Take control of your Windows desktop with these free utilities.
B
Y M A T T A B E
Twin
Cities Chapter
I'm a pretty easygoing guy by nature, but when it comes to my Microsoft Windows desktop, you could call me a control freak. I have worked with and around Bill Gates' PC operating systems since the monochrome green screen days. After working with an OS for a while, I always start to think those "it would be nice if it did that" thoughts. This has caused me to shape my OS with batch files, environment variables, operating system settings, and most recently, freeware utilities. I'd like to present a few of my favorites to you. Yes, they're all free, and by the way, each download is small enough to fit on a 1.44 MB diskette (remember those?).
- Naviscope, the answer to my long search for a real-time kilobyte meter for HTTP traffic.
- TrayManager, which reduces visual clutter by hiding infrequently-accessed System Tray icons that you either can't or don't prefer to hide altogether.
- Recently Used Programs Lister (RUPL), which adds a Mac-like "Recent Applications" menu to the Windows Start Menu
- TClockEx, which enables you to elegantly yet completely configure the System Tray clock.
- Ontrack PowerDesk 4, a file manager that combines the best features of Windows 3.1 File Manager, Windows Explorer, Quick View, and WinZip (and, would you believe, X-Tree Gold?!).
This tool's primary benefit is a real-time meter on a floating toolbar that displays the flow of bytes through your Internet connection, via modem or LAN. It makes your browser's animated logo seem like the "idiot lights" on your car's dashboard. Naviscope can tell you why it is taking so darn long for that web page to appear: three more GIFs to download, for example, including their file names.
It accomplishes this by acting as a proxy between you and the Internet. It is compatible with other proxies you may be using, such as a corporate firewall or anonymizing proxy. Because everything downloading from the wide, wild Internet must pass through the Naviscope proxy, it can do other useful things besides reporting transfer rates, such as block advertisements and cookies, cache DNS entries for faster page loading, and "pre-fetch" linked pages for faster apparent page loading.
Naviscope also throws in several other goodies that only a netizen could love, such as a Web site mapper and HTTP header viewer, built-in trace and ping functions, and a function to synchronize your PC clock with an atomic clock. It all adds up to a boatload of useful Internet utilities that doesn't take much screen (or hard-disk) real estate.
Naviscope is a free download for an unspecified period of time, after which it will be sold, so check it out soon.
TrayManager to the rescue! TrayManager is itself a System Tray icon that can hide all of your other System Tray icons inside of it. When you want to access an icon, to launch a program or change an option for example, simply right click the TrayManager icon to display your hidden icons in a context menu.
TrayManager lets you display the icons you want to see (such as the ones that change to display an alert), and hide the rest until you need them.
One thing I do admire about the Mac OS is its "Recent Applications" menu item. So when I found the Recently Used Program Lister (RUPL), I installed it right away. RUPL shows your most recent applications so you can launch them again without drilling down through nested Programs menus, and lets you exclude apps from appearing in the list. Windows 2000 has something similar (finally) in its adaptive menus technology.
Just like a Mac!
Showing the seconds display and the CPU meter has a real benefit: it allows you to tell if your computer is really frozen, or if it just looks that way because the CPU is busy. It's interesting to start Windows and watch the CPU meter fluctuate after the boot process otherwise appears over.
TClockEx was recently updated to work with Windows 2000.
PowerDesk 4 mashes together the best features of Windows 3.1 File Manager (enter "winfile" at the Windows 95/98 Run dialog if you don't know or remember it) and Windows Explorer, adds a few new tools of its own, and even lets you choose your old X-Tree Gold or Norton Commander keyboard shortcuts to speed things along.
The drive letter icon toolbar from Windows File Manager is back, restoring quick access to drives A through Z. Power Desk's slick integrated features include a file viewer, which displays graphics, text files, and even PKZip archive lists in a window pane. If you have Inso Quick View Plus, Power Desk automatically integrates its capabilities. PKZip, uuencode, and file encryption/decryption functions are also integrated. Power Desk also lets you archive directory tree listings, with or without individual file names, on the most long-lasting, universally accessible media known to mankind (paper).
Now how much would you pay? Ontrack gives away Power Desk 4 as an enticement to purchase Power Desk Pro and Ontrack's other utility software. (Yes, this is the same Ontrack Data International that provides hard drive data recovery services and the essential-in-its-day Disk Manager software.) The Power Desk Pro version adds the aforementioned kitchen sink to the product: more file viewing formats, graphics converters, FTP, folder synchronization (like Windows Briefcase or my favorite, Comparator), folder size viewer (like TreeSize) and other features that you just can't live without.
I'm not including a screen shot here because the interface is a bit overwhelming at first. Just download the free version and take it for a spin. The control freak in you will rejoice.
Matt Abe is the Documentation Group Leader at ColorSpan Corporation, and a past President of the STC Twin Cities Chapter. He still believes that even "free" software must earn its share of storage, CPU, and RAM resources, even though all three seem virtually unlimited compared with the "olden days."
Volume 3, # 2