Tag Archives: portable

Quickly Launch A File Type With An Alternative Or Portable App Using Coffee

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Often when you hear the word coffee, what exactly does come to your mind? Is it that energizing warmth of winters, or the refreshing aroma you simply find irresistible? Whatever it may be, the app we're about to review has nothing to do with your daily dose of caffeine. Coffee is an open-source portable application for Windows that allow you to associate different applications with a single file type (based on its extension), so that you can easily open any file of that type with either of those applications without having to use the 'Open with' entry of the right-click context menu. To keep things simple, you can assign two different apps to a single file type, allowing you to open a file in secondary app whenever needed by holding the ALT key while double-clicking it. This can be extremely useful if you have a set of portable applications that you want to use for opening files on the go; you can simply carry Coffee on the same flash drive as those apps and run it first on the computer you're using, and it will open your configured file types in the apps you have associated with those files in Coffee. Read More

Delete All Empty Folders In A Directory From Its Right-Click Menu

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Empty folders are a nuisance, especially empty folders within other empty ones. They make it harder to search for something important. Usually, I’m content with letting them be, because locating each and every empty folder on your system just isn’t worth the bother. Tools like Empty Folder Cleaner speed up the process a great deal, but their bulky interfaces and extra features can prove to be a handful for some. If you want to satisfy your cleaning instinct with nothing more than a click, try out Sub4Del - a nifty, semi-portable tool that lets you delete all empty sub-folders within a directory of choice right from its right-click context menu. Read More

PC Hunter Consolidates Every Bit Of System Information Under One Hood

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System information tools come in all shapes and size, and we've covered plenty of them in the past such as SIW, i-Nex, Speccy and countless others. If you’re a power user who wants to view detailed PC information for various purposes, try PC Hunter. It’s a portable program that puts a whole lot of useful system related information at your disposal. The application is designed to aid advanced users in detecting and removing malwares from their system, as well as access deep-level information related to the registry, hardware and software components, kernel modules, network, startup programs and much more. Read More

Light Alloy Is A Portable Video Player With Borderless Viewing & Advanced Scheduler

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Audio and video players come in all shapes and sizes. While some people like to stick with the native Windows Media Player, many choose to go for third-party alternatives that offer a lot more features and options. I personally like to use KMPlayer as my default application for watching videos, as it plays back any format you can throw at it, provides easy navigation and volume controls, and offers a plethora of options related to every aspect of audio and video playback including subtitle and audio syncing, and a lot more. Other video players boast their own specific features, such as QuickPlay that has support for playing videos of up to 4K resolution, and the world-famous open-source VLC Player that packs with a large number of widely known as well as little-known features. Light Alloy is yet another media player for Windows that comes with simple playback controls, borderless viewing, switchable skins and multi-language support for English, German, Japanese, Romanian, Chinese and more. The navigation bar displays a timeline so you can see exactly how much playing time has passed, and the player supports Blu-Ray playback as well. More on Light Alloy after the jump. Read More

Explorer++ Is A Light, Portable & Multi-Tabbed Windows File Manager

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On any computer platform, a good file browser is a integral part of a smooth user experience. Although Windows Explorer provides you with a lot of useful options to view, search and access your content, many power users require more than that to efficiently organize their files and folders, and quickly transfer their content between multiple folders. Explorer++ is a great portable and lightweight third-party file browser for Windows that has been around for a while and has recently received an update, fixing several bugs and making it more stable. It provides you with tabbed browsing, complete integration with the operating system, ability to split and merge files, search files with name and attribute filters, and a lot more. Read More

Turn Your USB Drive Into A Portable Apps Launcher & Media Manager

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Have you ever wanted to take your favorite Windows apps with you and use them wherever you have an access to any Windows PC ? CodySafe is what you’re looking for! It’s a handy portable applications manager that lets you install portable apps on a USB thumb drive or external portable drive. Both the software itself and the downloaded apps are directly installed to your flash drive. In addition, you can carry you favorite media files with you in its pre-configured and well-organized Music, Pictures, Videos and Documents folders. You may also enable the integrated autorun option for CodySafe to automatically launch itself as soon as you plug in the drive. Likewise, the installed apps can be set to auto-execute similarly as well. Read More

Swap Names Of Files And Folders From Right-Click Context Menu

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Sometimes, when you want to rename a file to something else, a message pops up telling you that the desired name is already taken by another file in the same location. In this situation, what you would normally do would be changing the name of the first file to something else, then renaming the required one with the title of choice. Instead of going through that hassle every time you come across such a situation, you can use a small tool called Swap’em. It is a portable tool that can be used to quickly and easily swap the names of two files or folders either by using the file context menu or by dropping items onto the application’s interface. Apart from swapping names of two files, it allows you to do the same for a file and folder combination. Read More

Maximize A Window To Auto-Fit Screen Space Between Other Windows

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Aero Snap is one of the Windows features that I use the most while working. The ability to open multiple windows at a time and snap them to the left and right side of your screen makes certain tasks a lot easier to do. Especially if you have a large monitor, the feature can help you take full advantage of the extra screen space, and in a quick, convenient way. Several third party tools have been developed to enhance Aero Snap and allow advanced window arrangement options. We have covered several of these desktop window management utilities here at AddictiveTips; for example, reSizer and GridMove, both of which provide you with quite a few options to rearrange windows in a grid. However, sometimes you just need a simple solution that feels more natural and is easy to understand. WinMaximumize perfectly fits that description. This simple tool lets you maximize an active window in such a way that it consumes all the free screen space left over by other windows. Read More

How To Create A Portable Windows 8 Enterprise To Go Workspace

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If you’re an avid Linux user, then you may be familiar with the Linux Live CD/USB, which makes it possible to use a Linux distribution without having to go through the hassle of installing it on your primary storage device. Linux distros such as Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian, Mint OS, etc., all provide an easy way to load the OS into the computer’s memory using just a bootable CD or USB drive. Windows, on the other hand, is devoid of such a feature, or has been, until now. The enterprise version of Windows 8 implements a fairly new concept of booting and running a fully-manageable Windows Enterprise OS from a USB drive using the Windows To Go feature. Read More

Batch-Rename Files By Custom Rules & Add Media Metadata To Names With FiRE

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When trying to rename files in Windows, we only have two options - we can either rename files one by one, or select all required files and rename them at once. Howwever, renaming in bulk will give all the files the same name with serial numbers at the end, which is why most users take help from third-party tools for batch-renaming purposes. FiRE is a portable file renaming Windows application that allows users to set file renaming rules and patterns to rename groups of files in one go. Like other renaming tools, it offers modes that append a specific keyword to existing file names, change its position in the file name and insert blank spaces. Additionally, you can use the metadata file rename mode to append metadata such as artist, year of release and album name to the names of multimedia files. Read More

Change Appearance Settings For Taskbar Thumbnail Previews In Windows 8

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The taskbar thumbnails in Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8 allow you to have a preview of all the open applications without actually bringing them up onto the desktop. This is especially useful when you have multiple windows of the same application open at the same time. For instance, if you have a lot of instances of Windows Explorer open on your desktop, switching between each one of them in order to find out which one you want to bring up is probably going to take a lot of time. Using taskbar thumbnails, you can easily get an idea about the content within each, and you can just click the thumbnail of the required window to bring it up. However, any version of Windows does not allow you to tweak the thumbnails according to your preference, and you are forced to use the default settings for the preview. Taskbar Thumbnails Tuner is a portable application for Windows 8 that allows you to change various appearance settings for the taskbar thumbnails, including Thumbnail Size, Number of Thumbnails in Group, Horizontal/ Vertical Spacing Between Thumbnails, Margins etc. Keep reading to find out more about this useful tweaker. Read More

Freegate Lets You Access Blocked Websites At Optimal Speed

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Internet censorship is becoming more serious an issue every day. On a lot of forums, you can read people discussing internet censorship bills, such as PIPA and SOPA, aimed at taking away the internet freedom of users by introducing censorship, as well as anti-privacy laws. Other than this, some websites are not offered in certain regions. Same is the case with some of the videos hosted on YouTube. Sometimes, when you click a YouTube video link, you are greeted with a message that the selected video is not available in your region. Today, we have a portable anti-censorship application called Freegate, which lets you access websites blocked in your region. While most VPN applications affect the browsing speed, Freegate provides as fast a connection to websites that are not available in your country as you'd get for local domains. Moreover, if anyone tries to access a website containing adult material, Freegate detects the adult material, denies the user’s request and does not allow passage. Keep reading to find out more about Freegate. Read More

Emsisoft Emergency Kit: Malware Scan, System Analysis & Registry Cleaning Suite For Windows

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Whenever a computer is infected with any malware or virus, a lot of times, installation and proper execution of Windows, as well as third party applications, gets disturbed. This means that you cannot install new programs to your computer in order to fix the issues. Sometimes, even the Windows Task Manager is disabled by some viruses, so that you cannot manually kill the processes responsible for the malicious activity. An antivirus program can protect you from all this; however, if the antivirus fails to detect and stop the malware from infecting your system, you might find yourself in a situation where your whole computer is rendered useless. Today, we have a portable malware scanner, system analysis and cleaning suite named Emsisoft Emergency Kit. Read More

Add Application, File & Folder Shortcuts To Windows Right-Click Context Menu

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The right click menu of Windows allows you to quickly access frequently used options. For instance, in order to change the resolution of the screen, you have to open Control Panel, select Personalization settings and go to the Screen Resolution tab, but as you may know that Personalization & Screen Resolution dialogs can be quickly accessed from Desktop right-click context menu. The Windows right-click menu tools are developed to extend the native options of the context menu, allowing users to add, edit and rename right click menu options. Take previously covered ContexEdit (reviewed here) for instance, it not only lets you add & edit new context menu items, but also allows configuring DDE ( Data Dynamic Exchange) settings. Today, we have one such portable application for you called Right Click Shortcuts Creator that lets you add shortcuts for applications, files and folders to the right context menu of the Windows Desktop as well as Windows Explorer. Using the application, you can quickly access frequently used applications, files and folders without having to navigate through different locations. More details after the break. Read More

A43: Windows File Manager With Built-In Quick Launch, Text Editor and Hex Viewer

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Gone are the days when the storage space of a PC was limited and we had to choose which files to keep and which ones to delete. Now, with massive storage spaces available even in personal computers and laptops, there is no reason for us to delete old files when copying or creating new ones. However, having so many files stored in your PC makes managing them and finding the required file a tedious task. The default Windows Explorer in Windows 7 provides you with file browsing, navigation and search options, but it lacks some advanced options, such as built-in archive explorer and extractor. Today, we have a portable file management utility named A43, which features a built-in text editor, supports archives, and includes an advanced file search function. It also lets you add frequently accessed folders as favorites, so that you can quickly open them without having to navigate through multiple locations. Read More

EasyMCC: Adjust Display Brightness, Contrast & Color Temperature

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LCD manufacturers design their screens with proper color calibration and optimal level of brightness and contrast. Most of the screens you buy off the shelf need little to no user calibration. Nevertheless, chances do come when stock settings doesn't meet our requirements and we need to manually configure them. Just like other OS platforms, Windows contains brightness controls to adjust the glare on your computer screen. The Windows Mobility center (which can be accessed by hitting the Win + X hotkey) provides you with quick access to Display Brightness controls. However, sometimes, adjusting the brightness of your monitor isn't enough and requires further tweaking to make the colors more natural. We reviewed an applications called f.lux, which is designed to automatically adjust the display temperature according to the time of day, but it doesn't provide an option to manually tweak color temperature levels, should you so need it. Today, we came across a portable application for Windows called EasyMCC, which allows you to quickly adjust the Luminance, Contrast & Color Temperature of your computer screen. It even lets you tweak the RGB value i.e. the Red Gain, Green Gain and Blue individually to create your own color temperature setting. Read past the jump for details about EasyMCC. Read More

TheFolderSpy: Monitor & Receive Email Notifications For Folder Changes

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You may know that Windows constantly changes, renames, modifies and removes certain files while you perform tasks using any User or System utility. It's certainly impossible to keep track of all the files that are being crearted, changed, deleted from the system. However, if you want to monitor the files for changes in a particular folder, check out the previously covered Folder Monitor (reviewed here), Directory Monitor (reviewed here) and Watch 4 Folder (reviewed here). File monitoring applications help users view the changes made to the specified set of files without having to manually check each file's property sheet. TheFolderSpy is a simple, yet powerful folder monitoring application that allows you to monitor multiple folders for changes, and notifies you whenever it detects changes in files' contents/attributes. Using the application, you can easily monitor files to check whether it's been renamed, modified or even deleted from a specified folder, or not. Apart from providing you with an on screen notification, it also allows you to automatically send information about the change to a user-specified email address. More on TheFolderSpy after the break. Read More

ContLab Is A Comprehensive General-Purpose Workflow Manager

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ContLab is a free business organizer for Windows that is currently still in its beta stages. Nevertheless, it shows promise of being a reliable tool for business enthusiasts who have trouble keeping records of their projects, contacts, agendas, reports and accounts. Also, the application comes packed with networking feature, which allows you to run the application from the server, so that all connected computers can easily use different features of the application from one central location. Details to follow after the jump. Read More

WirelessKeyView Updated; Now Lets You Import & Export Wireless Keys

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Back in 2009, we featured WirelessKeyView, an application with the purpose of recovering Wireless Network Keys from Windows or from the data left behind after Windows is uninstalled. Since our last review, WirelessKeyView had many of its minor bugs fixed. The method of displaying data has also been improved to incorporate grid view and to mark odd and even rows in order to make it easier to keep track of the fields. However the most important update added recently was the Import and Export of Wireless Keys. So now, you can backup and migrate your wireless keys anywhere you want.

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NetBScanner: View All Computers On A Network Within User-Defined IP Range

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Have you ever wondered if your home network is secured and safe, or are there some outside forces, trying to get unauthorized access? Network security is an important factor for everybody and that's why its advisable to keep an eye on all of its connected devices. The best thing you can do is to use a network monitoring tool like NetBScanner, which scans and monitors all the connected computers on your network. The application comes from an acclaimed Windows developer NirSoft, regarded as for developing extremely useful GUI and CLI based utilities for Windows OS. We have also reviewed most of their releases from time to time. NirSoft itself is short for Nir Sofer, the man behind the company. Nir Sofer's new release, NetBScanner, is geared towards both advance and casual users alike. "How the application works" you might ask, well, it scans for all the connected computers within the defined range by using NetBIOS protocol and displays information regarding the device’s IP Address, Computer Name, Workgroup, MAC Address, Network Adapter Company and Master Browser. With its ability to scan your local area network (LAN) by defining an IP range, system & network administrators can easily monitor all connected computers on a network. Read More