A rather interesting article of DownloadSquad tells us about the trial version that Nero offers for its Nero 9. I had already mentioned that there are solutions to pay nothing in order to get Nero 8 in free download (see lower), but it goes quite far.
You must give them your email address to download the trial version for Nero 9 – What do they want it for? Some Spam database address?
The installation brings an Ask.com tool bar – Why do we want this?
At the end of the installation, you are requested to transmit (anonymously) some additional information – What data? Why?
At first launch, you are requested your email address again – Those guys have no memory, I guess…
The free version does only data discs (no audio discs) – This is nothing more than the really free software programs shown below
Knowing that, the splash screen start only use is to show you what you don’t have in the free trial version – Speak about teasing me!
Of course, the uninstall process does not fully clean your machine – They are not even able to do it, or not even polite enough to do it…
With 55MB to download, this is only 20 to 50 times bigger than the real free alternatives!
So, I suggest that you turn to other options that are really free and well-polished:
This is what is strongly suggested by an article published in The Register indicating that the Santa Clara giant would have suspended the shipments of its 2nd generation of X25-M SSD drives, because of a data corruption issue. We are waiting for a firmware update to correct this problem from what appears to be a tremendous product with low power, high performance and nice price.
SSD drives are those disk drives that are not using rotating platters with data stored magnetically, but that are based upon a set Flash memory components (so, without any mobile part, and with a performance that has nothing to do with even the fastest magnetic hard disk drives). SSD drives are expensive but, with costs are plummeting, the most expert and demanding users are starting to look at them dreamingly.
But everything shows that the SSD drives are not all equal (there is still an intense competition at this apex of performance). We see many a product recommended, often without all the technical arguments.
The “A look at SSD performance in Windows Vista – The more things change…” article from Geoff Gasior (The Tech Report) is definitely full of little gems because of that: It comes after a large number of tests (and many articles on the same subject) and compares finely the most representative products of the market.
Intel is presenting new X25-M SSD products that are supposed to bring prices down and performance up (in a nice gray metal case). See more details in Ars Technica early presentation.
Without telling it all (read the article. It’s worth it and you will learn many things), there are a few important conclusions drawn:
Initial performance is usually much reduced after some time and some even light use,
X25-M from Intel is probably the best drive around, the most well-balanced (recommended for a purchase in the short-term),
The OCZ Summit is the faster in write operations (Intel is an ace of reading),
the differences between suppliers come more from the controller used (Intel, Samsung Indilinx) than from the the brand.
The arrival of Windows 7 (with its TRIM feature support) will probably change the situation (all the more because TRIM support is not yet certain from Intel) and, if you can wait, you will be better being patient and hope for Windows 7 and the new products and new firmwares made just for it.
If you have Windows installed on your PC, you may have noticed one surprising thing: File copying is amazingly slower than what it was in previous editions of Windows or on other kinds of computers. The exact reason is a bit unclear (some say that it is linked to some Digital Rights Management features kicking in any time you copy a file, but this is still unproven to my knowledge) but this became a very annoying issue for people who have to copy either lots of files (backing up your daily work is a good example – by the way, did you make your daily backup yet?) or some very big files (moving video files around your computer is the archetypal example).
This situation led to the appearance of a few optimize file copy utilities (a software category that did not exist a few years ago, but a useful one). Let’s look at 4 of them which have the enormous advantage of being completely free:
SuperCopier: Its strong advantage is that -after installation- it replaces completely the default Windows copy for drag-and-drop (it works nearly without thinking about it)
FastCopy is fast but forgets mostly about being beautiful. However, it has a few interesting (and unique) options to configure the way the right-click menu appears.
RichCopy is the internal Microsoft solution to their own bug/issue. Amazingly configurable, you can setup profiles for different uses (probably too much for most users, though) but I couldn’t find how to insert it in the right-click menu.
CopyHandler: You can’t get more technical than this one! Options include things as obscure as buffer size depending on the type of file copy you do (disk-to-disk, directory-to-directory, disk-to-CD/DVD, etc.) The best little gems here include the possibility to pause/restart file copying, shutting down the computer at the end of a copy session, or scheduling a copy session for the next login.
All of them get rid of the usual flying folder kind of window and replace it with a more technical-looking window with progress bars and more optional lists of details.
Anyway, even if I can recommend all of them (a little preference for SuperCopier), remember that they are not even useful (in terms of copying speed) in Windows XP or Windows 2000. But, if you are using Windows Vista (mostly) or Windows 7, you should seriously consider them.
Defragmenting your hard disc drive may not be the latest fad, but it still is useful to improve the performance of a disc drive that’s been used for months or years and now looks more like a mouldy swiss cheese than a nice little techo-gadget. The solution: defragmenter your disc drive(s).
Here are a few ideas of (free) software programs that may be useful here:
Ultimate Defrag (from DiskTrix) is clearly a defragmenter wet dream. The only trouble? So many options that you won’t be able to sleep.
Smart Defrag (from IOBit) will help you defragmente several disc or several partitions at the same time.
There a re zillions of disk defragmenters for Windows. Most are free and nearly all of them do unknown actions with no perceptible effect. UltimateDefrag is not the ordinary defragmenter for (at least) two reasons:
It is beatifully presented as you can see below.
It groups the most used files in the fastest access location of your disk drive. It does not make the computer faster, but it helps in loading faster those applications that you use most.
It is always a bit difficult to actually think about doing backups. Either you spend too much time thinking about it or you forget about it. For Windows, I found a nice free utility program: FileHamster from MOGware.
This small utility will allow you to automatically backup every single file you save or modify. FileHamster will create a full history track of your activity without even the need to think about it. It acts immediately (you don’t have to wait for a daily backup), and keeps everything. Of course, you need some free disk space, but it’s so much of a relief…
If you want the best possible Flash memory storage for your camera, you need to look for a good Flash memory card. But which one is the best? Just look at those tests:
And remember that the fastest memory cards are no longer needed if you are not using one of the biggest SLR cameras and in RAW mode. However, a fast memory card is still useful to get the data into Photoshop (if you have a really good flash card reader on your computer, not the first 13-in-1 USB reader on eBay).
When you have a computer with multiple partitions on the same disk or several disks with different partitions, things start getting bad if one of them is a Linux Ext or Ext2 partition: Usually, you can’t access the Linux partition from your Windows computer, Microsoft totally ignore your disk/partition.
In order to correct this, you can/must use a special Windows driver able to recognize correctly those Linux Ext/Ext2 partitions. Ext2 IFS provides full read/write access. It’s is essentially a kernel ext2/ext3 filesystem driver for Windows. When installed in your Windows computer, it simply becomes able to natively access the Linux disk. After installing, you can mount your Linux partition under a drive letter, just like you would an NTFS partition. The drive will be available in Explorer and within any file browser dialog in your favorite Windows applications.
Your hard disk drive is a black box in more meanings than one. Wouldn’t it be pleasant to be able to directly visualize its contents? That is the core of the following proposal: an external hard disc drive whose surface is covered by an OLED screen used to display a treemap contents like it’s done by SequoiaView (see the example here showing the contents of a large disc drive containing hundreds of small files and a few bigger masses).
The display is slightly different, but takes advantage of the same principles and gives you a direct perception of the internal status of your storage media. It reminded me (in a more practical way) the slightly silly proposal I saw a few weeks ago, of a USB key chain that would physically inflate as you fill it with data.
Sometimes, you make a heavy use of a FTP server. But it is tiresome to go to a separate program in order to copy files to and from this server. There is an easy solution under Windows: Add a FTP server onto a disk drive letter.
What could be the use of network hard disk drive of one Tera-Byte which would strictly refuse to serve files because there may be a risk of breaching licensing agreement potentially applicable to them? This is the question that potential buyers should ask before purchasing the Western Digital disc drives using WD Anywhere Access: WD My Book World Edition.
In my opinion, a WD My Book World Edition disc is defintely worthless. You cannot usefully put on it an MP3 file, and AVI file, a TMP file, a QuickTime video or a Windows Media video. Western Digital seems worried that you may not have the licensing rights for these. So they don’t want you to use them. Leave those Western Digital discs at he irresponsible stores which are selling them or bring them back.
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Your hard disk drive is a black box in more meanings than one. Wouldn’t it be pleasant to be able to directly visualize its contents? That is the core of the following proposal: an external hard disc drive whose surface is covered by an OLED screen used to display a treemap contents like it’s done by 
