Tech @ FuryTech

Recently, dotPDN released version 3.5 of their popular FREE image editor Paint.Net. I’ve had a chance to use it the past few days, and I’m impressed with it. While it’s not as powerful as Photoshop, it does offer a lot of features that most free programs can’t even touch.

It handles curves and levels, along with a fairly accurate auto-levels option as well. Additionally, it offers layer support as well. Its printing options are comprehensive, allowing you to print contact sheets, and picture packages quite simply. It keeps a detailed history of what you’re doing to the image, allowing you to effortlessly jump back and forth.

The user interface is very friendly. Much simpler to use than Photoshop or Gimp, in my opinion. It’s light on the system resources, which is good for older computers.

Normally, I would provide pictures of the program, however, my internet connection isn’t that stable where I am at the moment, so there aren’t any pictures in this review.

You can download the program here.

Overview

X-Setup is a customizing program for Windows. It allows you to change many hidden settings in Windows, and to customize many of the dialog boxes. It is no longer freeware, instead there is a $8 registration fee after a certain amount of time. It is well worth it in my opinion.

Interface

The interface should be familiar to anyone who has used Windows for a while. It uses an explorer-tree like setup. On the left, there is a list of folders detailing different settings, and as you open them, it drops down into various settings that can be changed. When a setting in the tree view is clicked, the options for the setting appear in a pane on the right. If changing the setting could be detrimental to your computer, it will ask whether you want to make the setting read-only, so you can’t inadvertently change it.

There is a goback function as well, so if you change something that you didn’t want to, you can just revert to the old setting.

In the menu bars, there are quick links to various diagnostic and monitoring software that comes with Windows. This makes it easier to quickly jump among the different programs that come with Windows, but don’t have shortcuts.

For users who are new to changing settings, they have a wizard mode, which makes changing settings much easier, though it does take longer to get through it.

All in all, the interface is good.

Features

This program lets you change virtually every setting in Windows. You can add links to your My Computer context menu, make bitmaps display as thumbnails, and many more things. For those of you who know what they are doing, there are various cache and registry settings to change around.

The best part of the feature list is the plug-in system. All of the settings are controlled by plugins, which can be updated individually. This means that when they release an update for one of the plugins, you just have to download a single plugin, and not the entire program.

There are many custom plugins out there that change various settings. One lets you change the name of your mayor in SimCity 2000. There are also some password removing plugins.

The plugins can be somewhat useless though. There are still a couple that only work with Windows 95 and 98. They are disabled for other operating systems, so you can’t accidentally mess with them but they do take up screen space. Also, there are a couple plugins for ancient versions of software, so you can just ignore those.

Conclusion

This is a great program, and is well worth the $8 to register it. Most people will only need to run it once, but the results of running it will have last much longer.

You can download it here: http://www.majorgeeks.com/download4083.html

Quite a few people use the Windows Live Messenger as their main IM client. Not only does it come with virtually every computer that is sold, it also is interoperable with the Yahoo messenger. It’s still not as popular as AIM, but it’s getting closer. While the program itself is decent, it is lacking in a lot of ways when compared to applications like Trillian or MirandaIM. Windows Live Plus aims to fix some of these holes, and it’s free.

It adds a ton of features to MSN, ranging from chat log enhancements to full scripting support. It gives the option of using either HTML or plain text for logs, and it can encrypt them as well. There are a ton of scripts out there that add various automation features and better contact management. It also adds support for tabbed chats, which can make carrying on multiple conversations a bit easier.

Installation is pretty pain free, it closes messenger, installs itself, and restarts messenger. At that point, a wizard walks you through setting up some of the more advanced features that the program offers.

Some of the more fun features, such as sounds, do not work with standard Windows Live Messenger; the other person would have to use Plus to hear them, however, that’s not that big of a deal. The only real downside with this program is that it does give the option to install some spyware. When you go to install it, it will ask if you want to install a sponsor program. Make sure that you select no, otherwise it will mess up your system a bit.

It’s a free download, and highly recommended if you use WLM a lot.

Anyone who has multiple monitors on their computer knows what a pain it can be to keep track of all their open applications. nVidia has software with their graphic cards that helps a bit, but it doesn’t do much to help out with keeping track of applications. This is where Ultramon comes in.

Ultramon’s number one feature is multiple taskbars. Each monitor can have it’s own taskbar, and only the applications/windows that are opened on that monitor show up on the taskbar. It makes keeping track of which window is where much easier.

You can also add buttons to the titlebar of the applications and windows to maximize across all screens, or to quickly move it to another monitor.

With Ultramon’s wallpaper program, you can set up a panoramic background across all your screens, or you can set up a different background for each monitor. You can do the same thing with screensavers as well. Having the Lattice screensaver from Really Slick spread across four screens is quite impressive.

Ultramon is pretty stable under Windows XP. However, it has a few more issues with Vista. The title bar buttons don’t show up most of the time, and the separate taskbars get confused a lot. They are working on releasing an update soon that will fix most of the Vista problems, but until then, it can be a bit annoying.

I’d highly recommend trying Ultramon if you have multiple monitors. You can download a trial here

Overview

UltraISO is an ISO creator for Windows. It lets you create ISO files that can then be either burned to a CD or used by a Virtual CD program. For those of you who don’t know, an ISO file is an uncompressed container file that is created from CDs by various programs. Once an ISO is on your hard drive, it can be used by programs like Virtual PC.

This program does what it sets out to do, while making it very easy in the process.

Interface

The interface is almost fool-proof. There is a small toolbar right beneath the menu bar that lets users quickly jump to the function that they want. The menu bar is self-explanatory, nothing really radical there.

It has basically a double-windows-explorer view for adding files to the CD. The top two panels display files on the iso file, and the two on the bottom display files on your computer.

Features

This program is rather full featured. Not only can it create ISO files from scratch, but it can extract them from CDs as well. If you want to, you can pull IMA’s off of floppy disks, but the program cannot create them. For bootable CDs, you can extract the boot file and use that to create a bootable CD. You have the option of skipping bad sectors, but it can make the resulting files not work.

The program can save in the ISO, BIN, NERO, Alcohol, and CloneCD formats, so you can use them with virtually any burning program. It can also convert between those formats.

If you have Nero CD burner installed, you can burn CDs with it to. For those who have the trial version, you can only burn 300MB isos, but you can create them as large as you need.

Conclusion

This is a good program. I would recommend it to anyone who wants an easy way to create ISOs. It isn’t necessary to get the full version if the 5-second wait dialog doesn’t bother you, and you don’t burn more than 300MB ISOs.

Ulead Videostudio 9 is the latest video editing product from Ulead. It is easy to use, and has a lot of powerful features that set it apart from the other video editors in its price range.

Once installed, it gives you a couple of options on how you want to run the program, including a beginner mode that walks you through the steps of putting together your movie. I personally stick with the normal mode; it isn’t that complex, and gives you a lot more control over what you want to do.

The main screen is laid out very well. The left side of the screen is used for the settings of what mode you are in. For example, if you are in transition mode, they will give you extra options for changing the way the transition runs, while in this mode, it controls the length of the images you put in. In the middle of the screen, there is the preview window. This shows you the clip/image that is currently selected. It also can play your movie as you go, though that requires a powerful computer. On the far right of the screen is the Library. This is where you can insert all of images, movies, transitions, and more. It acts like a repository of your files to insert into your movie. Sadly, it gets kind of sluggish when you try to load up 200 pictures into one section. Fortunately, you can add your own categories to the list. At the very bottom of the screen, there is the Timeline area. There you can put your images, movies, sound clips, music, filters, and transitions.

Doing movies in this is pretty simple. It comes down to inserting the image or movie, adjusting the length, adding some music, and creating the movie. It can be used for simple slideshows, or complex movies, and it handles both of them equally well.

It also comes with a bare-bones DVD burner, which lets you take your movies, and make VCDs and SVCDs out of them. While it does offer a motion-menu option, it only shows the first 5 seconds of each movie, and has no configuration options. Hopefully the next the version of the program will give greater control in that area.

Before I wrap this review up, there are a few other things that need mentioning.

First, it comes with a lot of transitions. Most of the transitions are highly configurable, which is even better, and it gives you far more control over the finished product. There are also sites online where you can get more transitions for free, just look for VFX transitions.

Secondly, it does support blue-screening. While it doesn’t work as well as the blue-screening in Adobe Premiere, it works well enough.

Finally, it supports creating movies in almost every imaginable format, including MPEG4.

This is a great program, and is a steal at $99. I would recommend it to anybody who wants a great video editor, but doesn’t have $600 to put into one.

Overview

Treesize Pro is a disk space viewer. It allows you to create graphs of what is using up your disk space. It also can show you how much wasted space you have. It is a well-put together program that does a good job of what it set out to do.

Interface

The interface is self-explanatory. On the left side is a directory tree and on the right there is a bar graph/pie chart depending on what options you pick. By clicking on the folders in the directory tree, you can see the way that the disk space is used on the graph/chart.

You have buttons at the top of the screen, beneath the menu bar, to change the way the disk space is displayed, and what mode the program is in.

In the demo version, the menu bar has an extra button for buying the program. This isn’t in the full version.

Features

There are quite a few nice features in this. It can show you where your diskspace is being used. There is a mode to set it to display the how much space is used up by extensions or by the user that owns the file. The latter option is only useful on mutli-user systems, otherwise they are all show up as the same user.

There is also an utilitiy included that can be used to find files on your hard drive. I didn’t care much for it; I prefer using the Windows search.

You can also export the results of the scan into an XML file.

Conclusion

This is another fairly good utility program. The shareware version just has a bunch of nag dialogs, so there isn’t any real reason to upgrade.

Terragen is a fractal image generator. A fractal image generator generates random landscapes, and worlds, based on various settings that you input. Terragen is the best of all programs like that. It is free for non-commercial use, and only $99 for commercial use.

Terragen gives you an enormous amount of things that you can do. You can adjust the lighting, change the parameters of the random generation, and much, much more. The only thing that it won’t let you do is to include 3d objects in the random generation. If the program would let you do that, you have things like trees spread throughout the place. On the bright side, the next version will support 3d generation.

When you create a landscape, you first select the what colors you want everything to be, and select the distribution of them, based on area and height. Then you can generate the rough draft, which is basically a small chunk of land. From there, you can change lighting settings, set up clouds and water, and pick your vantage point.

Picking the vantage point is entertaining. The chunk of land is rendered in 3d, and you can either click where you want to start, or you can walk around using the arrow keys.

Once you pick where you want to take the picture from, you can then render the image, and save it as a bitmap.

This sounds complex in writing, but in practice it is very simple to do.

By using a plugin, you can also set it up to follow a set path through the land that you render, and have it play back as a movie. That is a lot of fun to do, though it takes a while to run.

Terragen is a great program, and well worth a download. If you decide that you want to sell what you make with it, you can buy a license for $99 from the company. Buying a license also allows you to make images larger than 1280 x 960.

I give it 4 out of 5 stars. If they add native animation support, and 3d object support, it would be a 5 star product. Still, it is well worth the download.

Official Site

Perhaps the best system monitoring tool that I have had a chance to use is the freeware program called Sysmetrix. It allows you to monitor virtually every aspect of your computer hardware, from temperature, to disk space, to network usage, and more.

The program runs as a horizontal or vertical block that sits somewhere on the screen. You can either have it always running in the corner of the screen, or you can keep it minimized to the screen, and only restore it when you want to see something.

It supports usermade themes, which is a huge bonus in my book. Looking at the various theme sites, one can find huge numbers of themes for it. Configuring the themes and the other settings are quite easy.

However, there are some problems. In order for it to display the system temperature, Motherboard Monitor must be installed, and running. Secondly, what things are monitored is chosen by the theme. So, if you want to monitor 4 hard drives for space, you have to either find a theme that has 4 hard drive monitoring spots, or you have to live with text hanging off the end of the program. You could also design your own theme, but I can’t picture that many people wanting to do that.?

In conclusion, this is a good program, if you can get over the couple disadvantages. Right now, I have it running on my second monitor, that way, I can keep my eye on what my computer is doing.

Official Site

Maxivista is a killer multimonitor application that lets you not only use other computers next to yours seamlessly, it also lets you use up to three monitors on networked computers as secondary screens. It works quite well, and is highly recommnded if you have multiple computers on a desk you want to control with one keyboard and mouse or if you want to use extra monitors without an extra graphics card.

Setting up Maxivista is fairly simple. Just install the application, and then run the EXE it generates on the client systems. While the primary system’s software can find the secondary systems automatically, I found it saved time to configure the IPs of the secondary system manually.

Once the software is all configured, you can set up the secondary screens in the display settings box, just like you would a real monitor. By right clicking on the system tray icon, you can change the screen from being an extra screen or remotely controlling the computer.

This software does have a few downsides. First, while it is Vista compatible, it only works with Aero disabled, which is frustrating for those users who like the Aero look/feel. Secondly, since you need to have a separate computer and monitor for each extra screen, it can get pretty cramped on your desk.

If you can get past these downsides, this software can be very useful. It can be helpful if you have an extra laptop that you want to use the screen on.

You can download it here