Most of you know that I love a freebie and today I’ve got five of them for you. They’re all Windows utilities that solve specific problems and/or make life using Windows a little easier. Best of all, not one of them will cost you a penny.
1. Advanced Uninstaller. The perfect addition to any flash drive, this no-installation-required uninstaller does a fine job removing all traces of unwanted software. My favorite feature? Batch uninstall. Just indicate the apps you want to remove and AU does the rest.
2. Dual Display Mouse Manager. A few years back I finally moved up to a dual monitor system. Let me tell you that this has been my best decision ever. My only complaint is that I frequently overshoot the “border” between monitors when I mouse to the edge of either one. Dual Display Mouse Manager senses my cursor’s proximity to that transition point and automatically slows it down. It’s a small convenience, but an essential one for anyone using two (or more) monitors. You guessed it – my next upgrade will be to 3 or perhaps 4 monitors. (I’ll just need to get a bigger desk first)
3. Dexpot . No room in your budget for a second monitor? No problem: Dexpot transforms your single screen into two or more virtual desktops. This popular freebie’s been around for a while, but the latest version adds a terrific plug-in for Windows 7 users: SevenDex, which pops up thumbnail views of your desktops when you mouse over the Dexpot taskbar icon.
4. Universal Viewer. This is one of those utilities that really should be built into Window’s, Universal Viewer lets you view the contents of just about any file. It’s great for those times when someone sends you a weird file attachment and you don’t have the program installed that’s required to read it. And like Advanced Uninstaller, UV is fully portable (no installation required), so it runs nicely from a flash drive.
5. Wizmouse. Microsoft still hasn’t learned. After all these years, Windows still isn’t smart enough to detect where my cursor is pointed and make the mouse wheel work there. Instead, it works only in the window that has “focus,” meaning the currently selected window. That’s an absolutely frustrating “feature” which should have been fixed by Microsoft years ago! Fortunately, there’s WizMouse, which activates the scroll wheel in whatever window is under your cursor, plain and simple. This also works in programs other than Windows.
OK, those are some of my favorites – if you have any you’d like to share, just post a comment on my blog. Click the links below to get your free copies.
1: Advanced Uninstaller
2: Dual Display Mouse Manager
3: Dexpot
4: Universal Viewer
5: Wizmouse
