Freeware Guiding Light

Yesterday, I simply deleted an entire folder with about 2.5GB of data, and I shouldn’t have done that. Obviously, as the power user I consider myself to be, I am always removing files directly, because “Recycle Bin is for n00bs”, but in such moments, I end up feeling like a n00b too (I hope you don’t take that as an offence, if you’re using Recycle Bin, because I don’t feel offended at all when somebody calls me “n00b” in some game). With this occasion, I had a brilliant idea - to finally try a program I heard of some time ago, but didn’t run it yet, a file recovery utility called Recuva…

To cut a long story short, I needed to recover my files, and do it quick. Most data recovery applications I could think of are not free, and their trial versions don’t help you at all, in most cases. This is exactly where Recuva comes into play. To download the program, go here. Once downloaded(only about 700KB), install it, then fire it up. All done?

All you have to do is scan a drive for files, then search the list. While you can’t filter which files to scan for, the scanning process is pretty fast, and you can use the Search feature afterwards. The file list can be displayed in list mode or tree mode, and while the interface of the application is very simple, its utility goes beyond simply recovering files, because you can also use Recuva to destroy data using one of the 4 methods available, from simple 1-pass overwrite, up to the notorious Gutmann method, which overwrites data 35 times using random patters (if you are going to use this, prepare for a pretty long wait!).

Even more, you can preview images before recovering them, and if you act in time, you can recover all your files without breaking a sweat! If it worked for me, it’s going to work for you too, as long as your deleted files weren’t overwritten by some new ones yet. I have to mention I used it only in Windows XP, so I can’t tell if it’s going to work perfectly in Vista, or not, but it should work, after all, it’s the same file system…

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These being said, I hope you enjoyed finding out about this freeware wonder, and you’ll save a lot of money by using it for free, instead of going to a data recovery lab. Obviously, if you save too much money, you can send me a little donation, I won’t mind at all($1,000 or more, please!)…

Hahaha, just jokin’! I also accept $100 donations!

I know I should’ve come with this a week ago, but I thought it’s better to let things cool down a little. Why? I just wanted to be sure this time I won’t run into any ground breaking news the next day, so… let’s set things straight regarding that Rapidshare problem, shall we?

In the end, GEMA, the German RIAA, won the legal battle that took place in a district court in D?翹sseldorf at the end of last month, so Rapidshare is now to be held responsible for people’s uploads to the site. While things so far were pretty easy - you upload content without holding the rights to do that, Rapidshare receives information about this, and then removes the file(s) from their servers - from now on, they may be forced to stop you from uploading any content without holding the copyright. Well, that’s fine with me, but how can they do that?(good question, no answer yet)

What else can I say? Let them take all the servers and move to Mars, this way they’ll get away from all these people without anything better to do than hunt down witches, and seeing witches in every file upload site! For now, Rapidshare is still up, but nobody else knows what may happen next, so be careful and don’t upload anything that may cause copyright problems with RIAA, GEMA or any similar organization.

If police would behave like RIAA/GEMA/whatever, we would probably end up living in caves and eating with our bare hands - kitchen knives can kill, so they should be banned, electricity can be used to torture and even kill people, so it should be also be forbidden, cars can be used to run over people, so they should also be declared illegal…

Let’s just say “thanks” all the above is not happening, and do the best we can with our lives, in both real and the virtual world!

I didn’t write about Rapidshare so far, because that would require a long row of articles about all those file hosting sites available, and I am not feeling up to this task yet. In fact, it may also be the fact that such a topic may help a lot of people, yet the traffic of my blog doesn’t allow me to reach too many, yet. Anyway, let’s drop that, because I only want to tell you one thing: our freedom just took another hit, with the temporary (I hope) closure of Rapidshare.com!

The story behind Rapidshare is not that long, first of them being Rapidshare.de, and its follower, Rapidshare.com, which was launched at the end of 2006. The file limit of 100MB wasn’t really high, but the download speed and the popularity of this service made Rapidshare one of my favorite file upload sites(I usually stored temporary backups, photo galleries to send to my friends, and so on, don’t think about anything illegal!), and I am sure I wasn’t the only one in the neighbourhood using it…

Earlier today, I uploaded a photo gallery to Rapidshare. I got out, went to a friend of mine, had some beer, downloaded the photos, talked about lots of stuff, then I got back at home. When I finally got back to my computer, I got the screen below…

Here’s what I just found on Wikipedia- “On 19 January 2007, news broke that German collections agency GEMA had claimed to have won a temporary injunction against both RapidShare.de and RapidShare.com. “The latter is said to have used copyright protected works of GEMA members in an unlawful fashion.”"

Need I say more? Do we have to sign a petition and swear with our hand on the Bible(or whatever Holy Book our religion may use) that we only use this service for sharing things that don’t have any copyright problems? I am waiting to hear your opinions!
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Two days have passed already, and I can’t wait any longer. This is not going to be a review, because I already talked about foobar2000 here. All I want to do is tell you how magnificent this program is and show you a few screenshots from the new version, because foobar2000 0.9.5 is a much better music player than ever before!
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Hello again!Yes, I am talking to you, my only reader, no matter who, where and how you may be! Since everyone sends greetings these days and makes promises for the coming year, I thought it would be nice to do the same…
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In the last months, I’ve been checking and checking for new versions of my favorite freeware applications, especially in those cases where I knew something really interesting should be added in the next version (or at least “should”). Unlike latest version of WinAce, which added only a new licensing version, as you can see here, 7-Zip’s latest version(4.57), released a few days ago, comes with a pretty solid feature list…

As you probably know already from my previous articleon 7-Zip, all things look great about it, including file format support and compression speed. To make it even better, today I noticed that 7-Zip also supports using multiple threads for speeding up the processing speed on multi-core systems. The bad part is that, after checking the official release history page, I found out that version 4.42, the one we talked about last time, already supported multi-threading mode and had it enabled by default on multi-processor systems, so this is not quite a new feature.????Anyway,??I??am??excused,??because??I??didn’t
have??a??dual??core??CPU??at??that??time…

Well, despite the fact no major changes have been done since then, you can check the screenshots below to notice that visible improvements are in place, like the two password entry fields(for some may seem useless, but it’s always better to retype your password to be sure you entered what you should, when encrypting an archive using a 70 characters password…) or the ability to set manually the solid block size and the number of threads.

I won’t get into any speed or compression results, because I did that last time, and now I only re-assure you that 7-Zip is by far the best freeware compression utility, and if you grab this program from here and you can prove me wrong, please feel free to do so! I’ll be waiting for your comments, as usual…

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I know people that are ten times crazier than me about media players, and I don’t want to compete with them by knowing every single player in the wild and its good parts or bad ones. All I want to discover is the best programs from this category, and here we’re talking about free programs. If these programs are also tiny in size, yet powerful, that’s a bonus, and today’s discovery is called XMPlay…

As you can see in the screenshot below, the interface of this player can be really compact, and if you want to make it even smaller, simply double click its title bar. Pretty cool, isn’t it? Well, we’ll have more screenshots today, but now we have to check the things that make this audio player worthy of your attention, so let’s start, shall we?

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Once you download the program from the official page, all you have to do is unpack the files from the 300KB ZIP archive to a folder on your hard drive and start the party! By default, XMPlay only supports a handful of audio formats, but this list can grow as you add new input plugins (thumbs up for supporting Winamp plugins).

Working with the program is simply amazing, because it has everything you can ask - support for online radios, a useful auto amplification feature, a 9-band EQ and a nice reverb effect, all included in the main interface, as you can see better, once you click the thumbnail below.

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If you think something’s missing, then try using your right mouse button to click on controls. For example, if you right click to minimize the program, you send it to the System Tray, while left clicking the control sends XMPlay to the Taskbar. One more thing - if you want to add directories instead of individual files, simply right click the “+” sign in the playlist area!

At last, I will tell you that the settings area of this program looks great, with a lot of options to set, as you can see in the shots that I spared for the end. These being said, I’ll simply go and lay back on my bed to enjoy my music with this amazing player, the same thing I advice you to do, once you set your options right (yes, XMPlay is capable of playing 24bit/48kHz sound, so there’s no need to look for another player for that X-Fi you just got your hands on!).
These being said, there’s no more time left to waste, so grab XMPlay and rock on, because I know??that’s what??I will do, for sure!

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If you thought I am gone, then you should know that this blog and its author are still far from their final day! Unfortunately, the long blackouts in the last months happened because some of my other projects and various personal problems, but the most interesting thing that happened in the last months is my hardware upgrade…

I didn’t get a high-end computer, but a decent machine for Vista which should help me write about the latest software releases without crying out “this program requires 1GB of memory, and it simply made my computer crawl”, no matter if my articles are posted on SoftDistrict, TechPin, PlayerzBlog or, of course, here, on Freeware Guiding Light.

What should you expect from this blog in the coming months? Well, I am going to do the same thing as before, that being reviews of various freebies available on the Internet, and I will try to check more games than before, giving you the best information about it.

As an example, The Battle for Wesnoth, the only game we had on my blog yet, proved to be much better than it looked at first sight, while programs like Avant Browser or foobar2000 keep improving with each new version, and despite the fact I won’t be able to keep up with all the new releases, I’ll try to talk about as many new subjects as possible, without forgetting about the topics from the past.

One of the reasons that made me almost quit this blog for good was lack of feedback from my readers, but since those few people that posted comments or emailed me deserve to get more than I was able to deliver so far, I’ll do it for them, and for those that read my articles without any feedback, but found them to be useful.

Hoping for a better future, I end this news update here, with a promise - I’ll be back soon!

I didn’t die yet, but I have to excuse myself for this long break, anyway. I didn’t even had a holiday in the mountains or on a beach somewhere, because in that case the excuses would have been pointless. Anyway, since I’m back, it’s time to give you some system tweaking ideas, don’t you think?

Since most people with powerful computers are moving to Vista, I think that for those still hanging on with their oldies running Windows XP is very important to keep their operating system in top shape. While most system tweaking programs cost some money, Fresh Devices offers FreshUI for free, and it’s my pleasure to tell you a few words about version 7.91 of this software, released less than 3 days ago…

To be honest, there’s not much to say about this program. In fact, saying that FreshUI is everything one would expect from a free (and not only “free”) program isn’t far from the truth at all. This application is pretty easy to use, has a decent Help system and is gets frequent updates.

While Windows XP takes full advantage of the tweaks built into FreshUI, there are also specific settings that only work for Windows 98, Millenium or other editions that are dead at this time, but some people still use them. It’s always good to see that some software producers think about small groups of users, in a time when users are forced to upgrade their hardware even when this is not really needed (see the requirement of a DirectX 9 video card to run Vista’s Aero interface with all effects enabled, for example).

Since you’re probably asking about the things that you can change with FreshUI, I’ll only tell you that every little application that comes with your Windows can be tweaked, including Notepad or Microsoft Hearts.

The section called “Covering Your Track” helps you to keep a clean system and, even better, remove all those history records that can get you into trouble - we all know that Internet is for p**n, but let’s pretend this is not the truth, all right?

At last, I should remind you a very important thing - always backup your settings before using such programs! In FreshUI, the File menu has two options especially for this purpose (backup and restore), so don’t forget to use it!

I know I didn’t tell you anything about the largest part of the options available in this program, but this program explains everything as you work, so just keep your eyes open and…that’s all. Good luck!

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When talking about IrfanView, I shouldn’t say this is “a good image viewer”. For me, IrfanView is “the image viewer”, but since you don’t have to believe me without any proof, let’s check a few facts about this software, shall we?

Once upon a time, I was one of those using ACDSee, but in the meantime, that program got full of useless features, slower and slower with each new version, and started to follow a direction that I don’t like. I hate programs trying to be a “software Napoleon”. What’s that? Well, a “software Napoleon” is a program that tries to accomplish a dozen of tasks, but doesn’t handle any of them the right way.

Now, moving back to IrfanView, just go and check the official site. Grab the program and the plugins pack, install them, and you’re all set. Be careful when choosing file associations, because you may end up opening movies with IrfanView instead of your favorite movie player, and one of the few parts that I don’t like in IrfanView is exactly the built in movie player.

If you’re looking for a cute photo organizer and viewer like ACDSee or the one built into Windows Vista, then move on, because IrfanView is not your thing. IrfanView is a program for those that need to view and perform basic image processing tasks, such as renaming, conversion or resize, but things don’t stop here. IrfanView can use Adobe Photoshop compatible plugins to process images, and this is a big “pro”.

Although the image management features are as good as none, and the interface of this program looks outdated, I simply don’t care. I can save my screenshots as easy as 1-2-3, I can convert huge amounts of image files using the batch processing feature and, of course, I can easily view pictures until my eyes bleed. All these are free, so if you want to pay for a fancy interface and some features that you’ll never get to use, fine - there are plenty of choices you can make, and it’s your money.

Well… you should simply forget all that I wrote here. The only thing that matters is that IrfanView is great, it’s free, and it does its job perfectly. Just grab it and share your opinion with the rest of us. If you are going to be happy with it, then I have done my job. If you are going to be extra-happy with it, then maybe you can also click some Google Ads on this page so I won’t die of starvation… thank you very much!

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