Executor is a very useful replacement of the standard windows “Run” dialog (Start->Run). That is the way the standard Run command should have been done. It offers many customization settings and it is skinnable.
You can define your own keywords, to start applications, etc. Executor features keywords autocomplete, history, and many others. Very cool feature is that you can define your own commands with parameters, and launching multiple programs with a single command.
Here are couple of screenshots – (I grabbed them from the Executor’s web-site, because I couldn’t figure out how to make the screenshots I like).
If you are like me to hate searching through program files and have your hands on the keyboard most of the time this is for you. I love the program – it starts with my windows.
Inno Setup can help you create your own installers and uninstallers. I have used Inno Setup in the past and recently and I have created an installer for 30 GB worth of data files and some custom scripting to detect installation folders, system config, etc. It is a very good install program with the most IMO worthy features as follows:
- Support for all windows versions (including Vista) – both 32 bit and 64 bit
- Choice of single executable or disk spanning
- Custom Setup types
- You can create custom pages for the installation
- Different compression types – 7-Zip’s LZMA compression has excellent compression ratio and fast decompression
- Integrated Pascal scripting engine
- Very good community support and variety of example script
- Many tools available to supplement the installer creation process (like ISTool, InnoSetup Form Designer, addons for downloading, license keys, etc.)
Overall excellent installer with a very small footprint. Strongly recommended!
Recuva is a fast, reliable and easy to use application to help you discover and undelete files already removed from the Recycle Bin. It scans your hard drive for files, that have been deleted and allows you to restore them.
A nice feature is that it also allows recovery from memory cards (for digital cameras, etc.) as well as portable USB drives.
By the way the makers of Recuva are the same guys that brought CCleaner to you. Nice.
CDBurnerXP is a program to burn CDs, DVDs, BlueRay and HD-DVD discs. It is easy to use and has a very nice and responsive user interface. It is a worthy replacement of many commercial burning applications. Here are some of the most important features:
- Supports single and dual layer DVD-R and DVD+R, CDs and also rewritable media
- Supports for multi-session disks
- Creates, Converts and burns CD/DVD images
- Supports buffer underrun protection
- Creates audio CDs (from mp3, ogg, flac, another audio cd, etc.)
- Multi-language interface
- Online updates
In my experience an excellent application, definitely worth a try. I’ve been using since version 2.
TrueCrypt helps you to create and operate an encrypted file, which you can mount as a volume (data storage device) on your computer. In other words you can create the encrypted file and mount it as a drive letter and it behaves as yet another hard drive on your computer. The beauty of it is that you can copy files to and from it like between normal drives on your computer.
Here are some feature highlights:
- Files are automatically encrypted and decrypted on the fly;
- The entire filesystem is encrypted (file allocation table, files, directories, etc.);
- Never saves any unencrypted data to a disk;
- Support for “hidden” volumes. It is a encrypted volume inside an encrypted volume, but you need to know the volume name and the password before you can access it. It is not visible otherwise.
- Support for multiple encryption algorithms (AES, Serpent, Twofish) and even a cascading combination of them;
- It can prepare for you a CD/DVD volume, so you can use it as a read-only encrypted medium;
- Format, encrypt and use a normal hard drive partition as well as a file as a TrueCrypt encrypted volume. It can even encrypt an entire USB drive. Sweet!
Overall an extremely useful program.
