Small But Powerful: 30 Useful Apps Under 2MB
Small But Powerful: 30 Useful Apps Under 2MB
Posted 04/14/2011 at 3:50pm
| by The Maximum PC Staff
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When it comes to computing, our general philosophy at Maximum PC is that bigger is better. More, speed, more memory, more power--as far as hardware goes, there's no such things as excess. Software, though... Software's a little different. Big, feature-packed utilities and applications are great, but we prefer apps that show a little restraint.
That's why we've put together a list of 30 apps that kick ass without taking up a lot of space. Every program in this list can be downloaded for free, and takes up less than 2 megabytes of space. Read on for more!
SpaceSniffer
What the heck is taking up all that space on your computer? Find out with SpaceSniffer. Like WinDirStat and a few similar programs, SpaceSniffer scans your drive and creates a visual representation of all the stuff that’s on it, so you can see at a glance what’s cluttering your boot drive. From there you can right-click to interact directly with files and folders—anything you can do from the right-click context menu, like delete, cut, copy, and paste, you can do in SpaceSniffer.
f.lux
Ever notice it’s hard to sleep at night after staring at your computer screen all evening? It could be the color temperature of your monitor. F.lux is a simple app that matches the color temperature of your screen with the lights in your room, and with natural light in the morning. Go easier on your eyes; you only get one pair. Presumably.
CPU Z
CPU-Z has grown to be one of the most valuable tools an enthusiast can access. It gives you the nitty gritty on what clock speed your CPU is running at, what it idles at as well as what stepping and revision it is. CPU-Z also gives you quick info on your motherboard, RAM and GPU too. On a rigs, we often use CPU-Z to verify that our CPU is running at its rated speed. Believe it or not, but sometimes a motherboard will incorrectly set the multiplier for a CPU and unintentionally under clock the chip. We put a load on the CPU with Prime95, and then use CPU-Z to verify that all is what it should be.
TeraCopy
Windows’ file copying and moving can be a little arcane, and the interface lacks much useful information. TeraCopy is designed to copy and move files as fast as possible, with plenty of options not available in Windows Explorer, like pausing and resuming, error correction, and test copying. It can also integrate seamlessly with Windows to replace the default file movement system, unlike similar programs like FastCopy.
Everything
Think Windows 7’s built-in indexed search is fast enough? Think again. Everything, from Void Tools, is a ultra-light-weight indexed search app, that makes looking for files jaw-droppingly fast. Like, instantaneous.
If you don’t believe us, try it out for yourself—we guarantee you’ll be impressed. Indexing is remarkably fast (a minute or so per hundred gigabytes indexed) and Everything’s system footprint is minimal. You can only search in filenames, but regular expressions are supported and the speed is phenomenal.
TMonitor
Core i3/5/7 chips are great at handling thermal and power loads. Instead of simply crashing or locking up your box, most Core iX chips just throttle the clock speeds down until the heat is manageable. That’s great, except you don’t really know if you’re giving up performance because your heat sink or case air flow is underperforming. Since the chip throttling doesn’t appear as an error in the OS, you’ll have to rely on the wonderful TMonitor. This utility monitors the clock speed of each core in real time and even shows you what the Turbo Boost level of the chip is. Fire up TMonitor, and load up your CPU with a good work multi-threaded load such as Prime95. TMonitor should show all of the cores running at maximum clock speed and without any sags. Let it run for at least 15 minutes to an hour. If the TMonitor shows large sags on some of the cores, you have a thermal issue with your system.
Darik’s Boot And Nuke
Pretend that you’re an editor at a web site that just came across a prototype phone from a fascist-like computer company. Great ! Well, that is until the company’s illegal security contractors start kicking in your front door. What are you go do? You should have Darik’s Boot and Nuke handy. Simply download the pre-built ISO, burn it to disc, and when needed, reboot to the disc. DBAN will begin nuking your PC’s storage subsystem and any hard drive it can detect. For many of us who don’t live the Hollywood, high-adventure lifestyle of a web editor, DBAN’s probably more handy for wiping old machines before you sell them or give them away.
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December 09, 2011 at 12:01am
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December 03, 2011 at 2:14am
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OriginalSensible
October 25, 2011 at 7:53am
CPU Z is a great tool for managing your multi core systems. In particular if you are setting up dedicated cores for rendering etc. To be honest all of these tools are must haves for all of us productivity geeks out there. Even though people are now using huge hard drives and high power processors the need for small footprint yet powerful utilities is always there, It just means you can use more of them :) cannabis seed
JonnyD
July 04, 2011 at 9:34am
To keep it honest, CCleaner is just over 3.5MB.
μTorrent has one major drawback. It doesn't support broken downloads. That was the reason, why I switched to Free Download Mnager. Installation package about 6.5MB, 18.6MB fully installed. It has built-in Torrent support and many useful features, like scheduling downloads, shutting down a computer afterwords, etc. To work with latest versions of FF, one needs to download and configure the FlashGot add-on.
CpuZ while small, has very limited capabilities. Speccy from Piriform gives one a lot of info about different components, not just CPU. Installation package 3.4MB, 4.3MB fully installed.
Uri
June 24, 2011 at 12:37pm
How about finding a small app that will allow sending and receiving a pop up message on a computer from another one on the same network?
GaryIKILLYOU
May 18, 2011 at 2:39pm
Gmail notifier plus is in the screen shot, but the link is just vanilla gmail notifier (which is less appealing and has less options)
Download link for Gmail notifier Plus here ---->http://windows7center.com/news/windows-7-gmail-notifier-plus/
Century22
May 12, 2011 at 5:27am
I use many of them already.
When I first bought my Eee PC I knew I had to find smaller programs to do many of the tasks I was doing on my Home PC. The 8GB hard Drive ment I had to eliminate bloatwear, and find small programs.
I and others compiled this list: http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?pid=469181#p469181
Winpatrol ToGo 586, DSClock2.2 1311, Eizo-test9 988, SumatraPDF , Cool PDF 651, JustZipIt 377
WinMd5Sum 181, Sandboxie 455, (File Hippo) Update Checker 243, MOK (Mouse Only Keyboard) 68
Calc Plus 476, convert 153Many of the tools here are in MaxPC's previous article: http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/build_ultimate_usb_thumb_drive_toolbox?page=0,4
Your size limit should be like mine 1.4mb The maximum you could get on a single 3.5" floppy disk.
I'll try more of these, Good work!
escaramujo
May 06, 2011 at 12:32pm
"Everything" is great; it did my C: in a jiffy. BUT I can't make it work with my Win Home Server. I am trying to index everything in my WHS but I don't seem to get the parameters right.
Can someone help? I will certainly appreciate it. Thanks.
AnUnknownSource
April 25, 2011 at 9:58pm
@Sparx10 TeraCopy is a lot faster for me, and way more useful than windows' copy function.
My favorite under 2MB is by far uTorrent.
Sparx10
April 25, 2011 at 5:55pm
SpaceSniffer is so much nicer than WinDirStat in my opinion, faster and more helpful. I love it.
Everything search engine is also quite amazing, so fast. I only wish there was a way to replace Windows search with it. You can replace Windows Search with Google Desktop, I'm sure theres a way to do it for Everything... If anyone finds out, please tell me.
I've been using CCleaner since probably 2006/2007. Best freeware program I've ever used.
uTorrent of course is a favorite :D I could never understand why BitTorrent was like 10MB when uTorrent was 200kb and had more features than BitTorrent does.
7zip is great, I recently downloaded an item customizer for it, it's much nicer to use now.
I think ColorCop is a pretty nice program, I'd been using Pixie by Nattyware since then. I think I like Pixie better.
Hamachi is great, many uses all around.
I recently used Memtest86 and found out one of my 2GB modules was not fried, it was only the other one. So thanks to it I have 6GB of memory :D
I haven't had a chance to try Greenshot yet, but it sounds great.
I never got f.lux to work, maybe thats because I was using it in a VM though.
Edit: The VM was causing it not to work. I tried f.lux just now... Worst program I've ever used. It took my screen from a nice white to a disgusting pink/orange. That color ended up hurting my eyes more than the bright white did.
TeraCopy looks promising but I heard it's slower than Windows Explorer's copying function in a lot of cases. I'm quite wary of trying it until there is further evidence.
Just my opinons anyway :D
Athlonite
April 15, 2011 at 10:50pm
hmmm you put up CPUz but not it's companion GPUz and there's nothing wrong with Win7's sniping tool for screenies why have two programs that do the same thing
FrancesTheMute
April 15, 2011 at 3:01pm
I guess i'm the only one who still thinks that PrtScn + MS Paint is still good enough for any screenshots I need to take. We have so many people at work that "need" Snagit, I despise that program. But that's because at my last job the geniuses at software distribution decided to push out Snagit to nearly all the machines on the network. Many of these machines had Acrobat Pro....and Snagit broke every single copy of Acrobat. I spent weeks cleaning that mess up.
Magius
April 15, 2011 at 2:49pm
The hash calculator is nice, but for convenience my vote goes to Hashtab at around 1.2MB.
You just select any file, right-click and select properties, and there is a tab with the hashes (that you select) calculated for you. Drag any file onto the tab and it get compared automatically.
shunshu
April 15, 2011 at 1:52pm
Haven't used Greenshot, but am a big fan of MWSnap for taking screenshots. Free too and only 644kb. :)
I have heard of and tried a number of the apps, but plan to try a few more of them out this weekend. Thanks for the list!
compro01
April 15, 2011 at 7:52am
Who the heck picked spacesniffer over windirstat? the latter even clocks in at 1.46MB.
andresau
April 15, 2011 at 12:58pm
You're absolutely right. Who the... picked spacesniffer over windirstat?
codepath
April 15, 2011 at 5:02am
In the section "ShellMenuView and ShellExView", the last sentence says to see the how-to article "here". But there is no link "there".
codepath
Ridnarhtim
April 15, 2011 at 4:43am
Whenever Everything starts on system startup, or when I use the right-click search everything option, I get the windows 7 "do you want to allow the following program to make changes to your computer." Is there a way to permanently disable this for this program?
tabletfan
April 14, 2011 at 10:49pm
hi, Everything and CPUz are both cool, small size indeeds doesn't mean the feature is weak
bautrey
April 14, 2011 at 10:34pm
Under 2MB!!!! Awesome cuz i have only 1.41GB of 500GB left. Lets find all that clutter!!!
T8RG8R
April 14, 2011 at 9:10pm
I use some of those progies too, here is a couple that I use everyday. ShirusuPad 569 KB Hash tab 1.1meg Locate32 (32&64bit) 1.3meg
muzicman82
April 14, 2011 at 6:51pm
I think you should add Shell Tools to the list. Far more useful than some of these.
http://www.moonsoftware.com/shelltools.asp
I LOVE the context menu "Show Hidden Files" option. Unfortuately, it's 32-bit only. Does someone know of an alternative program for 64-bit? You can use 32-bit explorer to still use this.
iceman08
April 14, 2011 at 6:34pm
That f.lux is a biiiig difference already. much less strain on my eyes. Call it a psychological thing if you want, but its much better. and it adapts to the time
CaptainFabulous
April 14, 2011 at 6:05pm
Great list. I use about 1/2 of these already, and the other half I just have no use for. But I'd like to add a few of my own to the list (all under 2 MB and free):
ShellFolderFix: great utility for managing Windows 7 windows now that Microsoft saw fit to remove previous window size and locations.
Wizmouse: allows you to scroll in windows without having to click on them first.
ATI Tray Tools: allows futzing around with all sorts of under-the-hood settings on your ATI/AMD card.
Sandboxie: great sandboxing tool for all those "might be a virus" programs.
AutoHotkey: the ultimate macro and hotkey utility.
RichieB07
April 14, 2011 at 4:54pm
The new version of CPU-Z is around 3.59MB on download.com. Still not horrible, but definitely not under 2MB. Just thought I'd give the heads up.
whelderwheels613
April 14, 2011 at 4:19pm
Nice uTorrent screen shot. I see your still using uT 1.6, and that you have a decent taste in movies.
Also, Hamachi2 is a peice of crap. LogMeIn did to Hamachi what Ford did to its cars. Build a simple, clean application then down the road triple the size and make it disgutsing. The original Hamachi is by far, much better. Here is the link the previous version.
mseyf
April 15, 2011 at 1:21pm
Yeah, I'll bet the MPAA will be interested in seeing the uTorrent screen cap. Couldn't you have torrented some linux distros for the image?
Sparx10
April 25, 2011 at 5:39pm
Guys I doubt it's even their image. It's most likely just an image from a google search for "uTorrent". Obviously MaximumPC would be using the latest version and not doing anything illegal ;)
Insula Gilliganis
April 14, 2011 at 4:16pm
Haven't used most of the apps listed and will check out many of them, but I have been using CCleaner for years now. I run it at boot it so it is one of a very few programs that gets used every day. It seems to get updated approx. every 2 weeks or so and you can set it up to automatically alert you to newer versions. 2 neat things I use it for is to clean out Adobe Flash "super cookies" that many sites leave behind on computers (on my computer found at C:\Users\"your computer name"\AppData\Roaming\Macromedia\Flash Player\macromedia.com\support\flashplayer\sys) and doesn't normally get deleted by browsers. And I also use CCleaner's "System Restore Remover" to delete all but the 2 or 3 of the most current Windows System Restore files as those can take up a lot of hard disk space needlessly.
This program does so much more than any brief description can give it justice and should be installed on every computer.
chillyb
April 16, 2011 at 8:59pm
amen my bratha! I couldn't agree more. Thx for the list MPC! IrfanView is another one that's a must install for me. Then again, image editors are .10 a dozen these days. ;)
bikerbub
April 14, 2011 at 4:07pm
that's a nice lookin' .minecraft folder you got yourself there.
just a quick 'get-to-know-you', do you use custom texture packs?
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