Free Software List for Vista

[sandrila]

I found great freeware form SE-SOFT for my PC and for my usb drive.
I use SE-TrayMenu to launch applications and manage shortcuts, SE-Screensavers (it's great collection with Matrix preset, 3d photo album and 7 other presets) and RssTools for RSS reading. Today it published new media player. I didn't try still but I think it can be good.
Vista and Windows 7 compatible of course

 

[MilesAhead]

ResizeExplorer

This is just an AutoIt3 compiled script I wrote that sits in the tray and moves and sizes the first Explorer window it sees. If your system has no problem remembering the Explorer size and position info, then you don't need it.

You can find more detail and a download link in this article:

ResizeExplorer 1.0 - DonationCoder.com

edit: note that I cut down the sleep interval between polling for the Explorer window to 1/10th second. Seems much snappier and still doesn't hog CPU.
If you notice CPU usage on your system over 1% then you can bump the number up a bit using the .ini file setting. I would recommend using 250 or 1/4 second as the most. That should calm CPU usage down and still give good response.

edit2: I updated this to v. 1.1.0.2 and it's available from my download page:
http://www.favessoft.com/downloads.html

I added a help file in TreePad format (use TreePad Lite 3.0 or better)
and a few features so that you don't have to manually edit the .ini file.
There's also a plain text Readme for those who don't want to install
TreePad.

 

[chimp78]

Wow, really appreciated all of these! Thanks!

 

[MilesAhead]

Toggle2

I wrote a small utility dedicated to Toggling the active window between 2 non-maximized sizes and positions, with a hotkey.

You can see details here:

Toggle2 v. 1.0 - DonationCoder.com

You can download directly from my site here:
Hotkeys

It's free for you to use at your own risk.

edit: added an option to the Tray Icon Menu.
To avoid letting go of the mouse, you may also
Shift Middle Mouse Click.

 

[MilesAhead]

Re: Toggle2

I wrote a small utility dedicated to Toggling the active window between 2 non-maximized sizes and positions, with a hotkey.

You can see details here:

Toggle2 v. 1.0 - DonationCoder.com

You can download directly from my site here:
Hotkeys

It's free for you to use at your own risk.

edit: added an option to the Tray Icon Menu.
To avoid letting go of the mouse, you may also
Shift Middle Mouse Click.

Updated to v. 1.3. Now non-folder application windows, such as Firefox, Notepad etc. have their position info saved to .ini file. Click the top link in the quoted section for details.

edit: updated to v. 1.5. See Readme.txt in download for change log.

 

[MilesAhead]

PlayTime

A programmer on another board, named skwire, was nice enough to write this utility at my request. It's called PlayTime. It gives info about media files, but the main feature is it totals the play time for all selected media files. You can set it to use the shell extension. Select some media files, right click and select "Add to PlayTime" etc..

It's a nice little utility. I've used it without problems on Vista64 and Win7 32 bit for quite awhile now.

Skwire Empire - PlayTime

 

[Katokato]

thats a very big list, did you write that all by hand or copy and paste?

 

[Brink]

Hello Kelvin,

While it was all done manually, some descriptions were copied and pasted from the program's website.

 

[Katokato]

okay, good long list =)

 

[Airbot]

I would remove the Quick Media Converter, in the list. You can't install it unless you either let it install the ask toolbar, or set your homepage/search provider as ask. And you have to kill it in task manager to cancel the installation.

 

[Brink]

Thank you Aaron. Removed.

 

[MilesAhead]

Here's an Auslogics Task Manager alternative:

Auslogics Blog » Auslogics Task Manager to Help You Control Your PC

Not super spiffy but it does show disk usage along with other resource data.

 

[sassofalco]

Here's an Auslogics Task Manager alternative:
Auslogics Blog » Auslogics Task Manager to Help You Control Your PC
Not super spiffy but it does show disk usage along with other resource data.

Thanks MilesAhead,

Yet another great little tool from Auslogics....thanks for the heads up on this one.

I downloaded the Portable version, installed it on one of my external hard drives, and it ran perfectly from there.

It has a basic sort of 'Windows type' presentation, but it does put a lot of useful information, right at the fingertips.

Nice one!

 

[MilesAhead]

Here's an Auslogics Task Manager alternative:
Auslogics Blog » Auslogics Task Manager to Help You Control Your PC
Not super spiffy but it does show disk usage along with other resource data.

Thanks MilesAhead,

Yet another great little tool from Auslogics....thanks for the heads up on this one.

I downloaded the Portable version, installed it on one of my external hard drives, and it ran perfectly from there.

It has a basic sort of 'Windows type' presentation, but it does put a lot of useful information, right at the fingertips.

Nice one!

I didn't think of that. I'll have to get going on some USB kits with portable suites. It does make quite a difference if you have a lot of utilities on your HD too that don't depend on the registry. I install a lot of small programs with .ini files under C:\Utils. That way if I do a Custom Install they don't get swept away with the stuff under Program Files(I realize I'm preaching to the choir, but ... )

 

[sassofalco]

I didn't think of that. I'll have to get going on some USB kits with portable suites. It does make quite a difference if you have a lot of utilities on your HD too that don't depend on the registry. I install a lot of small programs with .ini files under C:\Utils. That way if I do a Custom Install they don't get swept away with the stuff under Program Files(I realize I'm preaching to the choir, but ... )

Hey clever, MilesAhead......

......'good housekeeping', keeping all the crumbs off the bench and in a container of their own. Thanks for the great tip.

 

[MilesAhead]

DriveAlive

Here's one I just wrote to keep the drives in my docking stations from spinning down due to idle time-out:

DriveAlive

I just typed in a lengthy description on another board. Please take a look at the details if you wish:

DriveAlive 1.01 - DonationCoder.com


Here's a direct link to the download page on my site:

Faves Downloads

The download link is near the top of the page.

edit: btw if you have a Seagate or other external USB drive that doesn't have software to set the idle time-out(or disable it altogether) this should work just as well with those.

edit2: I updated this to v. 1.1. Get the latest from my web page. It not longer pops up an error dialog if you try to run a 2nd copy of the program. The 2nd copy just quits without the error box.

 

[pacinitaly]

Re: DriveAlive

Here's one I just wrote to keep the drives in my docking stations from spinning down due to idle time-out:

DriveAlive

I just typed in a lengthy description on another board. Please take a look at the details if you wish:

DriveAlive 1.01 - DonationCoder.com


Here's a direct link to the download page on my site:

Faves Downloads

The download link is near the top of the page.

edit: btw if you have a Seagate or other external USB drive that doesn't have software to set the idle time-out(or disable it altogether) this should work just as well with those.

YOU are the freakin MAN !!!

 

[MilesAhead]

Re: DriveAlive

Here's one I just wrote to keep the drives in my docking stations from spinning down due to idle time-out:

DriveAlive

I just typed in a lengthy description on another board. Please take a look at the details if you wish:

DriveAlive 1.01 - DonationCoder.com


Here's a direct link to the download page on my site:

Faves Downloads

The download link is near the top of the page.

edit: btw if you have a Seagate or other external USB drive that doesn't have software to set the idle time-out(or disable it altogether) this should work just as well with those.

edit2: I updated this to v. 1.1. Get the latest from my web page. It not longer pops up an error dialog if you try to run a 2nd copy of the program. The 2nd copy just quits without the error box.

btw I updated to v. 1.2
Now it's written in AutoHotKey. You don't have to kill the app in the Tray to run with new params. Just launch a 2nd copy and it will replace the Tray app automatically.

Also has a smaller memory footprint. The latest is on my page. Softpedia should update in a day or so.

 

[MilesAhead]

PromptHere 1.0

PromptHere is a variation on the old Command Prompt Here utility.

Rather than use a Registry entry I coded it as a Tray Hotkey.
No install. Unzip exe and readme to an empty folder.
It creates no Registry entries, .ini files, or any additional files.
You may want to create a shortcut for your StartUp or
TaskBar.

Usage: Run in Tray. Alt Middle Mouse Click opens a prompt for
folder(s) selected in Explorer. Each prompt has the respective
selected folder as the current directory.

It is free for you to use at your own risk. Available right now
from my hotkeys page:

Hotkeys

 

[MilesAhead]

Note if you are using Selector, FolderCache or ReOpen utilities I've written, I've fixed a bug introduced in the previous update where running a second instance of the program would cause it to zero out the data file(s) as it exited.

Please update to the latest on my hotkeys page.
Sorry for any inconvenience.

The latest AutoIt3 version made changes in the automatic function
call system as programs exit. I made a logical error in all three of
these utilities when I updated and recompiled with the latest AutoIt3.
All 3 should work as expected now.

You can download the latest from this page:

http://www.favessoft.com/hotkeys.html

Please use file versions shown in this changes list, or newer, for these 3 utilities, to avoid the regresion:

http://www.favessoft.com/changes.html#FolderCache

(My site has the newest versions of course. Just use the about function to get the file version to know if you're running old code.)

Sorry for the confusion. After a bit I should be acclimated to the new AutoIt3 release.