Do you want your downloads to be faster? It is annoying and boring to look at the downloading screen ages, isn’t it? Even if you pay for faster Internet connection or change the hardware, it may not help as much as you would like. The real problem is in your personal computer’s settings. After this problem was discovered, many tools were developed to fix it forever and give the users what they deserve and pay for.

One good solution might be Internet Cell Boost by Reohix. This program is so simple that it has only six optimization options – Internet Settings, Advanced Settings, Local Area Network, Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Everything Automatically.

In the free version, you can use only the Internet Settings optimization. Clicking on this brings up a screen on which users can select the type of connection they have, with numerous options for DSL or cable, wireless connections, dial-up, satellite, and closed networks. Just select your connection type and click the Apply Optimization Settings button. You will be asked to confirm that you want to optimize the settings, and then the optimization will begin. After restarting your system, run a speed test, and you should notice the difference!

Internet Cell Boost could be an incredibly simple way to increase your download speed by a significant amount.

Check it out at InternetCellBoost.

Does it take ages for a file to be copied from one directory to another on your personal computer? Windows and all other applications are loading much slower than before? This is caused by the so-called fragmentation of the HDD. This makes the files harder to find by your system and slows down any work with them.

Microsoft, the developers of Windows, were aware of this problem and integrated a small application for defragmenting, but if you are aiming for best results, then its recommended to use more advanced software, such as Puran Defrag Free Edition. This program, created by Puran Software is especially useful as a “set-and-forget” tool that will keep your disks clean and your system fast through regular background maintenance.

Just install it, change few settings and forget about any fragmentation problems forever! It will run in your background very silently without any annoying pop-up messages or slowing down your system and defrag when the CPU is not busy. Puran Defrag also defragments your PC’s boot sectors for faster start-up, and its Intelligent Optimizer boosts your system’s speed.

It can also defragment selected files or folders only and make exclusions by file and folder or wild card. There is even a command line option for advanced users.

Even if you never used defragmenting software before, the included Help file will guide you very precisely and assist you if any problems occur. You can also select Low Priority and Shutdown After Defrag options from the interface. On the Additional Operations tab the user can select from an extensive list of check boxes specifying actions such as freeing space for temporary files, excluding files by size or other options, and filling gaps with blank data to avoid frequent fragmentation. And it is recommended to enable the Puran Intelligent Optimizer (PIOZR), which boosts your system speed. On the Automatic Defragmentation tab you are able to set Puran to defragment either of your drives, including several automatic boot, restart, and shutdown options, and check a box to stop automatic defrags when on battery power.

Puran Defrag Free Edition is supported by all HDD’s, Windows XP /2003 / Vista / Server 2008 / 7 operating systems and is absolutely free.

Check it out at Puran-Defrag.

With the increased number of different formats these days, it is not very easy to look at some of their characteristics.

MediaInfo is a simple utility, supported by Windows 95 / 98 / Me / 2000 /XP / 2003 / Vista / 7, that can provide the user with metadata about their audio and video files collection, including codecs, and frames per second.

The program has a very easy to use and intuitive interface with menus across the top and buttons down the left side. You are able to select one or many files to open and view at once. There are eight different views to choose from – Basic, Sheet, Tree, Text, HTML, XML, MPEG-7, and PBCore 1.2 – each of which provides a variety of different information, such as file size, duration, bit rate, compression mode, and color space. The metadata can be exported in CSV, sheet, text, Graphical Interface, Command Line, or HTML file if you wish to do so.

There is Frequently Asked Questions on the publisher’s website to help the new users, but the program is really self-explanatory, mostly for users who already know what all of this metadata means. MediaInfo is definitely a program that’s meant for people who already have substantial experience working with audio and video files, not because it’s hard to use, but because what it does will be of little use to amateurs. The supported formats are MKV, OGM, AVI, MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG4, DVD, OGG, MP3, WAV, RA, AC3, DTS, AAC, M4A, AU, and AIFF.

Get it at MediaInfo.

If you are a writer or an office manager, then you know how hard, boring and tiring is to write 5000 words in a single day. If you want to have more free time instead of hitting the keys endlessly, then why not try this small program, published by Bartels Media.

PhraseExpress AutoText combines autocomplete with macros in one versatile free tool that can type phrases, sentences, and other text automatically when the program detects certain keystrokes or manually via hot keys. The AutoText feature lets you designate abbreviations for frequently used words and phrases that you use or will use often, such as your address.

When you type the abbreviation, PhraseExpress automatically enters the expanded text. To access the program and all the settings just use the small tray icon. Here you can open not only the settings page, but enter new phrases as well, access the last used entry, and clear the clipboard cache. The settings menu actually consists of two pages: a main page for managing phrases and folders and a more detailed page of options that you can access via the Tools menu. On this second page the user is able to configure everything from pop-up behavior to expert options such as delays and advanced text prediction settings and also choose audio files for system sounds, configure network proxy settings, and set paste and e-mail delivery methods.
The AutoText feature integrated in this program will be familiar to anyone who has used autocomplete, but PhraseExpress offers several useful options, including manual confirmation, delimiters, and expert options.
It is free to use and supported by Windows XP/2003/Vista/Server 2008/7.

Check it out at PhraseExpress.

Do you like electronic music? Ever wanted to be as famous as the DJ on the radio? In the last few years digital deejaying’s popularity has grown. And that is not surprising because you can find a lot of software that can do even better than the very expensive DJ hardware. Plus its easier for basic users who just want to practice, to download one little program and start right away.

The most famous free deejaying program is Virtual DJ, developed by Atomix Productions. There is also the Pro version if you want to make really professional mixes, but the free version is great if you are aiming at basic tracks and playlists.

Once installed, Virtual DJ automatically populates a folder tree in the bottom left corner where you can easily access your music collection. The bottom middle serves as a tabbed, multifunction area where you can browse tracks, sample music bites, add effects, and make recordings.
The interface may look complex to you at first, but once you start working it will become very simple and easy to use. The top of the window is dominated by two digital turntables, which are distinguished by color: blue on the left and red on the right. Each one has the ability to cue, loop, adjust pitch, scratch, and shift (among other features). In the middle is the mixing console, where you can adjust the gain and master volume, as well as transition between the two tracks.
Once the songs have been dragged and dropped into the console, a bar along the top displays the sound waves of each to help with visual mixing. There’s also a video input option that lets you create montages to the music.

Check it out at VirtualDJ

WinRAR is a very lightweight, flexible, and easy-to-use archiving utility that can unpack most archive formats, as well as compress to both RAR and ZIP.

It is definitely one of the best programs in the compression category and here is why. The very user-friendly interface, very fast speed and great compression made it the most used archiver in the last few years.

Start creating (or add to) an archive by dragging and dropping your files into the interface or by browsing through the Folder Tree side panel (when enabled). From there, the most common functions are laid out in the form of colorful, mostly intuitive icons, which can all be customized by downloading themes from the company’s web site.

Add files to, Extract, Test, Delete, or even Repair archives right from the main interface. Drop-down menus house the program’s more advanced features, including self-extracting archives (.exe), archive locking, benchmarking, and autodeletion of temp files.

What else do you need? Yes, there is even more! The archive can be protected by a password and there is also integrated protection from damage that allows the user to recover the data from the archive in case of damage. WinRAR provides complete support for RAR and ZIP archives and is able to unpack and convert CAB, ARJ, LZH, TAR, GZ, ACE, UUE, BZ2, JAR, ISO, Z, 7-Zip archives. It is available in over 40 languages and has a 40-day trial period without any limitations.

Get it from RarLab.

Do you want to see what other members of your family such as your kids are doing while online? If you do, then you will need a program to “spy” for you without being detected.

A good solution is All In One Keylogger by Relytec. You can monitor and record every word that was written in any language, every mouse click, talk and messages conversations, passwords, e-mails, clipboard, microphone sounds, captured screenshots, desktop, and online activity without slowing down the CPU! Also you have the option to block a website of your choice, so it can’t be viewed on the machine. If you worry about your kids staying safe online, it could be good peace of mind.

Now a good question – Is this program hidden from them? Short answer is YES, sometimes even you can forget that its running in the background. You have the ability to hide the taskbar icon, delete the Help file, and remove any Start menu icons and the uninstall list. Even an X-ray could not spot it!

To show the program again all you have to do is type the master password that the program requires you to create, on your desktop or any document, and the program appears. After that the collected data can be viewed by date, with each entry providing the user responsible for the action, the time stamp, and the active window.

All In One Keylogger has a 7-days trial period, only 4MB in size and with its simple interface it is great for beginners. There are many free to use programs, but if you want very good results, then try this one.
Check it out at Relytec.

Home Mortgage Calculator developed by Vertex42 is a free Excel spreadsheet template for calculating fixed and variable-rate home mortgages. That sounds useful, but not very exciting, Excel spreadsheets are like that in general, aren’t they? However, Home Mortgage Calculator is more than just a page full of tables and numbers.

It incorporates many automated features and options, but better still, it is very clear with explanations, numerous examples, and graphical displays make it easy not only to calculate mortgage rates, but also get a better overview of your mortgage. To use Home Mortgage Calculator, you only need Microsoft Excel 2002 installed on your personal computer or better.

The first things you will notice are the numerous examples with caption boxes explaining each step in simple language. Each item has a small red triangle that shows additional information and instructions in a tiny pop-up when you move the mouse cursor over it, and in clear, easy-to-understand terms, too.

The spreadsheet has five main sections: Mortgage Information, Extra Payments, Balance, Summary, and Fixed-Rate ARM. The Extra Payments tool offers a graph plotting extra payments against the balance year by year, while the interest rate tool includes a graph depicting Interest Rate History. Finally, the Payment Schedule tablet offers some 180 lines of calculations, similar to a tax table.

The tool is extremely easy to use and returns accurate calculations quickly. You just have to enter your own values in each field and click Enter. Home Mortgage Calculator will display everything from your monthly payment to how many years it would take to pay off the loan. Beyond its built-in features, it behaves just like any Excel template. This program is absolutely free, and you just need to have Microsoft Excel 2002 or newer to run it.

Get it from MortgageCalculator.

Ever wanted to create an online test for your students? Want to advance your teaching methods to the 21st century? You don’t know how? It is because you haven’t found this useful program, created by Daypo – Daypo Online Tests.

It’s designed for creating, editing, printing, saving, publishing and sharing online tests for e-learning. It doesn’t matter if you are making a test for a big group of students or just for your personal use, to memorize something better by repeating it, the intuitive interface and the well-written help files will guide you until your job is done. Just use the buttons on the top of the program. Begin with the Properties section. This is where you go to get started, with fields to name your exam and add a description and your name.

A dropdown menu offers different categories for the exam, such as languages, computer, entertainment, driving test, history, and many more. Radio buttons allow you to use the option of asking a question again if a wrong answer is given or to allow a button to not answer the questions, and to leave the question for later.

Enter all the information and use the button Continue to advance to the Questions section. Here, you are able to select the question type from a drop-down menu: Option, Check, Question, Arrows, Section, and Valuation. By default the program gives you two answer options, but of course you can add more. From there, you are able to configure the points and add comments for right / wrong answers and input the time allowed for each question.

Make your test today with Daypo Online Tests and help other people who want to learn just like you, or simply raise it to the rest of the Internet users absolutely free.

Check it out at Daypo/.

You don’t know what captcha is? Have you seen the colorful words or numbers that most websites ask you to enter when registering or logging in? Yes, this is the so-called captcha image that is actually an acronym: Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart. Internet Captcha is a free tool that creates very colorful animated captchas that you can embed in your web site to limit traffic to people and exclude other computers or the so-called bots. The captchas it creates use number codes with distortion, animated effects, and background objects that make them impossible for computers to read.

With the detailed wizard like interface you will be able to create captchas in three easy steps. First, there is the Visualization, where you choose the background and number colors and the size, thickness, and movement of the numbers. The user is also able to add simple icon like background images and set their speed. In the Security step set distortion levels, distance between numbers, maximum spin of the animation, and doping elements via level adjusters. Finally, the Code Resulting step generates a code in ASP or PHP that can be copied and embedded easily. A preview panel along the bottom displays your captcha as a work in progress, depicting various effects as you add them. A thermometer like display will rate your security choices.

The program’s web site offers documentation and information, but this tool is basically self-explanatory since you can observe the result of every change you make. If you are concerned about the access to your web site, here is a free-and-easy solution.

Check it out at Icaptcha.