StartupSaver: Faster than a locomotive!

Ok, I'm going to admit, this is my freeware. I mean, this is literally the first freeware that I've coded and felt comfortable enough to release to the public.

StartupSaver is a program designed to improve your computer's startup time and quality by executing programs at intervals. You basically choose your program, and then set the delay you want after that program, and then the same for the next, and the next, and ect. This way, when starting your computer, it won't start everything up at once, but space it out. Here's a few of the features that I thought handy and tried to incorporate:

-Import: Because if you were to switch over to StartupSaver, it would be a pain to have to get all of your items that are already on startup. So you can import items from the registry, the global registry, the Startup folder, and the global startup folder.

-Export: More of a tool outside the program, exports registry, global registry, startup folder, global startup, or StartupSaver settings (or all of the above) to TXT, REG, or even a folder of LNKs.

-Delay for SS: So you have a chance to back if you want to abort starting all the programs, you can set the delay, and show a window that has a countdown before the program launches. Also, it helps Windows get fully loaded before starting.

-Enable/Disable entries: As of v0.96, SS how has checkmarks for every entry, so if you want to disable a program without having to remove it, you can just uncheck it. The entry will stay in StartupSaver, but it will just be skipped in the lineup when starting. (Props to lanux128 of DonationCoderfor suggesting it.)

-Install: Installs your choice of directory, with an option of adding to start menu, and adding to startup. Keep in mind, this is an install inside the program, so don't expect too much. Also, you can uninstall from the directory the program is running.

-Multi executable: there are two executables, StartupSaver.exe, and StartupSaverConfig.exe. StartupSaver.exe is the program itself, Config is the GUI for adding stuff. But if you want, you can delete the Config and just open the INI file and edit settings yourself. Only if you want.

-Portable as an option: If you choose not to install, if is portable. But since the point of the program is to start on startup, it has to create a shorcut in the start menu to do so...but it's still technically portable.

-Open source: For years, I've promised myself that if I ever made a program, it would always be open source. That day is here, and I'm keeping my promise. I'll always make the most recent version of StartupSaver available.

-Tiny: For all three required files, it starts at around 400kb. If you ditch the Config, it gets down to 200kb.

Is it the best program ever? No. But I had alot of fun making it, and I think it might be really useful. If you want take a look. If you leave a comment, please include the version number(ie. v0.96)...since this is StartupSaver's home, and it's probably going to be here a while. But if you do download, beware.....

-Beta: To be honest, StartupSaver is basically where I want it. But I'm not sure how buggy it is, since I've only used it on my EEE 901, with the same registry, the same screen resolution, and so forth. So in order for it to achieve "v1.0 stable" status, I need feedback! I need people telling me what I need to fix, or if it's ok! Until I actually get somebody to download it, and then post some comments (it only takes a couple seconds, yall), poor StartupSaver will stay beneath 1.0.

*I apologize for any strange messages that may pop up.....I'm still really bad at testing my programs, and really bad at taking out things that I put in to test. Let me know if that happens.

See more StartupSaver screenshots here

Visit FreewareWire Software Downloads page for StartupSaver v0.96

Media Player Classic: They don't make media players like the used to.

While it may look like a Microsoft product, Media Player Classic is not. Though it's designed to look like the old version of Windows Media Player, it is actually open source, and holds alot more than WMP.

The best part of MPC is that it can play nearly every media file (both Video and Audio) right off the bat, and it doesn't even need to be installed. So let's talk about that for a minute.

MPC is fairly small, and standalone. It weighs only around 6mb, which may not be the smallest player, but considering how many built-in codecs it has, I'd say it's very worth it. It is also portable, meaning that you can take it anywhere, to a computer with no codecs, and still be able to play many files.

In terms of functionality, MPC has everything that I currently need to play in terms of audio and video.

-DVD player: Yes, it does have a DVD player. It may not be very flashy in terms of interface, but it is fully functional.

-Favorites: You can mark a file as a favorite so it can be easily accessed, and you can even make it remember the position of the object, so if you quit a movie, you can pick up right where you left off.

-Subtitles: To be honest, I've never used it. I don't even know how. But it's there, and that's what matters.

-"Open Device": Though I haven't used it much, it is a pretty nifty idea. For example, I can open my webcam, and view myself, typing this post.

-Keyboard shortcuts: Maybe not the most original idea, but almost everything has a keyboard shortcut, making it easy to go fullscreen, pause, view information, etc.

To be honest, that's all I can think of, at the moment. There's alot more customization, like you can open things in the same window or a different window for each file, you can change the icon for the main screen when no media is playing, and you can even specify an action to be performed after a media has finished playing (like shutting down or standbying.)

MPC is that it is the smallest, fully functional media player I've seen. When it comes to media player classic, I just want a program to play all my files. I'm not concerned with how it looks, just as long as it works. MPC opens files very, very fast, and I'm happy with that.

But if you guys think that my review was pathetic, let me know. I'm not very knowledgable on codecs and whatnot, so if something just works, I usually don't question it.

Visit Media Player Classic site for download

FastStone Capture: Gotta Cap 'em all!

FastStone Capture is a screen capture utility that really helps you get the most out of your screen. When you run it, FSCapture will sit down in your tray, waiting to be called upon. It also has a little menu bar that can be dragged anywhere across the screen. Rather than just capturing the entire screen, FSCapture has multiple options for making screencapping easy.

• Capture Active Window: Self Explanatory.
• Capture Window/Object: My favorite. You can capture somethinginside a window, such the website inside a web browser without getting thee toolbars. It's very versatile.
• Capture rectangle region: Self explanatory. Except one note, it does provide a small zoom box to help you grab just the right spot, so you don't have to resize it after capping.
• Capture Freehand Region: Pretty much can capture any region you want, even if it's not rectangular.
• Capture Fullscreen: Self explanatory.
• Capture scrolling window: My second favorite. This is probably the most decisive feature that separates FSCapture from other screen cap utils. You can actually select a part of a window that has a scroll window, and FSCapture will scroll the window itself, capture the entire time, and then copy the entire thing to the clipboard. To put it simply, FSCapture puts an entire scrollable window into one screen capture instead of having to piece them together in paint.

So that's it for other stuff. Not only are these handy options, but they also all have keyboard shortcuts that have to to with Print Screen (like Alt+PrtSc, Ctrl+PrtSc, etc.) There are also a ton of useful options, once you've set the method of capture.

-Destination: You can set where the image goes after you take it. For example, when you normally hit Print Screen, the capture goes to your clipboard. With FSCapture, you can send it to:

• FSCapture Editor
• Clipboard
• File
• File (autosave)
• Printer
• E-mail

So let's talk about the FSCapture Editor. It's surprisingly amazing. You can do alot of editing in it (duh), including adding watermarks, changing the edge, sharpen/blur, etc. You can also select a rectangle selection then hit "Save selection as". You can save as JPG, PNG, TIFF, BMP, GIF, and even PDF. The only fault I can find with the Editor is that it seems to delay the screencap by like half a second. But otherwise, it's changed the way I screencap.

This may seem like a large post for just a screencap (and maybe it is), but FSCapture is really more than that. It even has a color picker and screen magnifyer built right in. Not to mention the fact that you can "Open file in editor" so it's also a light image editor. Speaking of light, the entire program is only slightly over 1MB, so I'm gonna go ahead and round that down to "Tiny". Likewise, it's also very light on resources; it runs at less than 1MB of RAM when minimized in the tray.

There's only one hitch, and that's that this entire post is about FSCapture v5.3. Any later and FastStone decided to make it shareware, giving it an experation date on the trial. However, A+ Freeware is benevolent to host it there, so head on over for the download. While you're there you'll probably see that there is FSCapture portable. Yes, that's right, it's portable.

*FSCapture icon by sonnysavage of DeviantArt. To him be the credit.

Visit A+ Freeware for download

DriveSort: Sort it like it's hot.

DriveSort is a very handy small tool to quickly and easily sort the files on your drives. DriveSort is very much like List Large Files, although, to me at least, it seems more intuitive.

Like List Large Files, you can sort by Size, meaning it will pull up the largest files. But it sets itself apart, in that you can also browse for a specific folder, while List Large Files can only do entire drives. But then again, DriveSort automatically returns 100 results, and List Large Files can be configured to return as many as you like.

But enough comparison. DriveSort can also sort a drive by the Date, meaning it will pull up the newest files in order. The creator states that this is good for "when you have just installed a new

application, and want to find out what files have been created by the installation program," and I agree with him. It also helps if maybe you were working on a file, but can't remember where you saved it or what its name was. Pull up DriveSort, and it will find it right away.

Another reason DriveSort is good is how organized it is. The window is very small and neat, with several columns for "Filename", "Size", "Date Created", and "Path". It's very nice that the Filename is separate from the path, and that the size is written in MB rather than bytes. Do make a note, though, that you cannot click a column header to sort the list. The list is automatically sorted by whichever option you chose: Size or Date. It's also very handy that if you right click an entry, you can choose "Open" or "Open folder".

Overall, it's a very handy tool. It's extremely fast at searching, and shows the results in an organized way. It is extremely light, weighing only 32kb, and being standalone. It's also light on resources, running at about 250kb idle before a scan, around 5mb during a scan, and then back down to around 300kb afterwards. It's also portable, which is very handy if you want to try to help a friend figure out where his space is going.

Visit DriveSort (lmadhavan) website for download

Rocketdock: One less thing Mac can boast about.

Rocketdock is a dock program much like the dock on a Mac. If you don't know the concept behind a dock, you can add shortcuts to programs, folders, files, internet shortcuts, and more, and they will all be displayed as icons.

Rocketdock can easily become a staple in your computer experience. Here's some very nice things about it:

-Easibility of add: It's very very easy to add/remove in Rocketdock. In order to add something to the dock, just drag it onto some place on the dock. In order to remove, click and drag something off the dock, and let go, and it will *poof* away. Same goes with reordering.

-Icon customibility: It's very easy to change the icon for any item. You can also set the opacy, the size, the zoom amount, and etc.

-Smooth looks: Rocketdock is really impressive in that it looks good. You can set the theme for the dock, 30 of which already come with the program (and you can add more.) You can also choose the fonts and font colors. Even more impressive still are the animations. You can have the cool "Bubble" animation as you slide across the dock, where it will enlargen the icon you are hovering over. But the cool part is not only how it looks, but also how you can customize. You can (as I said before) set the zoom rate, set the zoom width (how much the dock stretches), and set the zoom duration. Same with autohide. Oh, did I forget to mention that? Well then...

-Position: You can put the dock on any 4 of the sides of your screen, that's a given. But what's really cool is just how much you can shift it. You can adjust the centering, meaning it will be more to the left or right (or up or down, if you have the dock vertical) and you can even set the "Edge offset", which means how far away it will be from the edge of the screen (like if you set 30 pixels, there will be 30 pixels of space between the dock and the edge.) On top of that, it has multi-monitor support, and can be set to "Always on top", "Always on bottom", or "Normal" (it will be treated liek a normal window.)

-Use as taskbar: If you want, you can check "Minimize windows to dock," which will act like a Mac dock. Your minimized windows will be added on to the end of the dock instead of staying in the taskbar. You can also check "Running application indicators" (which are arrows below a program that is running) and "Show running application instance" (which means that if you click on a program in the dock that is already running, it will just bring up the running instance instead of starting a new one.)

-Docklets: In addition to having links to folders or programs and such, you can also have "Docklets" which range in a great number of things, like Clocks, Battery meters, Volume control, and even a Wifi level. Docklets help Rocketdock become an even more useful tool than it already is.


Overall, it's a very nice piece of software that perfectly combines functionality with eyecandy. But wait, there's more!

-SysStats: There is a certain type of Docklet called "SysStats" that I feel I should mention. The very nice thing about SysStats is that it adds a ton of options to Rocketdoc in terms of Docklets. For example, you can have a link to My Computer that shows your available disk space, an Orb showing your CPU and RAM usage, and even one to automatically check your Gmail account. This all sounds well and good, but I've had SERIOUS problems with SysStats in the past. I got to the point where I was about to give up Rocketdock, until I discovered that all the Docklets I was having problems with were SysStats. Now, I'm not saying "DON'T USE SYSSTATS", I'm just saying, beware. I have a simple volume app that I tried to remove from my dock and it froze up Rocketdock when I dragged it off the dock. Some of the scripts worked better than others, like the Disk Space script worked better than the Wifi. But anyway, just remember that SysStats and Rocketdock are separate. (Also, if you don't know how to install SysStats on Rocketdock, please don't ask it here. Does this look like a support forum?)


I first found RocketDock when I wanted to hide all my desktop icons, but still wanted to be able to quickly launch things. It's a very convenient tool, and the best "looker" program that still provides a good amount of functionality. It is moderate in terms of resources; it usually consumes around 20-30mb of RAM for me. It is also Portable, in case you wanted to use it on the go (even though I don't think the paths to the programs would not change for the different computers, so I dunno how'd that work...) I usually sacrifice beauty for speed, but Rocketdock is one of my few exceptions. It might use more resources than a simpler dock, but it looks nice, and is reliable (without SysStats.)

Visit Rocketdock website for download

UNetbootin: Easiest bootable USB ever.

UNetbootin stands for "Universal Netboot Installer," and essentially allows you to easily create a bootable USB with many Linux distributions. For those who've never tried, creating a bootable USB can actually be quite the hassle, so UNetbootin makes it much, much easier.

If you want to absolutely go hands free on a bootable USB, you can select from several common linux distributions, such as Ubuntu, Damn Small Linux, Puppy Linux, FreeBSD, Fedora, Gentoo, MEPIS, Mandriva, Slax, Frugalware, and many more. When you select one, you can then select the version (such as "8.10 live" or "8.04 install" for Ubuntu), or just pick to go with the Latest version, in which case, UNetbootin will check and download the latest released version. After you choose your distro, version, and select the USB drive, UNetbootin will automatically download the specified ISO, and make it into a bootable USB, meaning that you can walk away from your computer, then come back a few hours later (maybe less, if you chose a distro like Damn Small Linux) and have a fully functioning bootable USB device, no hassle.

Or if you already have your ISO and want to burn it, there's an option for that as well. Just show UNetbootin where your ISO is, select your USB drive, then hit "OK", and it creates a bootable USB from the ISO of your choice. It really is just that easy.

OR if you REALLY know what you're doing, you have the option of selecting the Kernel and the Initrd, and specifying Options.

Lastly comes the drive selection. UNetbootin is defaultly set to only display USB drives, but you can (if you dare) let it "Show all drives", but remember that if you accidentally choose your C:\ drive (or whatever drive your Windows is installed), you could screw up your Master Boot Record, and unless you know how to fix that.....well, just don't do it.


UNetbootin is a very, very handy program for those who want a bootable USB drive without any hassle. The very nicest part about UNetbootin is thatyou don't have to format your USB drive. That means that you can have your apps on the USB, then UNetbootin a Linux distro, and all your apps will be completely uneffected. All it does is just copy the needed Linux files from the ISO, set up a Syslinux boot menu, and edit the MBR on the USB drive. So if you don't like your Linux distribution, just delete the files. (Of course, your MBR would still stay changed, and I'm not smart enough to tell you what to do about that...) Probably the best part about it is that it isportable, and it is fairly small (around 3.5mb).

It's a very, very handy program if you don't have an available CD drive, or if you just prefer USB. There's also specialized versions of UNetbootin such asAuto Super Grub Disk, EasyPeasy, EeePCLinuxOS, xPUD, and FUSBi. EasyPeasy and EeePCLinuxOS are built specifically for the purpose of installing Linux to Netbooks, which makes UNetbootin a Netbook's best friend. (At first, I thought it was actually short for "Universal Netbook Installer" :P)

*My apologies to all smart Linux-people, if I misused a phrase here or there, or got something completely wrong. Feel free to correct me.

Visit UNetbootin website for download

Lightscreen: Praise the Lord, I saw the light!

Lightscreen is a screen capture utility that helps capture and manage your screenshots. It is very comparable to FSCapture, although Lightscreen might have a few less features. For example it has 3 different methods of capture: Screen, Window, and Area (a rectangle). It also has shortkeys that are customizable (and toggle....able) for all three of the above, and for opening the program window and opening the directory.

Speaking of which, Lightscreen's main feature (since it is on the front tab, and defaultly checked on) is that it can auto-save screenshots to a file. You can choose the folder, then set the filename prefix to be anything you want, then set a suffix being either a timestamp or just a number, so that each screencap will be organized and automatically named. Or you can even swap the two, making the custom name last and the date/number first. But anyway, you can then choose either JPG, BMP, or PNG, and the delay (the amount of time before the screencap is taken.

In addition to hotkeys and auto-file saving, Lightscreen also has a ton of other options, such as an optional taskbar icon, the option to hide the Lightscreen window when screen-capping, the option to show a magnification around the mouse when using the "Area" option, the option of either a sound notification or a traytip balloon when a screencap is taken, and even a screenshot quality adjuster. It also has "Advanced" settings like showing a "Save as" dialog for every screencap, including the cursor in screencaps, and the option to "Grab" only one monitor. Oh, did I mention it has multi-monitor support?

Overall, it's a nice little screen capture program. Like I said, it is very comparable to FSCapture, even though FSCapture is lighter, smaller, and more feature filled. Lightscreen is about 5mb in size and runs at 20mb RAM for me at the moment (though I am using portable). Oh, it's also portable, hosted over at PortableApps. It is also open source, if you view the files available on SourceForge. (It being hosted there anyway should tell you that it's open source.)

Visit Lightscreen website for download