Download of the Week: Bin Manager

Posted 04/16/2010 at 8:16am | by David Murphy

5

Comments

Print

Since its inception, the Window Recycle bin has operated with one purpose in mind: holding your stuff. As well, the recycle bin has always come with a super-bonus feature that, when activated, sends said stuff into the digital ether of your hard drive--or, technically, it marks the location of said stuff as "free space" on your hard drive, rendering said location available for an overwrite at some indeterminate point in the future.

There goes the joke.

Anyway, that's about it. You can send things to the Recycle Bin and you can delete things from the Recycle Bin. End of story. But thankfully--and finally--there's a piece of freeware that extends the usefulness of this digital trash pile just a wee bit past its original intention. It's not a monumental shift or crazy new feature, just a little, necessary tweak to an old friend.

Bin Manager's the name of the app and, like its title, it seeks to give you a bit more fine-tuned control over the contents of your recycle bin. Installing the app opens up a few additional options on the context menu whenever you right-click on your stuffed desktop bin. Hover your mouse over the "Delete Items Older Than" option and you'll be given the choice to select one of six different time periods for eradication, including "30 days," "2 days," and "today."  That's it.

Admittedly, this little hack won't move worlds--especially for those rocking a 64-bit operating system, which remains incompatible with Bin Manager's time-based deletions. Nevertheless, it's a neat little application that at least gives you the chance to free up some hard drive space and keep recently deleted files "just in case."  And in the world of freeware apps and utilities, there's nothing more important than squeezing every bit of additional space out of your storage. After all, there are always more things to install!

Each week, Maximum PC picks a new free or shareware download as its favorite of... the week. Have a nifty application that you can't live without? Twitter David Murphy @acererak with your latest suggestions.