ossblogger.com

On tweaking Windows, I found these 3 open source and free desktop enhancing tools few weeks back. They are small, and does not need huge resources to run.

Folder Size for Windows
I have been using Folder Size for Windows for the past few months, with version 2.3. Brian did a good job to upgrade it to version 2.4, and I have to tell you that it only works with Windows XP. He did have a problem with Vista, and said that there won’t be any Folder Size for Windows Vista.

Features:

1. Don’t have to switch to another program to see folder sizes. It’s always there when you’re viewing your folders (even in Open and Save file dialog boxes, you can change the view), and it’s a great visual cue to help you find the one you’re looking for. Not just for disk cleanup, but for any time you need to choose a folder.
2. No scanning phase before you can start. As soon as you display the Folder Size column, you’ll see sizes immediately. Large folders will continue to scan in the background while you browse your folders.
3. Explorer will automatically update the folder size column in real-time. No more manual rescanning.
4. Background scans won’t monopolize your disk. When Folder Size detects that other programs are doing a lot of reading to and writing from the hard disk being scanned, the background scanning will wait for the other programs to finish.
5. If you don’t show the Folder Size column for a while, it won’t forget what it’s already scanned, but the background scanner doesn’t stay active. It won’t waste any CPU time maintaining the cache on your P2P sharing or gaming machine that’s always changing files.

Launchy
The winner for Sourceforge.net 2007 Community Choice Awards for Best New Project, Launchy is a free windows utility designed to help you forget about your start menu, the icons on your desktop, and even your file manager.

Launchy indexes the programs in your start menu and can launch your documents, project files, folders, and bookmarks with just a few keystrokes!

It even has become a great feature in Lifehacker, with lots and lots of tips and tweaks on how to enhance the usage of Launchy. I personally loves Launchy, even more after knowing how to tweak the software with Lifehacker.

Ditto
Ditto is an extension to the standard windows clipboard. It saves each item placed on the clipboard allowing you access to any of those items at a later time. Ditto allows you to save any type of information that can be put on the clipboard, text, images, html, custom format, etc…

I use Ditto a lot when writing and editing HTML code using Nvu (now Kompozer). Although I have migrated fully to Wordpress, I still have few websites that I created using Nvu. Most of the time I hand coded the HTML pages and uses a lot of copy and paste feature. At this stage, Ditto plays a big role on things that I copied to the clipboard.

Features:

1. Easy to use interface
2. Search and paste previous copy entries
3. Keep multiple computer’s clipboards in sync
4. Data is encrypted when sent over the network
5. Accessed from tray icon or global hot key
6. Select entry by double click, enter key or drag drop
7. Paste into any window that excepts standard copy/paste entries
8. Display thumbnail of copied images in list
9. Full Unicode support (display foreign characters)
10. UTF-8 support for language files (create language files in any language)
11. It’s portable also!

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 24th, 2007 at 11:44 am and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.