Shutdown your computer the intelligent way!

Intelligent Shutdown is a free program for turning off your computer at a specified time, among other things. It can also launch or close programs specified by you at a certain time. It can lock your computer and display a picture at a specified time too, for example when you’re gone to work (or gone home from work).

So no need to remember to lock it or turn it off, as its all automated. All these things can be set to run at at a one off time or at a regular schedule, daily, once a week or month, etc. You can also set reminders for yourself. It also has a memory and CPU monitor so you can set things to happen only when memory or CPU is above or below a certain level, and it also shows idle time and uptime.

This program could be pretty useful for anyone who wants to automate things a little on their computer without having to remember to do it all each time.

It’s fully functioning shareware but you have to register if you wanna get rid of the welcome screen that pops up on start up. Get more info and the download here.

Transparent Screen Lock: Look, but don’t touch!

Transparent Screen Lock is a program for locking your computer. Big deal, right? Theres a few programs that already do this,or you could just password protect the screensaver. The difference with this program is that it’ll still display whatever’s running. This just means that no one can interefere with it, so they can look, but can’t mess up the settings.

For home or office users i can’t think of much use, as this idea seems to lack any privacy, since anyone can still see what you’ve been working on, I dunno, maybe that’s not an issue with some people?

Though this does seem like it could be very useful for things such as demo computers on display in computer stores or at trade shows, It could be a tad cheaper but may be worth it to certain people in those circumstances, but the rest of us regular home users can find similiar things for free, or just stick with password protecting the screensaver!

This seems like one of those programs that’s very useful to certain people working in certain conditions like i mentioned, and not very useful to everyone else, althought it has some advanced features such as logging attempts at unlocking the computer.

Theres a standard and a pro version, they seem pretty similiar to me,so if you wanna check it out and get more detailed info on what it can do, go here.

Hijacked by Spyware? HijackThis!

Ok. so you take precautions online. You know to a-l-w-a-y-s use protection, because all it takes is one time!! You don’t download strange files from even stranger people! You have a virus scanner, you have an antispyware scanner, and you’re not afraid to use ‘em!

But then suddenly the worst happens, your beloved computer screws up, is it spyware? Is it a virus? Get it out! Get it out! aaaahhh!! You’ve tried your scanners but it just isn’t helping!! Well, don’t panic and remain calm. There is a last resort, and it’s name is HijackThis!!

HijackThis is a small free program that scans the inner workings of your computer such as the registry. It outputs its findings to a text file, which you can then show to many computer knowledgable people in various forums online, such as such as SpywareInfo or Computer Cops.

Then they can hopefully tell you exactly whats wrong with your computer and how you can get things back to normal again! HijackThis is a serious yet simple tool for anyone who needs to sort out a spyware problem that seems too much for scanners, and you can get it here and information on using it is here

RecentX: Say ‘Goodbye’ to your start menu and ‘Hello’ to saved time!

Normally when you want to launch a program, it can be a real time consumer. You first gotta click on the start menu and look through the long list of programs you may have aquired. Then when you finally find it you gotta click on its submenu and scan your eyes through it again, it can be a real pain. Similar thing when you gotta navigate through folders in order to find a file!

Well with RecentX, you may never have to go through that on a daily basis ever again! It automatically tracks what programs and even files and folders you frequently use and keeps them in a list (which is also searchable) It can also track your favorites and history from both Internet Explorer and Firefox.

What i like is that it doesnt degrade the system performance since it doesn’t index your entire hard drive like certain programs. After all, what’s the point in indexing thousands of files you’ll never need to access? It just keeps track of the programs, files and folders that you most frequently use! You can also quickly perform frequent tasks such as copying and pasting. It even lets you access frequently used files on a networked computer! A lot better than clicking on network neighbourhood (”My Network Places”) and navigating your way to ‘em.

Check it out here for more info and a free trial.

Civil Netizen: Secure File Delivery

Civil Netizen is a free and secure way to send a file via the internet. It involves no complicated FTP settings, shared website settings, large email attachments, etc.
You can send your file(s) through a simple drag and drop interface. Files can be up to a huge 4 GB!! Thats an awful lot of data, so now you can easily send and share your latest project you’ve been working on, etc, no matter how big (well, as long as its under 4GB obviously). It also fully preserves the folder structure if thats important to you.

You simply “parcel” your content with the online interface, and then you send a pick up slip via IM or email to your recipient. An important feature to mention is that all files are fully encrypted with 128 bit encryption from end to end, so it really is totally private.

It’s a totally free service and they say it always will be! Sounds good! Another one for the bookmarks! You can check it out or use it by going right here.

Screensaver Commander: Randomise and manager your screensavers

Screensaver Commander is a great little freeware program I found when I was searching for a screensaver randomizer. Finding a decent screensaver randomiser was harder than you might think, and this one is the best one I’ve ever found, plus it’s free!

It allows you to add your favorite screensavers to a list that it randomly picks from each time the screensaver starts. A great idea, as you’re bound to get bored of just the one screensaver all the time, i know i did! It also has the useful feature of setting a list of programs that you don’t want the screensaver coming on during. This can be useful for times such as when you’re watching a dvd or video file, or doing anything processor intensive such as defragmentation or a virus or spyware scan.

You can also control the settings for each screensaver from within the program,test them, and set the period of time before the screensaver turns on and before the monitor powers off, if you should choose so. It’s a neat little easy-to-use program that makes using your computer (well, not using your computer) that little bit more interesting.

You can grab it for free and get more info by going here

Planestate: Impressive Free Screensaver

Planestate is a pretty impressive freeware 3d screensaver for Windows.

It’s kinda hard to describe what it looks like without seeing it, but imagine endless partterns twisting and turning as they float through a starfield. If that’s hard for you to imagine… Here’s some screenshots because its better than me attempting to describe it!
It’s hard to appreciate how good this screensaver looks until you actually see it moving, so the screenshots don’t really do it justice .

It also claims to have very low cpu usage which is an added bonus. Theres no nag screens or anything like that, just a title that fades away after the first few seconds when it starts up. I’ve seen scrensavers that aren’t even as good as this that make you pay for them! So its worth checkin’ out if you want a pretty cool screensaver for your PC!

To see for yourself, grab the free download here.

ProcessLibrary.com Quick Access

This little program is a free add-on for the Windows Task Manager, for finding out about what’s running on your computer.

Firstly, let’s get to the Windows Task Manager, this can tell you whats running on your computer. To get to it right click the taskbar (or press control-alt-delete), click Task Manager, and then click Processes. There you’ll see a list of all the processes running on your computer. A lot of this stuff is useful and needed stuff, but sometimes it can be unneeded stuff. It can be stuff that isn’t necessary and is just slowing up your computer by running, or it can even be bad stuff such as spyware.

So how can you know what all those things listed actually are? Well this program adds a little “I” link beside each thing listed (standing for ‘Information’ i guess!). So now with a simple click, it opens up a webpage telling you exactly what each one means. So you can learn exactly what it does and if it’s needed or not. Handy little program that saves a lot of typing into Google!

Theres over 9000 entries in the processlibrary.com database of running tasks,and more added weekly. So you’re pretty sure to find out what you’ve got running.

Here’s a task manager tip while we’re on the subject: You can easily see which programs are using the most RAM on your PC by clicking the memory column header in task manager to arrange them by memory use.This free little add-on program just does one useful job really well!

For more info and to download it, go here!