Microsoft Responds to The Annoying Experience

Well, Microsoft just came up with a new concept, known as “Microsoft Signature,” which is a service that gives you “out of the box” personal computers with absolutely no extra software installed. The company now offers both a line of Microsoft Signature certified computers and a service to certify computers that you have already purchased. It seems like the company is serious about pushing forth a policy of cleanliness and respect for the people who purchase computers. Imagine a world where you buy a computer with Windows installed and you’re greeted with an interface that’s free of any garbage.

What Does Microsoft Signature Do?

Besides eliminating the initial bloatware/junkware, Microsoft claims that it optimizes PCs that it sells to you. Details are not so clear on how the company does this, but they do admit that they install some of their own hardware that runs optimally on the operating system they created. The software includes Microsoft Security Essentials, Windows Live Essentials, Zune Software, and Internet Explorer with Bing as the default search engine.

In addition, Microsoft also offers a service for certifying your computer with Microsoft Signature. The Signature certification will mean that Microsoft actually had someone look at your computer, take apart its software, uninstall the unnecessary stuff you don’t need, and tweaked it to improve its performance.

How Does Microsoft Tweak The Computer?

I can only assume and speculate because, as previously mentioned, Microsoft didn’t provide many details about the situation and what they do to your computer to make it run better. The demo video shows you some insight:

According to this video, I could only assume that Microsoft makes tweaks on its software and operating system from within your computer to ensure that it’s up to spec, allowing you to have a better experience running Windows on your computer. Perhaps settings like visual effects and other things that affect performance would be changed according to how much physical memory, video memory, and CPU power you have. Coupled with the elimination of elements that would otherwise occupy your computer’s resources, this is a solution that will make your computer squeaky clean.

How Much Does Microsoft Signature Cost?

If you’re buying a computer from the Microsoft Store with Signature certification, the price will vary according to the computer’s own specifications. Microsoft doesn’t make the computers. The company simply tweaks and packages them. The computers come from their respective manufacturers, meaning that the price could be as low as a couple of hundred dollars or as high as a couple grand, just like with any other computer purchase.

If you already have a computer that you want to certify with Microsoft, their services for tweaking your computer cost $99. This might be a drawback, especially considering that many IT pros and enthusiasts can tweak their computers well enough without having to pay this fee. However, the company does have to cover the expense of labor in modifying your computer. They are not responsible for what was there in the first place, and this is their way of offering a hand. By the way, this is how a computer’s packaging looks like with MS Signature:

Should I Get Microsoft Signature?

If you’re the kind of person who has difficulty understanding online tutorials and cannot easily reach the settings necessary to tweak your computer, or you want Microsoft to have a hand at optimizing your computer’s speed, you should get this service. Otherwise, there’s no real viable reason to use a service that offers something you can just do yourself.

However, if you have multiple computers, this might actually save you some time. If you have a very fast hand at tweaking a computer, though, you’d lose more money than what you’d make up for in time you’d spend to perform the task. This is better suited for people who are new to computers and want to squeeze every bit of juice out of them. This isn’t the case with IT professionals who know their way around the registry.

The conclusion is that there are some people who could use Microsoft Signature and others who really don’t need it. Just do as you see fit.

If you want to learn how to tweak your Windows computer and enhance your experience with things Microsoft probably won’t add to your computer, we do provide tons of tutorials, tweaks, tips and tricks for Windows, for free.

Thoughts?

I’d really be intrigued to hear people’s thoughts on Signature, particularly opinions of other IT professionals and experts who work with Windows on a daily basis. Let’s start a dialogue! Leave a comment below and we can discuss Microsoft Signature.

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Interface

The interface used with FX Photo Studio is almost dead simple to use, there are no special manoeuvres that you have to take when editing photos. The application takes many of the lessons found with other multimedia editing applications like iMovie and Final Cut Pro, where you have a dedicated region for seeing the editing process, a bottom region for the dirty work, with the right side dedicated for editing options. The very top of FX Photo Studio is where you’ll find an area for loading the photo, saving the photo, and sharing it onto the web. Next to that, you have options for undoing and redoing your edits. You then have a region for zoom, fitting the photo to its true size, and fitting the screen. You can compare the two photos (original and edited), as well as view the application in full screen. The interface has three regions, all selected on the top right side. The first region page is for effects, second is focused on cropping, and another for adjustments etc.

Features and Filters

FX Photo Studio has various features and filters that make for having an easy experience when editing. You have a choice for a ton of filters and effects, so many that it took some time to go through and try all of them. For this reason, FX Photo Studio has a “favorite” feature, allowing you to like some of your most used filters and effects for quicker referral. While some people refer to it as the “Instagram of Mac”, FX Photo Studio has many more features from filters. FX Photo Studio allows you to crop and rotate your images, as well as add other features, turning your photos into great masterpieces.

Share Your Work

Once you are done editing your photo, you are now able to share it with your friends and family. FX Photo Studio allows you to share it on Facebook, post it onto your Tumblr, upload it to Flickr, post to Twitter, and even email it to your friends. Along with sharing the photo onto various websites, FX Photo Studio allows you to have the photo exported to iPhoto and onto your Mac. But, you must remember that when share through email, it will launch the Mail application, so make sure you have that set up or if you even wish to do that.

Conclusion

All in all, FX Photo Studio allows you to do a ton of things with your photos. From choosing amazing, high quality filters to cropping. Your photo will be perfect for your Facebook profile, or the next holiday greeting card. While you can’t do exactly everything in iPhoto on FX Photo Studio, individuals looking for a nice iPhoto companion in terms of the available filters, FX Photo Studio is the application for you. While the FX Studio Pro version is available for $40, the standard version (shown in this review) is only for $9.99. With very little feature differences, the standard version (with a couple of less features) seems like a very attractive choice.

Download Links: FX Photo Studio and FX Photo Studio Pro

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However, by clicking that box saying that you understand the Terms and Conditions, you are still just as bound to abiding by them if you read them or didn’t. This means the Terms and Conditions aren’t there to read as much as they are there to hold you to something you would be willing to do.

In this world of business that is conducted online, the people placing the Terms and Conditions on their website or software probably aren’t reading it either. Google shows over 20,000 Terms and Conditions generators out there to generate the wording and code to make it easier for business and websites to place it on their site or add it to their software package.

In lieu of being a speed-reader, the best way to know what you’re agreeing to before you click that box is to skim the text. There is so much information contained within this text it’s often laid out in outline form. It starts with roman numerals, and includes indents with capital letters, regular numbers, lowercase letters, etc.

Much of this is information you don’t need to read. Looking at the above sample, you know who the buyer is. It’s you. Why read the text explaining what it is? If you know what the word conspicuous means, there’s no reason to read most of the next five paragraphs. Simply skim it to make sure they aren’t applying a different meaning to it.

There are a few words you want to pay particular attention to while skimming, and perhaps read those areas a little more in depth. One of those words is liabilty. This pertains to how you will be held responsible for buying or using the software, app, or website. You want to be sure you know what you are agreeing to with this.

The other words you want to pay close attention to are “fees”, “compensation”, or anything else that translates into money going out. That’s always my fear when downloading software. I’m always afraid that while it says it’s free, I’ll be expected to pay after a certain time or when I use it a certain way. Be absolutely clear with this wording to be sure you don’t get stuck paying for something you don’t want to.

EULAlyzer

If you need even more understanding being following a few key terms, there is software out there that will help you understand the Terms and Conditions of software. EULAlyzer is a Windows-based software that will tell you how safe the software you are about to install is, and also helps analyze that Terms and Conditions agreement highlighting the key phrases that you should pay particular interest to.

By skimming and ignoring portions of text that either don’t pertain to you or are explanations of terms you already understand, and by knowing where to go for more help when you need it, you will be able to click that checkbox at the end with much more confidence. You can change hours of boring reading into minutes of skimming, skipping, and double-checking.

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1. Photoscape

Photoscape is my favorite photo editing software. Actually, it’s not just a photo editor, it has got a plethora of tools for images. Before using Photoscape, I was of an opinion that it is just another photo editing software. However, I constantly read positive review about Photoscape, so I decided to try it out. Since then, it has become my default photo viewer and editor.

Photoscape has got a very simple and easy to use interface. It uses tabs for important functions with one tab reserved for everything offered by Photoscape. I especially like the editor interface. as it helps me do functions like resizing, color adjustment, levels adjustment, sharpening etc with a single click. There is no need to find these options in a huge list of menus like in Photoshop. Another feature that I like about the editor is very simple display of the picture properties. It displays properties like photo dimensions, file name and size right below the image. These are the most common properties that I need while editing my photos. Overall it has been a very good experience with Photoscape and I intend to use it as my default photo editor in the future as well.

2. GIMP

GIMP is a free photo editor often known as the free alternative to Adobe Photoshop. It is open source and has lots and lots of features. It was made for Linux in the beginning but then ported to Windows and Mac too. Although it has many great features, it is still, in my opinion, a bit more complex than other image editors. The greatest feature of GIMP is that its functionality can be extended through plugins.

3. Picasa

Picasa is more of a photo organizer tool from Google but it also consists of a very handy image editor. Although the editor is not very advanced, it contains the most common tools that people usually use with the photo editors. Since it is very easy to use, it is a popular choice among people who don’t have time to learn the complexities of a photo editing software. If you are hosting your photos in Picasa Web, then this is the best tool you can get, since you can sync your photos to the cloud immediately after the editing.

4. Paint.NET

Paint.NET is another free and open source photo editor with some advanced functions. I use Paint.NET where I want to work with layers and level adjustments of the photo. Paint.NET can be compared with GIMP but it does not offer any plugin integration.

5. IrfanView

Irfanview has been my favorite before I switched to Photoscape. I like it because of its simplicity, portability and small size. After using Photoscape, I personally think that besides simplicity, IrfanView is a bit more complex and old in terms of user interface and usability. It does not provide any buttons or tabs of functions to edit the image. Instead it has a menu which contains everything that we need to edit a photo. Although it’s not my default image viewer and editor now, I keep a portable copy of IrfanView in my USB Flash drive among other essential portable software.

I hope now it will be easier for you to decide which image editing software you should keep as your default editor. What is your favorite photo editor? Do tell us in the comments.

You may also like 5 useful online image editing software and 5 useful alternatives to Photoshop.

Image credit: BigStockPhoto

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Fixing the duplicate applications problem

Fixing the duplicate Pages application was easily solved. I simply did a search for “Pages” and looked in the applications section of the results to find the two separate versions of the software. I used Get Info under the File Menu to find which version was the most recent.

It turns out that one of them was in the Applications folder, and the other was in a separate folder I had made to keep my writing apps together. With Lion, of course, it’s no longer necessary to make folders like that, as they can be organized together under Launchpad. Once I deleted the older app, I was able to determine that the version I had was indeed the most recent.

Fixing the situation with iPhoto proved to be more difficult. When I searched for the app by name, it was only finding one application. Yet, when I went to the App Store, it didn’t say “Installed,” and looked like it was available for a download to me. I assumed I didn’t have a new enough version, and that I would have to buy it. When I tried to purchase it, I was told I would have to update through the Software Update function, yet when I tried that, I was told all my apps were up to date.

I looked again for a separate application. It didn’t show up in Launchpad. However, when I looked through my application folder “the old-fashioned” way, I found an additional iPhoto application, one that was non-functional when I tried to open it. It seemed to be a partial download. I figured this was an easy enough fix and deleted the extra application.

This didn’t fix the problem, though. When I tried to update the application through the App Store and Software Update, I got the same messages as before. When I tried to open the application, I received a new message telling me there was something wrong and that I should contact support. It should be noted that in all this time of using the application, even though there was a non-functioning duplicate in the system as well, I never had any error messages.

I knew that this version of iPhoto had become corrupted as well. It had to be deleted, but I was afraid of losing the two years worth of pictures of and videos I had stored within iPhoto. I checked around on my hard drive and found the iPhoto Library stored separately, and I knew then it would be okay to delete the app, as my photo library would remain.

Once I deleted the corrupted app, I visited the App Store and tried to buy it again. This time I was told I already previously bought iPhoto, so I would be able to update it through Software Update. Sure enough, once I opened Software Update, iPhoto now showed up as available for updating.

The changes Apple makes to its system and applications are fascinating and indeed make things easier, but sometimes it adds up to additional snafus that create more trouble. Hopefully, as Apple continues to make changes to their updating system through Software Update, the App Store and iCloud, it will eliminate these the problems once and for all.

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One popular and effective way of beating a problem or releasing your creativity is mindmapping. While you can go old school and use pen and paper, there is quite a bit of mindmapping software out there for the desktop and on the web.

There are a number of really solid mindmapping tools for the Linux desktop. Let’s take a closer look at three of them.

1. FreeMind

FreeMind is probably the best-known Open Source mindmapping tool out there. And it’s definitely the most powerful.

Even though it is powerful, FreeMind is fairly easy to use. Every function you need is available from a right-click menu. You can add branches to (called nodes) to your mindmap, insert images, apply formatting, and even incorporate hyperlinks.

What really gives FreeMind a lot of flexibility are its plugins. One of the most useful is the plugin to export a mindmap to PDF or SVG. Even if you don’t want to use those plugins, though, you can export a mindmap to a number of other formats including XHTML, a Java applet, Flash, JPEG or PNG, or even an OpenOffice.org Writer document or a page for Twiki (a popular wiki engine).

2. VYM

VYM is short for View Your Mind and is quite a bit easier to use than FreeMind. A big part of that comes from its very clean, almost stripped-down interface.

As with FreeMind, all of the functions you need – adding nodes, inserting links and images, and changing line styles – are available with a right click.

One noticeable way in which VYM differs from FreeMind is how colorful many of the elements of a mindmap are by default. With FreeMind, you need to manually set colors for nodes and connectors. In VYM, they’re automatically colored. You can, however, change the colors if you need to.

VYM’s export function isn’t as flexible as that of FreeMind, but it does do a pretty good job depending on the format you choose. Those formats include OpenOffice.org Impress documents, XHTML, several image formats, LaTeX, and XML. Your best options are XHTML and the image formats.

Labyrinth

If you use the GNOME desktop manager and are looking for a simple mindmapping tool then you should give Labyrinth a look. While it lacks many of the bells and whistles in FreeMind and VYM, Labyrinth gets the job done.

While it’s easy to use, Labyrinth takes a bit of getting used to. Especially if you’ve used other mindmapping software. Forget about right-click menus. You add nodes by clicking somewhere in the editing area and then typing the label for the node. If you want to add a child, you need to click on the parent node first and then click in the editing area to create the new node. It’s a bit confusing at first, but once you get the hang of it editing in Labyrinth is fairly easy.

The mindmaps that you create with Labyrinth are like the application: very simple. You can add images to your mindmaps and export them in the following formats: PNG, JPEG, SVG, and PDF.

One feature that you’ll like about Labyrinth is map manager. When you launch Labyrinth, you get a window listing all of your existing mindmaps. No need to go hunting through a file explorer to try to find the one that you want.

Summing Up

Mindmapping is a great way to unleash your creativity and to clear any mental log jams. The right tool, when properly used, can help. And it can make the process of creating and using mindmaps even more enjoyable.

Photo credit: dumbledad

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What details? You may wonder. Well, how about your favorite programs? When an operating system gets an upgrade, your software may not be up to snuff, at least not initially, when it comes to compatibility. Before you go ahead and install that upgrade, you will want to be sure that you are going to be able to run all of your favorite (and essential) software. Skip this step at your own peril. After all, what is the worst thing that could happen?

Oh yeah. You know that copy of Adobe® CS5.5 Design Standard that you bought last year? The one that cost you $1,299.95. Well, you could run the upgrade and find out that it no longer works and you are now without a whole lot of cash, and for a valuable tool. Good luck getting your work done now!

So, lets get you amply prepared with a complete search that can help you to avoid the heartbreak of incompatibility.

Step One: Make a List

This may seem a bit obvious, but some people miss it. Go to you applications folder and make a list of all of the apps you want to check for compatibility.

This is probably every non-native app in the folder. You don’t have to check the ones you don’t care if you lose or not, but be sure that anything expensive or essential get checked out before the upgrade.

Step Two: Get Thee to The Wiki

A new site has sprung up to help create a master list of Lion compatibility statuses, which is good news for you since it saves a lot of site hopping. Make your way over to http://roaringapps.com/ and click on the big, red, “View the Compatibility Table” button.

Now you can either use the search field, or tap the button for the first letter of the apps name to see if it has a status listed. You will see an icon at the far right of the entry. A blue question mark means that there has been no solid answer. A yellow exclamation mark means that the software will survive the upgrade, but not function perfectly. A red check means that the software is not compatible. A green check means clear sailing ahead, the software is completely compatible.

Get Specific on The Yellows

If you have a yellow icon on an essential piece of software, then you will want to figure out exactly what kind of problems it has on Lion, and then you can decide if you are willing to put up with them on a case by case basis. To do that just click on the name of the app. You will be taken to a screen that gives you a description of the problem(s) that users have been experiencing with this piece of software.

There you have it. Now you can decide whither or not you want to upgrade now, or hold out for upgrades to some of your essential software.

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Cog is a lightweight music player,  which supports many audio file-types including MP3, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, AAC, Apple Lossless, Musepack, Monkeys Audio, Shorten, Wavpack, Wave/AIFF and much more. It also offers HTTP streaming, as well as some neat features like gapless playback, support for Apple remotes, Last.fm integration and Growl notifications. Additionally, it lets you specify which audio output device to use, should you happen to have more than one.

Layout

The layout is as straightforward as they come. It has a window which serves as the playlist, into which you can drag and drop music from Finder or the “file drawer”. You are able to save and load playlists, and both m3u and pls formats are supported. There are also options to turn on shuffle and repeat as one would expect from any music player, and you are able to search the playlist to jump quickly to a specific file.

Music Library

Some people find iTunes’ management of our music folders less than ideal, in the way that it reorganises and renames files and folders. As mentioned earlier, my music collection suffered a catastrophic setback a few years ago when iTunes decided to delete the entire collection of files. I was able to recover most of it, but needless to say I’ll never trust iTunes again. Thankfully, Cog takes a very hands-off approach to managing your music.

Cog has what it calls the “file drawer”, which is basically an integrated finder window attached to the main playlist window. The first thing you’ll need to do is specify which folder to use as the base for the file drawer in the application preferences, as per the image below.

Once you’ve done that and saved the preferences, just click the little folder icon on the top left and the file drawer will expand out. Adding music is then as simple as dragging and dropping folders or files from the drawer.

Shortcut Keys

Cog supports the Apple remote and also lets you specify shortcut keys in the preferences, under the “Hot Keys” tab.  It also offers full support for media keys, should your Mac keyboard have them. One issue you might run into, however, is that iTunes might also start when you use one of these keys. Thankfully, there is a solution. Simply download and install this little utility, and iTunes will no longer run when you hit one of the media keys –

Conclusion

All in all, if you’re looking for a music player that won’t chew up a lot of RAM and is fast and functional, Cog’s the app you’ve been waiting for.

You can find and download the latest release of Cog here.

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Home Accounting

Home Accounting is the most essential task that I do on my computer. All the budget of my home is made on the computer. This ensures that I have a glimpse of every financial aspect of my income and expense. I used to create Microsoft Excel workbooks for this purpose but now I have discovered Personal Finances Free which is perfect for handling home accounts.

Download Personal Finances Free

Backup And Recovery

Regular backup is very important aspect to look at because it makes sure that you have everything important at your disposal in case of any disaster or corruption. There are a number of backup softwares which perform the backup process differently.

I personally use Syncback Free edition to sync my primary hard drive with the backup hard drive. You can select the backup software according to your needs. Some good softwares include the following:

Genie Timeline

Paragon Backup

Easeus Todo Backup

Compression

Although Windows provides a basic compression tool which can read, compress and un-compress zip files, it is not enough in today’s technology world where there are plenty of other compression formats around. While WinRAR is the best paid compression software, I like to have, free softwares like 7-Zip or Haozip which provide similar features for free.

Drivers

Installing device drivers after installing Windows is an essential step. Although you can download and save all the device drivers for your computer and install the drivers one by one, there are software which can automate the driver backup and restoration/installation steps.

SlimDrivers Free is a new software that I’m testing nowadays while Driver Max is my all time favorite for managing my device drivers. Here’s a detailed tutorial on how to use Driver Max in Windows.

Internet

If you use the Internet, then there is a huge list of utilities that have to be installed ranging from browsers to instant messaging clients. Here are a few utilities that I install initially when I install Windows:

Browsers

• Mozilla Firefox
• Google Chrome
• Opera
• Safari

FTP

FileZilla

RSS

FeedDemon

Instant Messaging

• Windows Live Messenger
• Google Talk
• Skype
• Yahoo Messenger

Download manager

• Downthemall for Firefox
• Internet Download Accelerator Free
• Orbit Downloader

Office Suite

An Office suite is a must have in today’s world. Microsoft Office seems to be the obvious choice, provided you are willing to buy a premium for it. If you can’t afford it, you can select from a number of free Office suite which provide similar tools and features as Microsoft Office provides. The free Office suites include the following:

• OpenOffice (most popular alternative to Microsoft Office)
• LibreOffice
• Go-oo (based on OpenOffice with better support for Microsoft Office file formats)
• NeoOffice (Only for Mac)
• KOffice
• Softmaker Office (Free with limited functionality)

If you want an online Office suite then you can use Google Docs or Zoho.

Multimedia

Windows Media Player is installed by default in Windows. It is the primary audio and video player for me but I install K-Lite Mega Codec pack which extends the functionality of Windows Media Player. In addition to that, I like to use VLC player and Cyberlink PowerDVD as my secondary players.

Security

Last but not least, security is most important if you use the Internet frequently on your computer. You need to have a proper Internet Security suite to save yourself from hackers and viruses. Internet Security Suite can protect the computer from viruses, hackers, spam, spyware and other threats from the Internet. Since Windows 7 comes with a very good basic firewall, I don’t like to over burden my computer with additional Firewall, so I prefer to install only an antivirus which is free and can also protect from spyware in addition to other viruses and malware. Spam is not what I need on my home email. I prefer Avast Antivirus or Avira Antivir as my Antiviruses to protect my computer. Microsoft Security Essential is another great choice.

What is your list of softwares which you install after installing Windows?

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What is the solution? Find a powerful uninstaller tool to completely remove the remains.

Revo Uninstaller is one such software that can completely eradicate a software from your system. It can uninstall an application and remove all traces of its presence (be it files/folders or registry keys).

After you have installed and run the software, Revo Uninstaller will scan your system for all installed apps and list down the apps in the window. You can then right click on any app to uninstall it.

After confirming your decision to uninstall the app, a popup window will appear to offer you 4 uninstall methods. Each of them runs the default uninstallation utility. The difference is hidden in the efficiency of the system scan performed by Revo Uninstaller.

Built-in: Nothing extra, it is the same as the uninstallation process launched from the Windows Control Panel.

Safe: After completing the default uninstallation process, this method scans the registry and the file system for the leftover information, that you can remove safely. This is the least comprehensive but the fastest method.

Moderate: This method extends the capabilities of the Safe method with a more comprehensive registry and file system scans. This method is set as default.

Advanced: This is the slowest but the most powerful method. The capabilities of the Safe and Moderate methods are included and extended with a deep scan to detect all the leftover items of the application being uninstalled.

Note: be very careful when you choose the Advanced method, especially when you have installed different versions of an application (e.g. Firefox 3 and Firefox 4 Beta). The remained items for both versions may be listed and you may find a bit difficult to distinguish the items belonging to the version you want to remove.

Uninstallation and Complete Eradication

Before Revo Uninstaller proceeds to uninstall the application, it will first create a system restore point so that you can restore back to the original settings if your computer malfunctions after the uninstallation.

Once it has completed creating the system restore point and analyzing your application, it will launch the default uninstaller utility of the program.

After the installation is done, it will proceed to detect the obsolete and remained registry keys.

The bold items indicate that they were left by the default uninstall utility of your removed application. When you press the Select All button, all the items will be selected, but the ones in bold style will be deleted. To complete the removal, press the Delete button.

For some uninstallation that require a system reboot, select “Reboot later” and continue with Revo Uninstaller. Revo will detect the files in use and leave them intact until the next reboot. After restarting your computer, these files will no longer be around.

Hunt The Unwanted

The Hunter mode is one feature of Revo Uninstaller that allows you to quickly uninstall an app. When you click the Hunter Mode button, the main window minimizes to the notification area and a hunter sight takes over its place. When you aim it at a shortcut on the desktop, on the Quick Launch Bar or at the icons near the clock, it can capture the application in place and bring it to the uninstallation corner.

Alternatively, you can also drag and drop an app shortcut icon to the Hunter Sight to uninstall it (Right click the sight and select ‘Drag and Drop mode’).

Relevant Extras

When you click the Tools button on the toolbar, a sidebar with two sliders will come in sight, providing CCleaner like functionality to optimize your system and cover up your traces.

If you have not used Revo Uninstaller, I urge you to give it a try now. It is a great way to uninstall an app and remove all instances of its presence. Most important of all, it gives you a piece of mind, knowing that your computer is not bloated with unnecessary files.

Revo Uninstaller

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Thumbs.db files are only shown when a specific setting — Show Hidden Files And Folders — is enabled in the Folder Options panel. These files are completely harmless and their function is to render a preview of files inside its corresponding folder.

Thumbs.db generates a quick image based preview of files inside a folder when using the Icon or Thumbnail mode in Windows. By creating the preview before the folder is accessed saves time rendering a visual thumbnail. Doing this on the fly might not slow your computer down dramatically. However, for folders with many files or folders hosted on storage with a slow connection, thumbs.db can help give you a visual representation without waiting to connect to the folder.

If Thumbs.db look like clutter, you can simply delete them but removing one does not remove every .db file. To disable thumbs.db navigate to Folder Options in Windows either through the Control Panel (all items view) or via Organize -> Folder and Search Options in Windows Explorer. Under View, select Do not cache thumbnails and then click Apply to All Folders.

By selecting this option, Windows will no longer generate thumbs.db files to show a quick visual representation of what’s in the folder you are accessing.

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Firefox‘s built-in spell checking feature has been available since Firefox 2. It even has support for multiple languages, which are very useful if your native language is not English.

Simpler Than You Could Imagine

If you have looked around on the Mozilla add-ons site, you might found the page where language packs and dictionaries can be downloaded. At the time of writing this post, 105 dictionaries are available for 86 languages. These packs are actually extensions and you can install them like any other Firefox extension. They will be listed in the “Tools -> Add-ons Manager” menu or by pressing the “Ctrl+Shift+A” hotkey. You can install as many dictionaries as you wish, without limitations.

I use the English (United States) and the Hungarian dictionaries. Both of them suit my expectations. Apart from the dictionaries for certain commercial spell checker components, these open source dictionaries are maintained continuously and new words are added regularly.

Where Can I Find It?

Right click in the text area where you just typed in the text and find the “Check Spelling” item and the Languages dropdown in the context menu.

The Check Spelling command is activated by default. When you click it, the tick will disappear and the spell checking feature will be disabled. The Languages dropdown will also disappear.

In the Languages dropdown, you can only see those languages that you have installed. If you need a new dictionary, you have an easy job: Just click “Add Dictionaries…“, and it will bring you to the Mozilla Dictionaries & Language Packs page.

How It Works

The spell checking feature works on any web form. It may be the editor of your blog tool or your content management system, the new topic/reply page in a forum, a comment field, or even a contact form on a web page.

Similar to the word processors, an unmatched word is underlined with a red wavy line. When you right click on such a word, you will find suggestions in the pop-up menu, or you can add the word to the dictionary.

Firefox cannot detect automatically the language of your entered text, you have to select it manually in the “Languages” dropdown. Firefox will then perform the spell checking of the text using that dictionary.

Extend It

When you check the Mozilla Add-ons site, you will find a couple of relevant extensions.

Dictionary Switcher

While this is just a small add-on, it is definitely a useful one.. Dictionary Switcher fetches the language from the source code of the page where the web form is available. Another method – the more interesting one – is trying to detect the language of the text you are typing in and switching to that dictionary accordingly.

You can access it from the status bar (now add-on bar since Firefox 4). A dictionary can be selected from the context menu.

When I select the Remember dictionary for current site item in the context menu, it really did not forget the manually set dictionary displayed in bold style.

Quick Locale Switcher

This add-on is more than a simple spell checking dictionary switcher. Quick Locale Switcher cannot detect the language of the entered text, but can automatically set the dictionary for a manually chosen language on a web site you visited.

It also skulks in the add-on bar, perhaps you may access it easier and faster from the Tools menu. The appropriate flags are assigned to the listed languages, still you have to separately download the dictionaries.

Conclusion

Some web based WYSIWYG editors, having their own spell check feature, present a problem, because they may disable Firefox’s right click menu, in addition to this, they may not have a dictionary for your language.

I hope the extensions development will move towards remembering the languages of certain pages. It would be a giant step for the international communities providing international subforums for their members.

In the era of web publishing, the grammatical correctness is not only a human expectation. Due to the sophisticated algorithms of the search engines, it may affect the position of your site in the results list as well.

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Introduction

ISO Workshop is an extremely user-friendly desktop application for Windows operating systems. The program handles ISO files and performs functions that are typically associated with ISO files. People will find ISO Workshop’s interface to be neat and very simple to use.

Supported operating systems include 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows NT, 2000, XP, Vista, and 7. The installation setup file of the program is an EXE file sized at nearly 4 MB. Once you have the program installed, this is what the application will look like on the first run.

This screen with four buttons is “Home”. Here is where you can select one of 4 tasks that are outlined below.

Extracting Contents from an ISO File

In addition to being mounted on virtual drives, ISO drives can also be used to compress data in a CD-like format. In such cases the content is simply extracted without the ISO being mounted to a virtual drive. ISO Workshop’s ISO extraction feature lets you easily obtain the contents of an ISO file. All you have to do is point the program to the location on your computer where the ISO file is. Its contents are automatically loaded up.

You can choose to extract all contents in a single go or extract selectively by individually right-clicking on an item and bringing up the “Extract” option.

Backing up to an ISO File

As mentioned before, ISO files are disc image files. They can copy the contents of an optical disc (CD/DVD) exactly as they are. If you have a CD/DVD that needs backing up to an ISO file, all you have to do is specify the CD/DVD-ROM to the app and select an output folder and file.

Converting Other Files to an ISO File

Using ISO Workshop, you can convert a variety of disc image file formats into the ISO file format. Formats that can be converted include ISO, BIN, NRG, CDI, MDF, IMG, GI, PDI, DMG, B5I, and B6i.

Burning ISO Files to Disc

Copying an ISO to an optical disc is supremely easy with ISO workshop. All you have to do is click on the right-most button in the app’s ‘Home’ page. Then you point to your stored ISO file and the select the CD/DVD-ROM your blank optical drive is in. You can then initiate the burn process and see your ISO being copied to a new CD/DVD. Supported optical drives include CD-R/RW, DVD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW, DVD+R DL, and BD-R/RE.

Conclusion

Many computer users have trouble using ISO files because of the complicated interfaces of ISO-handling applications. ISO Workshop has made things far easier for computer users to fully benefit from ISO files. The only ISO-related feature lacking from the program is the ability to create virtual drives and mount ISO images on them. Hopefully this feature will be incorporated into the program’s future updates.

You can get ISO Workshop from here.

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Keeping a Windows installation clean, trimmed and running efficiently can be difficult. There are multiple tools that we have suggested in the past to help with tasks such as deleting unnecessary files, stopping unnecessary programs from starting at launch, and uninstalling unused programs. However, you have to use multiple programs to achieve all these tasks. Magic Utilities 2011 provides an easy to use interface to do all the tasks mentioned above and much more! The utilities included with the program include an uninstall manager, a start-up organizer, a process killer, a disk cleaner, a file shredder, and a file protector.

Note: There is a free giveaway of this software. Read on for more detail.

Uninstaller Plus

The uninstaller tool allows you to easily uninstall any application that is on your system.

This tool is particularly useful at uninstalling those apps which the Windows uninstaller refuses to remove. Additionally, if you have already uninstalled an application but the uninstallation entry remains, you can remove it by selecting Delete Entry.

StartUp Organizer

Does your computer take forever to start-up and become usable? It could be because you have multiple applications launching after your PC boots. To speed up this process, you can use the StartUp Organizer tool to remove the programs you do not want starting when you start the computer.

You can also add programs that you would like starting when the computer boots.

Process Killer

If your computer becomes slow while you are working on it, it could be because there are a number of applications eating into your processor speed and your available memory. Use Process Killer to stop unnecessary applications and speed up your computer.

Disk Cleaner

Over time a lot of gunk builds up in your PC. I am referring to leftovers from aborted downloads, uninstalled applications and other similar temporary files. To remove these unnecessary files, use the Disk Cleaner tool.

You can add certain file types that you specifically want to search for. If you want more control, select the Advanced tab.

Once you have made your selections hit OK and Scan (in the next window).

Finally, hit Remove to delete the temp and unnecessary files.

File Shredder

Often you may have sensitive documents on your computer that you do not want prying eyes to see. In such situations consider using the File Shredder tool to permanently delete the file of your computer (without any hope of retrieval or recover).

File Protector

If you have files on your computer that you need to secure use the File Protector tool to put a password on it.

Windows Utilities

Lastly, the Windows Utilities tool simply provides a shortcut to frequently used Windows Utilities.

Free Giveaway

Who doesn’t love free giveaway? We know you do and we are glad that the developer of Magic Utilities has given us a few license keys to give away. Here’s what you need to do to participate:

Step 1

Be our Facebook fan or follow us in Twitter :

(If you have already done this, skip to step 2)

STEP 2

Fill up the form below. This is to make sure that we can contact you when you win the license. We promise that we won’t spam you.

Update: This free giveaway has ended.

STEP 3
Share this post either in Facebook or Twitter, or leave a comment below.

This giveaway begins now and ends Thursday, 25th Feb at 2359hrs Eastern Time. The winners will be selected at random and announced via email.

Share and enjoy!

Image credit: newlivinghouston

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Kate SQL Client – The popular all-in-one text editor for KDE now has basic SQL client functionality, thanks to the new SQL Query plugin.

App Enhancements – Many other applications have been enhanced. Gwenview and KSnapshot now have social media sharing buttons. Marble has a route planning tool with MarbleToGo for mobile devices, and KStars now has OpenGL rendering support. A few games also received upgrades.

New Activities Design – KDE Workspaces activities allow the user to truly have multiple desktops, with each one having its own purpose, its own set of widgets, unique wallpaper, and even its own applications. Each activity additionally has its own set of virtual desktops, giving you maximum power and flexibility. This is an improvement over the last version, which was pretty confusing. The one feature I would still like to see is the ability to give each activity a more distinct icon.

KWin Improvements – One of the areas where KDE lagged behind was compositing window management. In previous versions, Compiz has always outperformed KWin, even though it was not a KDE window manager. In 4.6, KWin has been optimized, adding a significant performance boost. KWin also has support for more graphics adapters and better detection. The improvements were noticeable as soon as I started it.

New Notification Features – You can now detach notification popups from the tray icon and drag them anywhere you want, and expanded notification popups have a new meter telling you how fast a download is coming.

Docking Taskbar – The KDE panel has always had launcher capabilities, but now you can pin tasks in the taskbar, turning them into smart launchers. This worked fairly well, but it has some ways to go before users would be able to use the panel like a true dock. That may not even be the intentions of the developers, but it is a nice option to have, nonetheless.

Speed – In general Plasma feels snappy and fast. Even on my desktop computer, I used to notice a slight lag in effects such as the shelf widget icon highlighting. Those are now lightning fast. The same applies to just about every other plasma and KWin effect.

Oxygen-GTK – One of the big improvements in KDE 4.6 is the new Oxygen-GTK engine that finally makes GTK apps look pretty much identical to KDE apps, even with window color gradients in place. The screenshots on the KDE website confirm that it works, but I was not able to get it to work out of the box. First, it did not even come with my install of Kubuntu, so I had to download it from the project’s website. Even then, I could not get it to work right without manually editing the .gtkrc-2.0 file. After that, it worked as expected. On my test user account, which had received less tweaking, it worked without any problems.

Overall Impressions

KDE 4.6 is the fastest and most polished release of KDE in the 4.x series. It is truly smooth, and the added features just make it that much more solid and remind me why I chose KDE as my desktop. It will be interesting to see where they go from here, as they move closer to the inevitable KDE 5. As long as they stay on the path they are currently on, the future looks very bright.

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I am always plugged into new songs on my portable iPod or desktop computer, regardless of whatever I am doing. However, I also enjoy finding new songs that are still missing from my iPod playlists. In such situations, Internet Radio saves the day.

Radio channels streamed from the internet is a great way to listen to latest tunes as well as old classics. Things are pretty random with radio streaming, so if you are looking for a tool that will let you enjoy online radio stations from all over the world, try Nexus radio.

With a collection of over 15 million tracks and 11000+ radio stations listed, you will never get bored with music streamed with this free application.

Download Nexus Radio and install the tool on your computer. You will need to sign up for a free account to get started with it. Once you have successfully registered for a free account, use the login credentials to sign in.

NOTE: If you are using Windows 7 or Windows Vista, the program may crash several times. It is recommended to start the player in administrator mode, to avoid the annoyance.

There are 17 tabs that you can use to control different parameters of the radio player as well as use it properly. I took a quick look at the tool and listed below are the most needed tabs along with the tasks that are included within them:

1. Music Search: This tab lets you search individual tracks, there are four sources to choose from and the count of the tracks is more than 15 million. Once the search is complete, choose the song and use the playback buttons to play, pause or stop the track. This is a great way to look for tracks you just can’t live without.

You can also use the “Save Song” button to download any selected song to your computer and listen it offline.

2. Stations: This tab lists more than 11000 radio stations from all over the world and all of them are categorized as per genres. Click a genre from the left tab and select the station from the middle pane. Use the play button to start playing the channel.

Use the “Quick Record” button to record the currently streaming radio station. There are an overwhelming number of radio stations available, so finding your favorite one is not a problem at all.

3. Record: This is one of the great features of the tool that lets you record live radio stream on a scheduled time. Choose a Genre from the dropdown at the top of the middle pane. Select the radio station, choose date and time from the left pane and hit “Save” to save the recording schedule.

4. Filters: If you are want to record a specific song or songs from a specific artist, creating filters will help you.

Go to the filters tab and click the “Add/Remove” button (just above the playback controls) and select “Add Filter” and enter the artist or song name. After you have added a filter, you will be prompted to activate it. You can also turn it off/on from the “Options” button located beside the “Add/Remove” button.

5. Equalizer: The tool has a built-in 10 band equalizer to adjust the sound quality of the radio stream or the songs playing. The equalizer worked perfectly for me and the sound quality can be optimized to great level to soothe your ears.

6. Effects: Next to the equalizer tab, there is an “Effects” tab which complements the equalizer effects, by letting you control the pan, speed, echo and reverb settings of the songs played.

7. Tagger: The tag editor can be found under this tab and can be used to edit the ID3 tag info of any track on your PC which is quite neat if you are using any portable device to sync songs with your computer. Although I feel a bulk editor would have been better.

8. Trimmer: The tool’s inbuilt trimmer can be used to cut selected portion of any song on your computer. There are times I need to change my cell phone’s ringing tone. Till date I have been using some dedicated online tools to get this task done. I’m glad to find another reason to stick with this free tool now.

9. Options: This tab contains all the additional options relevant to the tools working methods. You can set to start the tool as Windows starts, change the default download location or hide/unhide song pop ups within this tab.

The other tabs included in Nexus Radio can be used for visualization during playback, see top 100 song charts, watch music videos, install or uninstall plugins, see history and many more other things.

By far, I am more than satisfied using the program considering its all in one usability. Barring the case of crashing on several occasions, the tool worked just as fine otherwise. Do try Nexus radio once and let us know your thoughts in the comments section.

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1. GCompris

If you’ve looked into free software for children, you’ve likely come across GCompris. This is a suite of over 100 games and activities for children aged 2-10. The activities are devided up between sections such as Math, Reading, and Amusement. The entire suite is available in the standard repositories of most major Linux distributions

To install:

sudo apt-get install gcompris

or search for “Gcompris” in the Ubuntu Software Center.

2. Sugar Desktop

The good folks working on the One Laptop Per Child effort have come up with a unique, simplified desktop system called Sugar. It was originally designed for their XO laptop series but it can be run on a home PC as well. If you install the complete package (instructions here) you’ll also get the included tools like a paint program, a few games, and some educational activities.

3. KDE Education Project

The KDE team has also produced a nice collection of educational software. This pack is aimed at an older crowd than GCompris, and includes tools like Kbruch for working learning fractions and Kturtle, a modern implementation of the Logo programming language for kids. To install look for the kdeedu package in your distro’s repositories

To install:

sudo apt-get install kdeedu

or search for “kdeedu” in the Ubuntu Software Center.

4. Tux Paint

What MS Paint was to many of us growing up, Tux Paint can be to our kids. It’s got all the normal drawing tools (pen, eraser, spraycan, etc) as well as dozens of additional shapes and patterns. It includes far more than MS Paint ever did, and should be a favorite for any young artists in the house. This is another common package that should be in your distro’s standard repositories.

To install:

sudo apt-get install tuxpaint

or search for “tuxpaint” in the Ubuntu Software Center.

5. Tux Typing

Typing can be a difficult skill to learn (I’ll be honest, I sometimes look at the keys) but fortunately there are software programs out there to help with the job. One such application for kids is Tux Typing, a fun a popular typing tutor game. There are multiple play modes such as Fish Cascade (spell the falling words before they fall off screen), Comet Zap (quickly type the letter on the incoming comet) and Lessons (match what’s on screen without looking at the keys).

To install:

sudo apt-get install tuxtype

or search for “tuxtype” in the Ubuntu Software Center.

Bonus: Children’s Linux Distros

Some individuals and organizations have realized the importance of free educational software, and have created complete Linux distributions specifically for schools and homes. Probably the best known of these is Qimo, which is also Ubuntu based. Qimo is more focused on use in the home on a standalone computer, as opposed to Edubuntu’s networked, institutional approach. It runs a custom XFCE desktop with large simple icons and emphasizes easy navigation.

There’s also Foresight for Kids, a children’s edition of Foresight Linux. It comes with several of the applications covered here such as Tux Paint, GCompris, and Tux Typing, as well as several multimedia applications for more serious use.

If you know of any other great Linux applications for kids, please share them in the comments below.

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Next, drag the “PrivacyDefender” bookmarklet to your bookmarks toolbar and click on the bookmarklet to launch the application (it takes a few seconds to start).

The application will now analyse your Facebook privacy settings.

Once the application finishes analysing your settings you will see a colourful wheel illustrating what information you have shared with the world. If this infographic looks familiar, it may be because it is similar to “The Evolution of Privacy on Facebook” infographic.

As you can see all my data is limited to only “Friends”. The other two layers of sharing available, include, “Friends of Friends” and “Everyone”. Along the outer edges of the circle you can see the different types of information that you can share.

To change how private you want your information to be, you can drag the slider along the bottom of the screen to your desired setting and then you must click on the on the green “Fix My Privacy!” button to set your privacy options.

The most secure option available is the “My friends” setting. Using this option limits all your information to your “Friends”. This setting is so secure that your “Friends” are not even allowed to view your “Contact Info”. To obtain this setting simply move the grey slider to any portion of the bottom bar that is coloured green, then click on the green “Fix My Privacy!” button. It will take a few seconds (depending on your internet connection) to change your privacy settings.

The next lowest setting is the “My Social Network” option. This option allows “Friends of Friends” to view much of your information. The principle here is that you want to expand your network, whilst ensuring that your data is protected. To change to this setting simply move the grey slider to the yellow portion of the line and click “Fix My Privacy!”.

The final setting “Everyone but not everything” keeps some of your information open to the web. However, although this is the loosest privacy setting available, only your “Name”, “Profile Picture”, “Posts” and “Other Profile Info” will actually be visible to everyone. The remainder of your information stays private. This turns your Facebook into a more robust version of Twitter. Your posts and updates are shared with everyone, but your more personal information, such as photos and contact info, are still protected. Again simply drag the grey slider to a red portion of the bottom bar and click on “Fix My Privacy!”.

Finally, if at any point you are unhappy with your settings, you can roll back to your original privacy settings by click on “Reset to current privacy settings”.

Which of the three options do you have your privacy set to?

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My backup solution has evolved from the perennial “copy and paste” method to incremental backups using command line tools such as rsync and more recently into the cloud with Dropbox. Since switching to Windows 7, I have started using the free version of Genie Timeline 2.0.

When looking for a backup application, I required something that backed up securely, quickly, with minimal interference and which kept older versions of a file so I could revert to the older version whenever I wanted. The type of backup program that attracted me was Apple’s Time Machine. However, having a Windows PC, Time Machine was not an option and so I came across the very similar application Genie Timeline.

Genie Timeline 2.0, comes in a free version, a “Home” version and a “Pro” version. The free version is fairly limited, however it is powerful enough for those unwilling to pay for the other versions. Till now I have been using the free version, but I have found the product useful and plan to upgrade to the Home version soon.

Installation and Setup

After the basic installation, the Genie Timeline icon shows in your notification bar and a window opens prompting you to “Select Backup Drive”. It is recommended that you use an external hard drive.

After selecting the drive you have the option of choosing the file types you would like to backup.

Unfortunately, in the free version you are limited to selecting the broad range of file types. Upgrading allows you to select the specific file extensions.

Being the obsessively tidy computer user, I am very particular about the specific folders I want to backup. Indeed backing up by file type would mean I may inadvertently backup something that is uneccesary or miss out something important. So, I selected “Customize selections”. Now, I was able to deselect the file types I did not want to backup. Alternatively, I could select the specific folders I wanted to backup by navigating to the “My Computer” tab.

That is all that is required to setup the backup process. The dashboard appears showing the progress of the backup.

Once the backup starts you are given the option of using “Smart Mode” or “Turbo Mode”. Smart Mode ensures that the backup process does not overload your computers resources. If, however, you want to ensure that everything is backed up quickly, you should switch to Turbo Mode.

Depending on the amount of data you are backing up and the speed of your backup drive, the backup may take anything from a few minutes to hours to complete.

Recovery

The backup is only the first stage. Genie Timeline offers a very visual method of restoring files using a “timeline view”.

To launch the recovery programme, you select “Timeline Explorer” from the Windows Explorer favourites bar.

Alternatively, you can select “Restore from Timeline” from the Genie Timeline dashboard.

Once Windows Explorer launches the recovery timeline you will notice a timeline below the address bar. Using this you are able to go “back in time” and view deleted files and folders and older versions of files. You can restore any file or folder by using the context menu.

Finally, you can also click on “Show Versions” to restore older versions of a file.

Advanced Features

Although the basic settings are sufficient to ensure all your data is backed up, there are a number of advanced settings that allow you to tweak your backup exactly how you want.

Click on File > Preferences to launch the settings panel.

The General tab gives you the option to enable and disable updates.

The Windows Explorer Enhancement tab gives you the option to show and hide certain files and folders, most importantly the ability to show and hide hidden files and folders.

The Auto-Exclude tab allows you to exclude specific files and folders including “hidden files”. You need to leave this unchecked if you wish to backup your hidden files (such as the AppData folder). The auto-exclude list is quite useful, however I have found it to not work all the time, so be careful when excluding folders.

Conclusion

Genie Timeline is a robust application providing a speedy method for backing up all your data. The free version is sufficient for most cases, however, the Home and Pro versions do offer some benefits including the ability to encrypt and compress data, the option to specify the backup frequency, the option to automatically purge data when the disc becomes full, the ability to create a Smart Disaster Recovery disc (helpful when your computer has completely crashed) and many other features.

I personally find the timeline view useful when I visually want to see what data I want to recover. It is much easier to flick “back in time” and see what files/folders I previously deleted and then simply restore them. This above all else has made Genie Timeline my default backup application.

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Data Recovery Wizard Free Edition is a powerful data recovery software that allows you to recover 1 GB data free of charge. It solves all data loss problems – recover files emptied from Recycle Bin, or lost due to software crash, formatted or damaged hard drive, virus attack, lost partition and other unknown reasons under Windows 2000 / XP / 2003 / Vista / 2008 / 7. It recovers data from formatted partitions with original file names and storage paths. Moreover, the free data recovery software works well with dynamic disk, RAID and EXT2/EXT3 file system.

We have previously covered in detail about this data recovery software. I have only good words for it since it literally saved my life (it recovers my important files from a dead EXT3 hard disk).

Grab the software now while it is available.

Update: Received another email from the Easeus team that this is not a free giveaway, but the release of the Data Recovery Wizard Free Edition. This Free edition only allows you to recover 1 GB of file.

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