RGdot

Monthly Archive: October 2011

Software Reviews

Freeware Shorts: Belarc Advisor (System Information)

Belarc Advisor is a highly rated and detailed program that builds a profile of any Windows computer and presents it to the user in html format to review in a browser. The detailed system profile includes installed software and hardware, network details, missing and installed Microsoft hotfixes, anti-virus status and also security benchmarks.

Belarc Advisor begins by asking and downloading security advisories to accurately check the system for the latest security and hotfixes released by Microsoft. It then starts to build a profile, a process that usually takes a couple of minutes, it will also survey the local network for

Green / Software Reviews

Freeware Shorts: The Carbon Footprint Calculator

The Carbon Footprint Calculator (Version: 2.1 as of this post) is a small and simple tool that helps act as a rough guide to how much Carbon Dioxide emissions a person or household is responsible for.

Environmental concerns and the issue of climate change are often debated and mentioned, even here on RGdot.com, and some of us believe that the time for debate has long passed and we must act quickly to ensure a better and healthier future. That debate aside, The Carbon Footprint Calculator provides rough estimates and is educational at least.

It asks and uses numbers for fuel

Software Reviews

Freeware Shorts: Bram (Batch File Renamer)

Bram stands for Batch Renamer and Mover. It is a simple tool that does what its name says.

It works both with folders (and optionally its subfolders with configurable depth) and if required with files alone skipping any folders that may exist along side them. Bram can also filter to specific file types and ignore others and one can also select only the files needed using the native windows’ method utilizing the Shift and Ctrl keys.

The renaming part can configured using the Parts button with any combination of sequential numbers, current file name, file extension, parent’s folder name and

Software Reviews

Freeware Shorts: Imagine (Image Viewer)

Imagine (Version: 1.0.8 as of this post) is a full featured image viewer and thumbnail browser. It features rotate, flip, negative and other common effects and filters. Support for plugins and command line parameters as well. It also supports animation creation, a feature less common in image viewers.

Via Tools —> Animation Factory one can create animations.  It supports setting delays between frames, setting transparency, resizing the animation, fliping frames horizontally or vertically and even manipulating the colors of the images. It is also possible to extract frames from an existing animation.

Another feature often missing or incomplete in many

Software Reviews

Freeware Shorts: RealWorld Paint (Image Editor)

Over two years ago I reviewed RealWorld Paint.COM and was impressed. Recently the author released a major update (Version: 2011.1) with a slightly changed name (RealWorld Paint). Once again he sought advice at the DonationCoder forums as well.

This new version has several new features, some of which are listed below that make RealWorld Paint even better and probably even more complete that is required for most users.

The features are: Support layers with styles (individual layers can be filtered with the likes of blur, rotate and more and even worked on with Photoshop tools. This is followed naturally by

Software Reviews

Freeware Shorts: Kestrel GX (Photo Editor And Organizer)

Kestrel GX (Version: 1.2.1 as of this post) is an attractive photo editor that also helps organize photos into one or more databases. It supports many image formats including JPG and others but also Photoshop’s PSD format and RAW formats. Photos can be arranged into PDF albums to share easily with others. The usual edits like resize, rotate, flip, convert, remove red eye, saturation, rename and others are available but Kestrel GX lets you choose an external application (File —> Open In External Editor) for editing images.

Kestrel GX is perhaps mostly useful as a photo organizer. Not only it

Software Reviews

Freeware Shorts: Bandizip

Bandizip (Version: 1.03 as of this post) is an archiver that support most if not all archive formats including the popular ZIP, 7Z, TAR, CAB, RAR and ISO formats and less common ones ones like XZ and BH.

More usefully Bandizip can create executables that will join big files that Bandizip itself has split and archived separately for easier portability. Bandizip can extract automatically from its context menu or let the user choose a destination. It also features what it calls high speed archiving. Here Bandizip recognizes file formats that are difficult or impossible to compress and bypasses them for