Are you talking just Windows? Or should I include OS X and Linux.
In general, Linux is an awesome free software. Specifically Ubuntu, OLPC Sugar, and gOS are fantastic.
What I get the most use out of though is Firefox, hands down. The Mozilla project in general is absolutely fantastic. I use Firefox, Celtx, and Songbird, which are all based off of the Mozilla XULrunner code.
Are you talking just Windows? Or should I include OS X and Linux.
In general, Linux is an awesome free software. Specifically Ubuntu, OLPC Sugar, and gOS are fantastic.
What I get the most use out of though is Firefox, hands down. The Mozilla project in general is absolutely fantastic. I use Firefox, Celtx, and Songbird, which are all based off of the Mozilla XULrunner code.
Piriform has a few neat and free utilities. CCleaner (formerly Crap Cleaner before getting advertisers) is a very fast and highly customizable garbage cleaner. You can choose which kinds of files you want deleted, from temporary internet files to some obscure Windows caches I didn’t even know existed. It even has a option to clean your registry. It doesn’t have its own scheduler because Windows Task Scheduler works just fine. They kept it small by leaving out the extraneous crap.
Defraggler is a defragmenter for individual files, but it can defrag a whole drive too. I don’t know what kind of intelligence it applies to drive-defrag, but I know that defragging my Outlook.pst file (500+ MB) made Outlook run faster.
Haven’t had to use Recuva, thankfully. If you catch your mistakes early enough, you shouldn’t have to.
Another couple I use are ERUNT and NTREGOPT. ERUNT performs a backup of your complete Windows registry and puts it and a restore utility in a directory that is still accessible if you have to use an emergency boot disk. So if you do something dumb (or something ostensibly not dumb, but retrospectively so) and blast your registry, you can boot to a bootable disk, go to that directory, run the restore utility and then have an old registry back in place. It doesn’t repair the registry so much as just put an older copy back. This could break software installed after that backup was taken, but if the problem was in the registry, it should allow you to boot again, which allows you to breathe again and change your underwear.
NGREGOPT basically optimizes your registry files. It does this simply by copying them to new files, writing the records in some presumed-optimal order and eliminating any empty space, then swapping the original files for the new ones. One reboot later, your registry is optimized.
Before finding these I had used various $80 packages to try to keep my system clean and fast. I now find they suck. Running the above free utilies in the order below made my 4-year-old computer run like new. Almost the same story with my Dad’s 8-year-old machine, although it didn’t originally come with XP so you have to cut it a little slack. I recommend the following:
1. Run ERUNT to backup your registry.
2. Run CCleaner to clean your registry. Run it several times because deleting broken links sometimes causes dependent links to become broken.
3. Reboot to ensure your computer still LIVES! If not, use ERUNT recovery and try again, maybe not so aggressively you damn barbarian.
4. Run NGREGOPT to optimize your newly-cleaned registry.
5. Reboot and BE AMAZED!
I’ve only done this once so far, a couple of months ago, and am still pleased with my computer’s performance. I do have a task scheduled to run CCleaner on my garbage files (not the registry) every night. Not only does it keep the machine perky but it also keeps my differential backup files small.
Hope this helps, because I’m outta words. I’ll have to check out some of those other sites, and I’ve been meaning to install Ubuntu for a couple of years now. I’m such a slacker.
Piriform has a few neat and free utilities. CCleaner (formerly Crap Cleaner before getting advertisers) is a very fast and highly customizable garbage cleaner. You can choose which kinds of files you want deleted, from temporary internet files to some obscure Windows caches I didn’t even know existed. It even has a option to clean your registry. It doesn’t have its own scheduler because Windows Task Scheduler works just fine. They kept it small by leaving out the extraneous crap.
Defraggler is a defragmenter for individual files, but it can defrag a whole drive too. I don’t know what kind of intelligence it applies to drive-defrag, but I know that defragging my Outlook.pst file (500+ MB) made Outlook run faster.
Haven’t had to use Recuva, thankfully. If you catch your mistakes early enough, you shouldn’t have to.
Another couple I use are ERUNT and NTREGOPT. ERUNT performs a backup of your complete Windows registry and puts it and a restore utility in a directory that is still accessible if you have to use an emergency boot disk. So if you do something dumb (or something ostensibly not dumb, but retrospectively so) and blast your registry, you can boot to a bootable disk, go to that directory, run the restore utility and then have an old registry back in place. It doesn’t repair the registry so much as just put an older copy back. This could break software installed after that backup was taken, but if the problem was in the registry, it should allow you to boot again, which allows you to breathe again and change your underwear.
NGREGOPT basically optimizes your registry files. It does this simply by copying them to new files, writing the records in some presumed-optimal order and eliminating any empty space, then swapping the original files for the new ones. One reboot later, your registry is optimized.
Before finding these I had used various $80 packages to try to keep my system clean and fast. I now find they suck. Running the above free utilies in the order below made my 4-year-old computer run like new. Almost the same story with my Dad’s 8-year-old machine, although it didn’t originally come with XP so you have to cut it a little slack. I recommend the following:
1. Run ERUNT to backup your registry.
2. Run CCleaner to clean your registry. Run it several times because deleting broken links sometimes causes dependent links to become broken.
3. Reboot to ensure your computer still LIVES! If not, use ERUNT recovery and try again, maybe not so aggressively you damn barbarian.
4. Run NGREGOPT to optimize your newly-cleaned registry.
5. Reboot and BE AMAZED!
I’ve only done this once so far, a couple of months ago, and am still pleased with my computer’s performance. I do have a task scheduled to run CCleaner on my garbage files (not the registry) every night. Not only does it keep the machine perky but it also keeps my differential backup files small.
Hope this helps, because I’m outta words. I’ll have to check out some of those other sites, and I’ve been meaning to install Ubuntu for a couple of years now. I’m such a slacker.
This is just brilliant Sethery. Just what I was after, I just didn’t realise it. I’m going to do all of that.
So if you never hear from me again, something went wrong!
On Monday we are instructing our draughtsman to go ahead with drawing up plans for some small extensions (to make an enclosed verandah into a full bedroom, and to enlarge the kitchen/dining area and open it up to the rear deck and lounge). I might just download this now and see what it does for for.......thanks.
On Monday we are instructing our draughtsman to go ahead with drawing up plans for some small extensions (to make an enclosed verandah into a full bedroom, and to enlarge the kitchen/dining area and open it up to the rear deck and lounge). I might just download this now and see what it does for for.......thanks.
Four hours later and I have pretty much have what I think our new bedroom and ensuite will look like, complete with furniture (sized to match what we have). Genius.
Tomorrow I might do the enlarged kitchen & dining.
On Monday we are instructing our draughtsman to go ahead with drawing up plans for some small extensions (to make an enclosed verandah into a full bedroom, and to enlarge the kitchen/dining area and open it up to the rear deck and lounge). I might just download this now and see what it does for for.......thanks.
Four hours later and I have pretty much have what I think our new bedroom and ensuite will look like, complete with furniture (sized to match what we have). Genius.
Tomorrow I might do the enlarged kitchen & dining.
It’s a pretty simple tool to use.
I was going to recomend doing the 20 mins training part that pops up right away, and then the “how to create a room” tutorial but it sounds like you’re beyond that already.
I’m having a slightly harder time building the furniture I want to put in my basment and dropping it into the empty room but I’m getting there. I taped out on the floor where the couch would go but it easier to see what it would actually look like in sketchup.
