If you have ever been worried about the possibility of hard drive failure, I have two pieces of advice for you. First of all you should always backup any important or irreplaceable stuff. Secondly, you could use a hard drive “health” monitoring program such as HDDlife.

It’s a real-time hard drive monitoring utility with alerts, malfunction protection and data loss prevention functions. HDDLife uses S.M.A.R.T. technology,(most modern drives support this) and works both for single PCs and large computer networks. S.M.A.R.T. technology was developed by hard drive manufacturers to accurately predict hard drive life span and prevent hard drive malfunctions.

HDDLife displays S.M.A.R.T. attributes in real-time and alerts you if particular hard-drive attributes exceed threshold values and are at risk. You can then backup data and/or replace endangered hard drives.It also tells you the temperature of your hard drive and you can even control the noise/performance aspects of it. It loads at Windows startup, compares new attribute values with the previous values and doesn’t use much memory. The program is extremely straightforward – so no technical knowledge of PC or hard drive technology is needed at all in order to use it. It comes in paid versions and a freeware version.

All in all, its a pretty impressive little program for anyone who wants that little bit of extra peace of mind about their stored data.

You can download it and read more info at the website here!

This is a really cool software worth checking out. It’s called MediaMan.

MediaMan lets you create and organize your own media catalog. You will no doubt enjoy the fact that it combines the capabilities of managing all kinds of media, including books, DVDs, CDs, VHS tapes, software and game titles.

With MediaMan, managing a media collection is no longer a stressful experience. It allows you to make use of the automated content retrieval function to create your digital catalog without typing. That’s not all, you get to keep an eye on borrowed and rental items with the status management feature and you can export your collection to web pages or even images to share with your friends.

It’s a really cool easy-to-use software, go check it out!

CLICK HERE!

I think you should check this game out. It’s called Galaxy Guard.

Galaxy Guard is nice and simple game with cool graphics. In the game you are expected to destroy as many enemies as you can and stay alive to reach the enemy’s base. But that’s not all you’ll encounter big motherships that are your primary targets, you’ll also get the chance to equip your ship with new weapons, armor and energy by destroying the right enemy ships.

It’s a nice and simple game that should work easily with most Windows OS, though I’ll advise you use any OS higher than Windows 98 for optimum performance.

Go Check it out HERE! IT’S FREE

You are going to love this software. It’s called Game Editor.

Game Editor is a game design software. It lets you create the games of your dreams. I love the fact that it is so easy to use you can create nice games with little or no programming or technical knowledge.

With Game Editor you can design and develop 2D games for personal computers and mobile devices.

What about compatibility issues?

I don’t think you need to worry about system issues or compatibility, though I’ll advise that you use at least windows 98 for better output.

Game Editor is designed to be portable across all popular platforms, including Windows (95, 98, Me, NT, 2000, 2003, XP), Linux, Pocket PC, Handheld PC, GP2X and Windows Mobile-based Smartphones. 

Go check out the trial version HERE!

When you’ve just bought a new computer, it usually comes preloaded with numerous “Helpful” programs, most of which you’ll never use. They’ll usually only serve to slow your new computer down to a crawl. Think of “PC Decrapifier” as an automatic garbage cleaner for them! Even if your computer isn’t brand new, but still has some pre-installed garbage on it, you can use it to get rid of some of those difficult to remove, factory-installed applications.

It was originally called the Dell Decrapifier but the author decided to rename it to the more politically correct PC Decrapifier. After all, Dell is not the only manufacturer that does this. This is a most welcome and much needed program to simplify the removal of some of those difficult to remove, factory-installed, unwanted applications.

Visit the website here to download it and also to view a list of the programs it can uninstall.

Halma is a game played on a solitaire type board with 10 pins by 2-3 players. These players can be either computer or human, and you can save games to pick up later if you wish. It’s identical to the board game Halma.

The game (named from the Greek word meaning “jump”) is a board game invented in the 1800s by a surgeon at Harvard Medical School, a guy called George Howard Monks. There was apparently an English game called Hoppity before this but Halma was different. You use a checkered board, divided into 16×16 squares, and playing pieces are of course black & white for two-player games, and of various colors in games of four players or more.

Curiously addictive. Oh and there’s no Hippos in the game. In fact it’s just the name of the software company. Also no hippos were harmed in the making of this game. 🙂

At times we get so carried away by the work we have to do, sitting at the computer for so long that we forget to take healthy breaks. Break is a useful software created to help you work effectively without killing yourself.

Break is designed to help you not work too long at one time on the computer. It lets you set a timer from 1- 120 minutes to remind you to get up and go for a walk, have a coffee, go home, go to bed etc. Auto reset and auto boot are also supported.

Break works in two basic ways, as a work logger and as a rest reminder. As a work logger it records your work times. Work can be divided into five different categories, with maximum work capping for each category. It maintains a running total to show you how long you are on your computer, and what you do most while on it. As a rest reminder it simply reminds you to take a break.

Go Check it Out HERE!

Here is a nice tool fro you to create personalized calendars with.

Simply Calenders, as the name goes, is simply about calendars. But this is no simple calendar creator, it can quickly create high quality personalized calendars and planners in any of 70+ languages. Isn’t that something?

It’s very easy to use; in fact there is a Calendar Creation Wizard that helps you walk through each step. What I really like about this software is that it allows you to include your own photos, birthdays and other events. That’s not all, with a click of the mouse; you can choose to include any of a wide range of national astronomical and religious events.

If it’s for office purposes, you can add your company logo and message. With cool features like 51 customizable styles for any year from 1582 until 9999, your choice of colors and fonts, multilingual options etc, you won’t have any problems designing really cool calendars which you can print and give out to friends, relatives, colleagues, customers or just for your personal use.

Create really cool personalized calendars and define your days clearly.

Check it out! CLICK HERE

Songbird is a media player, but not all media players are quoted as promising “to be the Firefox of media players”.

Apparently the user interface is very similar to iTunes, but the main thing I noticed about this media player is its ability to list all the sound or video files on a page, almost as if they were local files.

You see how this thing operates, is you surf to sites such as mp3 blogs etc, by using the built-in browser, and all the media on the page will be listed. You can then choose if you would like to save or play any of these songs/videos locally to your collection. Of course you can also play and organize playlists etc, with your current mp3 or video collection that resides on your computer.

It is pretty cool to be able to instantly play media without having to open it in a separate program.

This might be useful software for anyone who routinely browses for music or videos online. You can find out more details and download it by clicking here!

7-Zip is an open-source file archiver with high compression ratio. It can compress your files using a variety of methods, such as 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2 and TAR. It can also extract RAR, CAB, ISO, ARJ, LZH, CHM, Z, CPIO and NSIS archives.

Like other file archives you may be used to, 7-zip can integrate into the windows shell and it also has a command-line version. 7-ZIP also offers some advantages over other windows based archive programs such as winzip and winrar:
Open-source – You can read and modify the program source code.

• Cross-platform – You can run 7-zip on any modern operating system (Windows, Linux, OS X, and so on)
• No registration – There are no annoying splash screens or nagging registration pop-ups
• Provides a compression ratio that is 2-10% better than PKZIP and WINZIP provide for ZIP and GZIP archives.

Note that you can register 7-zip if you want to support it by clicking Help->About 7-Zip->register in the 7-Zip File manager but it’s not a requirement and it will never bug you to.

There are two basic ways you can associate certain file types with 7-zip. The easiest way is to open up the 7-zip file manager and choose Tools->Options and in the System tab choose the file extensions you want to associate with 7-zip. This will make it so files ending in those extensions are automatically opened in the 7-Zip file manager for extraction. If you choose to add the associations manually by the standard MS Windows way of right-clicking on a file, choosing “open with”, selecting the “always open files of this type with this program” and then browse for the 7-zip program then make sure you select C:\Program Files\7-Zip\7zFM.exe. There are two other binaries in the 7-Zip installation folder that could confuse you and they are called 7z.exe and 7zG.exe; so make sure to use 7zFM.exe (FM means File Manager)

It is possible that 7-Zip can handle all your file archiving needs but you may run into some files that were compressed using Winzip and they won’t always be compatible with 7-Zip. I personally haven’t came across this issue but just be aware of it.

To extract all the files of an archive first click Edit->Select All and then click the ‘Extract’ Button (As shown in the included screenshot)