Windows OS’ users have got a lot of softwares to do any task; be it reading Books, listening music etc. Also, the most popular among them are the free ones. Most users have either iTunes, Winamp or Foobar for music, Firefox or Chrome for browsing. Undoubtedly, these free softwares are very useful and therefore very popular. However, there also exists a large pool of softwares that aren’t yet famous but nevertheless useful. In this post, I list 5 of such softwares and briefly discuss them.
Sumatra PDF
Sumatra PDF is a light-weight alternative to Adobe PDF Reader and Foxit reader. The pdf reader is minimalistic in design. Toolbars don’t take up space most of the screen and allow more space for viewing the document. Secondly it is more light weight than its alternatives , so everything loads in a faster time, putting less burden on your CPU. Sumatra PDF also remembers at what page you closed a document and when you open the document later, it loads the file on that page. This feature is quite useful for those who read a lot of books or large documents as PDF.
Everything
Everything is a search tool. What sets it apart from the default file search tool bundled with Windows is its speed. Once Everything is installed, it starts up with Windows and keeps running in background, indexing the files present in your system. As mentioned, Everything is all about speedy search. As you start typing in the search bar, search results start appear in the panel below within seconds. Everything supports wildcard operators as well.
Revo Uninstaller
When a software is uninstalled, not all the files that were being used by that software are removed from your system by the default uninstaller. Some of the files the software was using (which are now useless) as well as some registry entries remain in your PC forever. Revo Uninstaller overcomes this problem by scanning for such files. After starting Revo Uninstaller, select the program to be removed. First it removes the program with default uninstaller. Then it scans you PC for those useless and leftover files and removes them. However it doesn’t take much time to scan the PC, probably less than a minute. So your system remains tidy and clutter-free. Also, you can select the level of scan like “Safe”, “Moderate” and “Advanced”.
Unlocker
Unlocker is a file unlocking utility. Sometimes, a file or folder could not be deleted or renamed and Windows shows error messages like: “Error: Unable to Delete file”, “The file is being used by another program”. When such a situation occurs, just right click the file or folder and select Unlocker. A dialog box appears where you can select from options like “rename”, “delete”, “move”, etc . You can successfully bypass the error and rename/move/delete the file.
CutePDF Writer
CutePDF allows you to print stuff to a PDF file i.e. you can save whatever you wanted to print into a PDF file instead of printing on a paper. This software is very handy for those who do not have a printer or if the printer is temporarily unavailable. They can save whatever they want to print and get it later printed at any Cyber Café, office, etc. CutePDF can also come in handy for storing backup copies of important documents like tickets, receipts etc. in case the original one gets damaged. Another advantage is that since documents are stored in PDF format, their appearance remains the same irrespective of the PC on which it is printed. Word files (.docx, .doc) sometimes distort when viewed on another PC.
Hope you liked my post and the softwares I described. You might also want to see my other post,” Five Lesser Known but Useful Firefox Add-ons” . Chances are good that you might be using some useful by yet-to-be-famous software. If so, do comment about it. Or any other thought regarding the post.