Category Archives: Freeware Reviews

Easily backup your datas and save some energy: two interesting freeware for XP and Vista!

This week, in our Freeware Page, we posted a review about two interesting freeware for Windows: FBackup and edison. FBackup is a powerful software which allows you to easily manage and plan your backups. All the menus are very intuitive and it is possible to back up files also when they are in use. Fbackup is very well structured and allows you to decide when, what, how (zip files or exact copies) and when backup your datas. On the other hand, edison is a simple freeware, developed to helpXP and Vista users to save more energy. Edison contains some simple setups which allow you to determine the best energy “saving” configuration depending your needs. This program can not be considered “revolutionary” but certainly helps to organize our PC, in a more efficient way. To conclude, we really think that using this freeware, we could benefit of some budget savings (in theory it is even possible to calculate your saving when using the dedicated menu). Recommended!

How to easily check HD health using a cross platform software: GSmartControl 0.8.3

1 Reply

GSmartControl is a multiplatform (Windows, OS X, Linux) freeware drive health inspection tool which is very useful in all that case when you think something is not working perfectly on your HD. Today, in our Linux Page (in Spanish) we have posted a brief comment about this software which basically is the graphical user interface for smartct. The program is very intuitive and easy to use; it automatically detects all your internal HDs (with some external USB disks we had some problems because they were detected as unknown) and let you decide if you want to activate the SMART feature. This particular feature let you “predict certain kinds of failures with certain chance of success” so you have a better chance to avoid HD crashes and all the consequent data loss. If you prefer, clicking on the “Enable Auto Offline Data Collection” the HDs will be tested every four hours without impacting your CPU performance. I would like to focus your attention that GSmartControl is very well developed and it is possible to download many “personalized” versions for all the main Linux distributions, OS X and Windows. Last but not least, do not forget that SMART could predict some HD crashes but it is not 100% safe; for this reason we strongly recommend you to backup your PCs, at least every week!

How to create a terrific slideshow in just three steps using Animoto.

Leave a reply

This week, in our Freeware Page, we have posted some brief comments about the free part of services offered by Animoto, a Web 2.0 website which allows you to create short free multimedia slideshows. Using Animoto, it is possible to make a 30 seconds video clip which directly melts your images/photographs with a soundtrack you can freely select in their data bank. The link of the video will be sent directly to your email and to all your friends if you prefer. Obviously, a paid subscription allows you to obtain longer videos with HD quality but, after some tests, we were actually satisfied from the Animoto slideshow we had obtained without paying anything. It is a pity we had so many problems when we decided to use Linux OSs to test Animoto… Something to try if you like to show some photos on your website (especially if you have a dark background).

How to install XBMC on Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex

Leave a reply

This week, in our Linux Page (in Spanish), we posted a brief tutorial about installing XBMC on Ubuntu 8.10. As you certainly know, XBCM is a complete Media Center based on Ubuntu. This program is multiplatform (Linux, Windows, OS X and also XBOX – not officially supported-) and, in our opinion, is the most efficient and complete open source media center you can find today on the Internet. Moreover, XBMC has developed a special version that could be installed on a USB Key on a Live CD to freely test the application before installing on your PC. The post is brief but contains all the complete instructions to quickly install XBMC without problems. Please, be sure to digit sudo apt-get update in Terminal after you install the new repositories. Recommended!!

Do not spend money for professional hardware when you can create your hi-tech router with less than 50 bucks!!

Leave a reply

This week, in our Freeware Page, we have posted a brief review about Tomato and DD-WRT two unofficial firmwares to upgrade your router into a professional machine which allows you to properly manage and strengthen your wi-fi signal. Surfing in Internet we found more manuals for DD-WRT than for Tomato. On one side it is possible to affirm that DD-WRT is more flexible for traditional home users than Tomato which has been developed for more professional users. On the other side when you read the “Supported hardware” of both the websites it is clear that DD-WRT is able to support many more devices than Tomato but we really were satisfied for all the test we made with both the firmwares on a old Linksys WRT 54G v.2. If your device supports both the firmwares we really suggest to spend a couple of days for testing them and decide what is the best for your needs. Recommended for all that people who do not like to waste money!

NoteCase: a simple multiplatform (Linux, Windows, OS X) freeware to preserve the privacy of your notes!

1 Reply

Today in our Freeware Page we added a brief post about NoteCase a powerful note editor for Linux. In our tests we installed NoteCase on a Ubuntu 8.04 with positive results. This free software allows you to write complex notes dividing them between “nodes” and, if you need, it is also possible to easily create child notes at each level. Moreover, using NoteCase you can insert images and links to your text. Using NoteCase, for complex projects, you can decide to insert tag in each node and find them in just few clicks with the “Find” feature. Last, but not least, when you save your notes, you can decide to save them into an encrypted file. In few wordsNoteCase is one of the best freeware to manage notes using different OS without risks. Recommended!

Three interesting extensions to enjoy a real Web 2.0 experience with OpenOffice 3.0

Leave a reply

After more or less a month from its release, the new OpenOffice 3.0 is receiving tons of positive comments. Anyway, this week, in our Freeware page, we have posted some brief notes abut three different extensions which are able to improve your effectivenss in office routines. First of all we have ooo2gd a simple menu bar which allows you to directly upload or download all kind of documents from Google Documents and Zoho. The second one is the Sun PDF Import Extension which has been created to allow minimal but useful changes to PDF documents. After few minutes we were able to make some interesting changes to a complex PDF documents with just a couple of clicks and export the result “into a hybrid PDF file, which is a PDF with the embedded source file asODF “. Last but not least we tested Sun Presentation Minimizer: an effective extensions which cuts the size of presentations reducing, for example, the image sizes. Using Sun Presentation Minimizer you will be able to simply and freely decide what kind of changes you want to make to your multimedia files contained in the presentations. To conclude it is necessary to focus your attention on the feature that also allows Sun Presentation Minimizer to work on Microsoft PowerPoint presentations. In few words we think that these extensions are guaranteed to be 100% satisfactory!!

Jeteye: a versatile online free bookmark service for your links and related stuff.

1 Reply

This week, in our Freeware Page, we posted a brief review about Jeteye, an interesting add-on for Firefox which we have tested few days ago. First of all, it is necessary to highlight that Jeteye is a free online service you can join in just few minutes. The Firefox plugin is available directly from the Firefox add-ons site. Personally, we were really delighted by Jeteye because we were able to create virtual folders, divided by topics, were we put not only links but also all the stuff we were selecting about a specific task (e.g. photographs). Using Jeteye you can create all the folders you want and, if you prefer, you can decide to share them with all the web-surfers or just with your friends. Unfortunately, at the moment there is not any possibility to migrate the info collected in Jeteye to Firefox bookmarks or to other online free services; de facto this represents a real limitation to the possibilities of this software. In fact, after some days of tests we would like moving some data to our desktop Firefox but we could only open each link and manually bookmark it one by one. Interesting add-on!

Symbaloo: a new interesting web portal to improve your time efficiency in internet!

Leave a reply

This week in our Freeware Page we posted a review about Symbaloo: a new interactive web portal which allows you to directly manage many everyday tasks directly on the web. As soon as you register yourself on Symbaloo you are able to freely modify your personalized Symbaloo, adding new features or deleting the default ones. Symbaloo is an interactive grid with 60 different squares (each of them hosts a different feature) and a central rectangle where some of your features can directly be visualized. Symbaloo is very flexible and allows you to deeply personalized itself. During our test we did not find any bugs and we were able to insert the 95% of the the features we planned to create there. Moreover, clicking on the plus (+) button on the upper left corner you can create a Symbaloo news page or share a new Symbaloo public page with your friends. Just to know, Symbaloo is available in The Netherlands, Spain, France, the UK and the US in beta. To sum up, it is possible to affirm that at the end of a three days test we do think that Symbaloo can really contribute to reduce time wasted on routine internet tasks. Something to try!

Pictomio: the most advanced photo and video manager for Windows

Leave a reply

This week, in our Freeware Page we have posted a brief review about Pictomio a very good program for “3D accelerated browsing of your photo and video”. Pictomio is more advanced than many similar software and its graphic appearance is very attractive. Pictomio has a full range of commands which allow you to easily organize and manage your photographs collections in at just few clicks. I spent, more or less, one hour to understand all (I suppose) the different features supported by this freeware and, at the end, I can say that my experience has been more than positive. What negatively surprised me is that Pictomio does not allow you to upload your images and videos to ftp servers or websites like Flickr .com. To sum up, Pictomio is something you have certainly to try because in the future with more social features it could become a benchmark for photo and video manager category. Interesting!