Utility Navigation

Compression Software | Editors | Registry | System Information | XP Utilities | File Transfer |

Latest news

04 Mar 2008: I updated the Screen Capture utilities that are currently available and free to use.

Links:

• FuturixImager

Utilities

The utilities listed here give some ideas for common requirements that I have found useful in my projects - they are certainly not intended to provide a comprehensive list.

I take the definition of a utility to be small software application that is used in the support of another task. A good example is Zip/Unzip software where before you can run your main application you may need to de-compress an input data file before it can be input. Some applications will already contain utilities built in, or better still allow the utility to be supported as a plug-in. Generally, I have found if there is a task to perform somebody out there has done it already and the software just has to be found and downloaded. I decided to put the Sourceforge logo here because it really does provide a great service to the open source community, by hosting more than 100,000 projects. When you start using open source software you may notice some bugs, but you will also notice rapid bug fixing with frequent releases of new features. Compare and contrast with some of the big commercial players.

Compression Software

If you need to save space for your data, audio or photo images then you need a utility to compress the file into say, zip format. When you download a zipped file you will then need to decompress the file to its normal size.

Editors

There are a range of editors that can handle almost any type of file (except probably database files). Common uses are for HTML, other file extensions that Windows does not recognise.

Registry

The registry quickly becomes cluttered no matter how neat and tidy you may be. It's just a fact of life that the registry is like a giant dustbin which is rarely emptied and never cleaned. Therefore, it might be worth investing some time in running some of the registry cleaners, although the results are never quite satisfactory. This is why many people decide to reinstall windows from scratch with all the hassle this entails just to get a clean system.

System Information

You can obtain a lot of this information via windows, if you know where to look. So in recent years there have been utilities that allow you to investigate by running a utility that provides the information centrally. A bit like Control Panel - well maybe.

XP Utilities

If Windows XP had been designed with a little bit more thought towards the end user then most of these utilities would not be required. For example why is there no means of clearing out rubbish files? Why are all these processes running when you are not actually doing anything or when you don't actually require the process? Some of these utilities will help you answer these questions, but be warned not for the faint hearted.

Screen Capture

I find it very useful to have a screen capture utility that can capture either the desktop, a selection or the active window. If you install FuturixImager and install the extra plugins, selecting the screen capture plugin, then you will find the capture command under File, Import. This always does the job for me having sufficient versatility, particularly when capturing off the web and saving the result as a gif image. There is also a screen capture facility built into Faststone Image viewer with even greater functionality.