TECH RESET » PC

My new favorite screenshot tool

Admin — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 19:54:19 +0000

In just a matter of a couple of weeks, I’ve discovered three different screenshot capturing tools, each one better than the next… and my new favorite is ScreenCatch. A tiny 193KB tool.

Captures the entire screen with a single click and then allows for cropping before uploading the image and hosting it for free.

Easiest way to install apps on a fresh Windows install

Admin — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 20:42:34 +0000

Most definitely the easiest way to install all your basic apps after a fresh install of Windows is using Ninite. You simply go to the website, select some popular apps you would install anyways (like Winamp, iTunes, Firefox, Adobe Acrobat Reader, uTorrent, WinRar) and the site checks for the latests version of those apps and then gives you a package to download of all of those apps, and then runs all their default installations disabling all the annoying installation options like ad-ware, toolbars, etc. And done!

Best software you may have not heard of

Admin — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 17:18:05 +0000

Great topic over at reddit.com asking “What’s your favorite software that no one has heard of“. I’m discovering and discovering a lot of gems as we speak.

Remobo: Hamachi alternative for the Mac?

Admin — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 07:38:04 +0000

When LogMeIn acquired Hamachi, I was hoping that they would release an official Hamachi client for OS X, but unfortunately they didn’t. I was looking for an alternative secure easy-configuration file sharing solution to use between Windows 7 64-bit and OS X Snow Leopard, and for a moment I thought I had found the solution in Remobo. It works on both OS’s and has most of the features Hamachi had, but it’s just not quite like browsing shared folders over VPN.

It’s still a great little app and some might find it useful.

Fixed: View Canon CR2 Raw file thumbnails in Windows 7 64-bit

Admin — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 10:32:32 +0000

So apparently Canon hasn’t gotten around to writing a Windows 7 64-bit compatible driver for viewing their digital camera CR2 RAW images as thumbnails in Windows Explorer. Easy fix: these guys at FastPictureViewer have it as a free download here.

CMS/Blogging software packages not needing a database

Admin — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 09:53:10 +0000

I run this site on Wordpress but a small project came up where I wanted to research some database-less CMS / blogging alternatives (still need PHP, just no databases to store the content).

After researching this a bit, the two I’ll be trying first are:

GetSimple
SkyBlue

And some others I came across and may try next:

Fixed: Gmail Notifier Won’t Connect

Admin — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 23:43:33 +0000

I use Gmail Notifier on my desktop PC so that Gmail handles all mailto: links, but I don’t really care for it as a notifier. But if you do install it and get the error message ”Cannot connect to your mailbox”, it may be because you’ve set your Gmail account to only use https, which the notifier is incompatible. So Google has a Windows registry fix/patch for that. Problem solved.

My New Favorite Bandwidth Monitor: NetWorx

Admin — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 02:27:36 +0000

For years I’ve been using Bandwidth Monitor Pro but for whatever reason it became buggy when I upgraded to Windows 7. It wasn’t correctly detecting my network cards and interfaces and rather than troubleshooting I decided to look for a free alternative and finally chose NetWorx (free, PC-only). Somehow, I had overlooked this particular bandwidth monitor in my searches the last couple years. And all the other apps that were coming up in my searches were inferior

NetWorx actually has more features than Bandwidth Monitor Pro, but most important to me is it’s simple and straightforward graph. I almost always keep this graph up because it helps me avoid getting frustrated over browsing and downloading slowdowns or videos buffering. This way, if I see no obvious drops in the visual graph of my connection, I get to more accurately place the blame on YouTube’s slow servers or slow torrent seeders.

Screenshots below of how I like my graph and of one of the settings tabs.

I still use VNC once in a while

Admin — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 05:29:14 +0000

My first choice for remote controlling my main home desktop/server (running Windows 7) is Windows Remote Desktop Connection. As a backup I also have that computer running LogMeIn for when firewalls block RDC or if I want to log in via a browser. And while those two have replaced VNC which I used exclusively years ago, I still use VNC for when I want to log in and remotely control a computer as is… without it having changing resolutions or desktop settings the way it would to accommodate LogMeIn or RDC. For example, I use it when I am watching a movie or playing music from on the main computer and want to change something in the media player without interrupting whatever is playing.

In those cases, my preferred choices are UltraVNC as the PC server, and Chicken of the VNC as my VNC viewer from my Mac notebook.

Fixed: M-Audio Fast Track Pro drops out

Admin — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 22:22:24 +0000

My primary audio card on my desktop PC is an M-Audio Fast Track Pro and after I had upgraded to the retail version of Windows 7, it would periodically just stop working (dropout). The sound would not play and some videos would refuse to play since no audio output was available. This would usually happen after I had been away from my computer for a few hours, meaning after no sound had been played for a while. I suspected it might be shutting off after inactivity, but it would also happen only a couple minutes after the most recent audio was played.

I did the usual and made sure I had the latest drivers, uninstalled, reinstalled the device, changed USB ports, etc. I also followed some advice on the M-Audio forums including checking for IRQ conflicts. But the problem persisted, and I finally went to check what I had suspected all along: Windows’ USB power management

THE FIX: Go to Device Manager > Universal Serial Bus controllers > and then right click Properties on all instances of USB Root Hub, and in the Power Management tab, make sure the first option is unchecked. (Source: M-Audio FAQ)