Quickly launch your favourite applications using Executor
There are various ways you can launch applications from our PC. One option is to create a shortcut on our desktop, another is to launch via the Start Menu or from the shortcut area within the Taskbar. However, there must be a more innovative way of launching applications, particularly applications that we don't launch very often? You would have thought Microsoft or Apple would have created a system where you can assign keywords to your favourite applications, to launch them more quickly.
Executor 0.91b is such a system. It's a simple text entry search-type bar where you can enter keywords. Many of the words have already been assigned to applications by the developer. For instance entering 'ie' launches Internet Explorer, whilst 'display' will start the Display Properties box. You can assign your own keywords and the software will auto-complete, so you only have to enter the first few words to find your desired application.
Only a few years ago, when you joined an Internet Service Provider (ISP), you were offered customised Internet software to connect to their services. The most famous of these is the Demon Turnpike software, which is still being made available to Demon customers. Why did ISPs offer integrated Internet software? Primarily as it was still difficult to configure Windows for accessing the Internet and configuring your modem with the right user, pass, dialup number and DNS servers was complicated for the novice user. These integrated Internet suites consisted of a dialup manager, web browser, email client and a tool to chat to other users.
Why are so many people still using Internet Explorer? That confuses a lot of people. I guess it's a combination of familiarity and the fact that people trust brands (ie Microsoft) rather than open-source or individual developers. The thing is, gone is the day when websites still require Internet Explorer to enable complete access. There's the occasional banking website that will require Internet Explorer, but that's becoming a rarity.
When you purchase and download music from the Apple iTunes music store, the tracks are protected with a custom version of the AAC-based DRM (digital rights management), which will control where and how you playback your audio. For instance, these tracks can't be played back on a rival MP3 player, only an Apple iPod. That's absolutely fine if you're happy with your iTunes<>iPod combination (and, quite frankly, most of those users are happy), but if you want to have complete control over your music, you might prefer to purchase a CD, rip the tracks and put the music wherever you want.
Windows users will know the primary choice for creating file archives is the ZIP format. Basic support for opening ZIP archives is built in to Windows and Mac OS X and it's probably the most universal format available. However, there are plenty of alternatives, including the RAR format, which has been around for longer than most others and can be open/accessed by most archive management tools. It offers more control and security over your archives and better compression.
If you have a USB extender, as you have more than three or four USB devices, you might find that you quickly lose control over the devices connected to your computer. Often there's no quick and easy (or obvious) way of knowing which device is connected to which USB port and, if you need to safely remove the device, knowing which device is the one you want to remove.
How many of us own a web camera but use it for nothing in particular? Yes, there's always the option to use it with something like Skype or MSN Messenger, but do you really like the idea of someone else seeing you looking unwashed on a Sunday morning? Thought not. Most of us still prefer the anonymity of the phone or typing through messaging, rather than appearing on a webcam. However, you could use your webcam to monitor the security in your room or a room in your house.
There are a number of key tools missing from Windows and have been addressed within recent editions of Mac OS X. One of these is a basic font manager. A tool that would enable you to view your installed fonts, remove duplicates (or unnecessary fonts), add further fonts and quickly preview font collections. The Mac OS X font manager is still basic, but is better than nothing.
There are times when you need to download large files and you'll leave them running either overnight or whilst you have dinner. You get back to your browser and find the download has either finished (early) or has stopped downloading. The only way around this is to start the download again. What you need is a download manager which will enable you to manage multiple downloads, resume downloads that have stopped downloading and speed up downloads by sourcing them from multiple locations.
There are loads of visual themes for Windows XP, although it takes a lot of time to customise the operating system to your requirements. Windows Vista ships with a host of new technologies, as well as a brand new user-interface. You can take these interface elements and add them to your existing Windows XP, giving it the look and feel of Vista.
It's extremely rare to lose data from your hard drive. Since Windows XP, the operating system is also very stable and applications such as Microsoft Word will perpetually auto-save your documents, in case your system needs to reboot or an application causes a crash. However, you use your hard drive constantly and it only has a finite life span. If you've owned your system for a few years, you never know when performance will decrease or your drive will pack in completely. If this happens, you might find that you lost all your data and more.
Every copy of Windows contains a number of tools and functions that are not easily accessible by the end user. Tools such as an optimisation or tweaking tool will enable access to these functions, but you need to know what you're doing to use the tool. Windows Vista is no different, the same optimisation, tweaking and other functions are built in to this operating system.
Who said that you need to use Internet Explorer to browse the web? Still, over 80% of people still use the browser as their primary choice for web browsing, even though Firefox and Opera are more regularly updated, contain more modern features and a wide number of extensions. It would be superb if there was a way of browsing Internet Explorer only content (such as your bank's website) through a browser such as Mozilla Firefox.
If you just want to write some simple notes or edit plain text, you will probably find yourself working with Windows Notepad. It's so basic and hasn't really changed much for years. There is no code syntax, you can't work with multiple projects unless you open multiple versions of Notepad and there's no additional support for programming code.
There are some software titles that, once installed and used for an amount of time, you can't live without. 
How many of us go on holiday and feel the urge to take our work with us? How many of us feel that we need access to our email, might need to finish some work, need to be in contact with the office or simply feel we'll be lost without our laptop, even though we probably won't end up using it at all. Dragging even the lightest laptop, charger, mouse and more with you can be a real strain. Then there's the chance it might be stolen whilst you're away, ruining your break.
If the free space you were given when you signed up to your ISP isn't enough for you to use for backing up your important data, supplying files to your family and friends or for your commercial store, you could justify your own server. You can purchase a server for as little as £30/month and often ship with unlimited bandwidth, so it doesn't matter how many times you upload and download from your space. The snag is, how do you manage the contents of the server?
There are times when you'll need to backup your drive contents, occasions when you'll want to partition a drive and the odd moment when need to copy or replicate a drive. Often you'll hunt around for software to perform these functions, in the manner required. However, individual commercial partition management, hard disk backup and drive replication software isn't cheap. A better option would be to purchase a complete suite of tools, integrated within one interface.
How many people draft their ideas on paper, working out a way forward for a particular project or set of ideas? The notes become so unwieldy, it becomes difficult to follow your initial train of thought. One option is to use a professional drawing tool to map our your ideas, plans and thoughts. As business drawing packages are shipped with hundreds of different objects, it's as simple as placing an object on the page and then linking to another.
If we backup our data, most of us just select our most important files and folders, then either burn the contents to disc or upload to a remote server. Often we forget to do this regularly and we don't always realise that a system crash would mean that you have to spend hours finding, installing and re-configuring all your applications. What happens to your preferences, installed fonts and other system-related files?
Why bother installing multiple security applications when you can install an all-in-one solution? One problem with individual apps is that they can interfere with each other. It's been known that an anti-spyware app from one commercial organisation will warn that an anti-spyware tool from a rival organisation is actual malicious software. Worse, sometimes the individual apps slow down your computer as they struggle to interact with each other.
We know of an easy way to create a professional website, without having to understand the code the makes up the web pages. Well, ok, you might need to know some basics, but essentially you can produce a site within minutes. How is this possible? Through a template-driven web design tool. Simply pick a template that meets your requirements, then make the pages around the templates. Drop in the images you require, write some basic text, upload to your homepage and you've got a site.
Even with the fastest broadband connection, how many times have you started downloading a large file, for it to stop at 75%. With a standard download, you will have to restart the download, from scratch. However, there are alternative options. A download manager will enable you to maximise your bandwidth, download from more than one source and resume downloads that you've either stopped or have stopped themselves, whilst you've left your computer download overnight.
If anyone has installed Windows Desktop Search or used Windows Vista, you'll know that you can find files and folders on your computer, within seconds, by entering the name (or part of the name) and performing a search. The results are almost instant, unlike the old Windows 'search' tool. However, these tools are still a little limited and won't search through alternative email and other clients, such as Thunderbird. You're limited to Microsoft-orientated products.
Trying to get different computers talking to each other isn't always easy. You could buy a simple 2-metre Ethernet cross-over cable, but then you're limited to this cable, two computers and situating the machines in the same room. Ideal if you're simply transferring files in one move, not ideal if you need to set up ongoing network so you can configure your own internal home network. You might want to swap files internally, use a networked printer and more.
Most of us would class ourselves as legitimate music buyers, whether we choose to purchase a CD or via an online music store. Either way (or both), it's easy to build up an extensive music collection. However, if you're a serious music fan, you are almost certain to have found, downloaded and want to manage many rare and live tracks by your favourite artists. In all honesty, there are many live tracks available between fans that have never been made available for purchase - often these are called 'bootleg' recordings/tracks and fall in to a grey area of legitimacy. Either way, like most music fans, you'll want to find music management software that will collect together all your tracks and support multiple formats.
It's rather stunning to see some modern web designers refer to themselves as 'web developers' when they barely understand HTML, never mind more advanced web code. Seriously - whilst old school web designers spent their time learning HTML, Javascript, CSS and hand-coding pages through Homesite, Dreamweaver and other tools, modern new media designers prefer the WYSIWYG and tools that enable you to code up pages using templates, rather than getting in to the code. However, to get the most from any commercial website, you really need to be able to understand the majority of the code basics behind your web pages.
Have you ever wondered about the overall performance of your computer and how it possibly compares to other systems? Could you do anything about your system in order to improve performance - for instance, would a new graphics card help improve the performance of games on your PC? Either way, there are tools available that will enable you to run a diagnostic check and system analysis on either your entire PC or individual components.
Project management is a full-time professional role and builders, architects and similar trades employ a project manager to make sure that their projects are managed correctly and completed on time. Any slippage can cost the company thousands, so the position pays for itself. However, a project manager wouldn't be expected to maintain the tasks involved within the project, on a pad of paper or even within their head. They'd use a professional project management tool.
If you've used Microsoft Outlook, you'll know that it starts download email and then writes to the (PST) database file close to downloading your last mail. If anything happens when you're downloading this email, it will download the same email again when you restart your computer. Another duplicate scenario is where someone sends you the same email to multiple email addresses, or simply resends it more than once. Either way, you'll end up with the same email multiple times. Add these together, along with all your spam, and you'll soon find that you have hundreds or thousands of emails to work through.
Whilst many of us attempt to remember the meeting we need to attend, our constantly changing 'to do' list and keep our work/life balance in order, other people are much more organised and calculated. We wonder how they manage to balance their lifestyle. One way is to use a personal information manager (PIM) which will enable you to track your meetings, tasks, 'to do' items, contacts and other information. If you want a basic PIM, you won't want to pay top-dollar.
You only need to take your digital camera on holiday, give it to your kids for the weekend and you'll soon find they've taken hundreds of photos. You can't easily process these within the camera, so the only alternative is to download them all to your computer and then decide which ones you want to keep, sort or print and give them to the family. To do this, you need a commercial-grade photo manager, which will enable you to import and manage your collection.
If you had to write a list of essential applications, an archive manager would be on that list. Whether you download an archive from the Internet and need to access the contents, or want to create your own archive to send to other users, you'll need an application to manage these files. There are loads of archive management tools around and both Windows and Mac OS has support for extracting files from ZIP archives, built in to the latest operating system.
There are many tools out there to cleanse your system, repair your Registry and optimise/tweak your PC. However, which tools performs the best? Do you really need a separate cleansing and optimisation tool? Ideally you'd find a tool that combined options for cleansing your system and optimising your Registry within one interface and that would start when you boot your computer. You'd know that the optimisation is being applied behind scenes.
For years, the Start Menu has been fairly customisable, but you're limited to using different themes, Start icons and the flexibility that Windows enables to make changes to how your Start menu will appear on your system. If you're one of the many people who has multiple applications stored on your computer, you might want to group these together within one directory, then link to the applications from this grouped directory. You could have a directory named 'Internet', then include your favourite Internet applications.
In 2007 there are still key tools missing from Windows Vista. For instance, as most PCs ship with a very large hard drive, you might find that your new PC ships with a drive partitioned in one large continuous block or as multiple drives. Either way, you'll probably want to make changes. If you have a scenario where you have a drive that's partitioned to support Windows and Linux, it makes it more tricky to make changes within Windows. One solution is to find a self-contained tool that enables you to boot and make changes, outside of Windows.
There are so many 'buy 3 get 1 free' and similar DVD promotions that many of us have far more DVDs than we realise. Indeed, as old DVDs are available for around £5, it's difficult to remember what we've purchased in the past, lent to friends or what's on our shelves. What you need is a DVD and video cataloguing tool that will enable you to create an extensive database of your collection. Better still, you can then box up and move some of your collection to the loft and make room for new DVDs.
When you insert a CD in your drive, if the autoplay function is switched on, an end-user should see an interface enabling them to choose from a selection of options. If the user is a novice user, this is the best way for them to install your software from a CD you produce for distribution purposes. Most novice users avoid using Explorer and you don't want them trying to navigate through your CD contents. However, producing a CD that will autorun, with a professional interface, isn't easy. What tool do you use to produce a disc interface?
Designing web pages that work across multiple browser on different operating systems, isn't always easy. Whilst you're coding up your pages, you can preview your work, locally, but it's not always the same as previewing your pages, live, after you have uploaded them to your server.
If you use your computer all day, every day, system components only have a finite lifespan. If your graphics card goes down, that's replaceable. If your monitor stops working, it's far from being a disaster. However, if you're hard drive stops working, you might not be able to salvage your important data, files and installed applications. Short of sending it to a professional drive salvaging company, you could be stuffed.
Although some of us can manage our diary and schedule without requiring to write anything down on paper, most of us are less fortunate. We have post-it notes all over our computer screen, write notes on pads of paper and keep a pile of notes and invoices with the attention of going through them in the future. Nothing is prioritise and working this way can lead to confusion.