Posted 06/22/09 at 01:30:24 PM by David Murphy

Dealing with your data is a critical part of the Windows experience. "No, really," you ask? I know, I know. But the kinds of file operations you perform on any given day represent the bread and butter of your operating system. You drag your pictures around, copy and paste your documents to other places, maybe send a file or two over email. It's simple stuff. That's not a value judgment, just a comment about the basic functionality that everyone uses on a modern OS.

When you're ready to step out of this minor league of file management and head into the majors, you'll find a host of freeware applications waiting to hit a pitch or two. These applications take the common elements of your Windows file operations and inject them with a dose of raw energy. For example, you can customize and jack up the very process of copying files from one directory to another. You can also beat back Windows' default system for batch file renaming and instead transform a large number of files with very specific titles and extensions. You can even map out just how much space your files take up on your drive, giving you the perfect opportunity to catch up on some spring cleaning across your battered hard drive.

While these kinds of processes are a mainstay of this week's roundup, I'm also taking a look at two additional programs that pack additional functionality into your operating system as a whole. So what are you waiting for? Quit your file transfers, click the jump, and get ready for a brand new world.

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Posted 12/05/08 at 04:05:59 PM by David Murphy

Need to keep your hard drive from being crapped up?  Are you a power-downloader with no organizational skills?  Do you want to see exactly where the space on your hard drive is going and have your computer automatically shuffle and sort new files around? 

You're in luck.  We've assembled a batch of freeware utilities that are, without a doubt, the most essential file management tools you'll want to have on your PC.  We use them to automate mundane tasks like file moving and deletion, and better still, to determine exactly where all the wasted space on our drives are going.   We would kill to have these feature integrated into Windows Explorer, but no dice thus far.  But we can't complain much, because we've saved so much time with these small utilities that we can't ever think about going back to a life without them.

 If you want a more ringing endorsement, there's only one way you're going to get it.  Click the jump and come check out the most time-saving file management tools we've ever found.

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Posted 08/21/08 at 10:47:03 AM by Chris Moody

Comcast is not about to stop in its attempts to manage heavy users on its network after the hand slap from the Federal Communications Commission that found that Comcast had improperly blocked peer-to-peer programs.

Bloomburg reports that Comcast now has plans to slow Internet service to the heaviest users during periods of congestion. The internet speeds for targeted customers will be reduced for periods lasting from 10 minutes to 20 minutes, to keep the service running smoothly for other users.

How much of a slow down? Mitch Bowling, Comcast's senior vice president and general manager of online services said it would back down to “a really good DSL experience''.

Internet Service Providers need a way to control bandwidth hogs during peak times in order to keep things profitable. The only other way is to add additional bandwidth that they would never even touch the rest of the time, which comes off their bottom line. Comcast’s first mistake was being sneaky about it and not disclosing the practice to consumers.

I actually like their latest idea, but from the sounds of this, they are about to repeat their second mistake; not defining what constitutes a heavy user and what exactly is this penalty phase with the bandwidth cap? The generalities just make users uneasy. Those same uneasy users will backlash if they unknowingly get caught up in Comcast’s heavy user slowdown, with what they see as reasonable usage. That reasonable usage is completely subjective, unless Comcast chooses to define it.

What do you think? Is Comcast’s latest plan an improvement?

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Posted 07/26/07 at 06:01:21 PM by David Murphy

The prettiest way to wrap your cables should hardly be your biggest worry when you're modifying or building a sweet rig.

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