that you can access it through the shortcut resize menu in the right mouse click popup menu.

So please go ahead and try for yourself!

Read More

PrimoPDF – Free PDF converter

HanaDaddy 1 Comment

Are you looking for a free PDF creator/generator? You don’t have to spend high prices to create a decent PDF document.

PrimoPDF (http://www.primopdf.com/) is a free to use PDF converter program. When installed, it works like a printer device that you can print documents from any Windows Application such as Microsoft Word and Firefox Web browser.

For example, if you would like to create a PDF document for a Yahoo Website, visit Yahoo.com in your favorite Web browser and click on the Print menu.

Print Window
When you see the Print Popup windows , select ‘PrimoPDF’ from the Printer selection list. Then click on the ‘OK’ button to print.

Then a new PrimoPDF window shows such as below.
PrimoPDF print window

Now you can just define the new PDF file name to save as by clicking the “…” browse button. After selecting the filename, you can finish by click on the ‘OK’ button.

Here is the captured image of the PDF file opened with Adobe Reader 8. You can click on the image to view the enlarged image.
Opened with Adobe Reader

Another great thing about PrimoPDF is that it does not print any kind of Watermark in the generated PDF file unlike some freeware/shareware PDF softwares. So you get the exact document that you want to print.

Here is the actual PDF file , Yahoo!.pdf, created with the PrimoPDF.

Read More