Windows Live Essentials 2011

Windows Live Essentials 2011 offers some free and useful applications. Here is my overview on all the optional applications. You can choose what applications you wish to install if you click on �Custom install� when prompted.

The good:

Mail
Windows Live Mail is an excellent mail program. I have used Mozilla Thunderbird but it was very unstable and the interface looked outdated (compared to Live Mail). The ribbon interface makes the program very easy to understand and use. Also the overall modern feel of the program and fast response makes it very pleasant to use. The quick search with live results is also extremely useful.

Writer
Writer can be very handy if you have a blog. You can add all your blogs in this program and compose / edit your posts. Easily insert images or videos by uploading them or choosing a video from an online service by pasting the video URL or logging in to your online video account like YouTube. The only feature I miss here though is to see a total overview of all your posts per blog and be able to delete posts.

Photo Gallery and Movie Maker
Photo Gallery is highly improved compared to the standard Windows Photo Gallery that is shipped with Windows. Now it comes with face recognition and you are able to easily upload photos to your online account like Facebook, Youtube, etc,, If your preferred online sharing service is not listed in the publish box, try to find it in the Plugins that you can download.
Movie Maker is also a very handy free movie editor. It can accept almost any video and image format and comes with transitions, effect and you can even speed up or slow down your video. Publish the movie directly to your YouTube account or other sharing service, or save the video on your desktop.

Windows Live Mesh
Allows you to share and sync folders with friends and other computers in your personal network. It uses a �p2p� (peer-to-peer) or (computer-to-computer) system so the transfers are directly to the other computer rather than through several servers. You could say that it is like �cloud� file sharing, as it can also download the same file from other computers in the network to speed up transfer. I use this a lot to sync my music and wallpapers with all my computers. There is no file size or sharing limit (like other similar paid services do).

The Bad:

Messenger
Personally I do not use this. I remember years ago when I used one of the first versions of MSN messenger. It was a small, lightweight, advertising-free chat application. In time I have seen it change. Tabs and banners were introduced and some other things I rather not see. Since then I stopped using MSN Messenger and moved to Pidgin, also because I have a Gmail account and wish to be available on Google Talk as well. I did test the new Messenger and it was just as I expected. The program got even bigger (visually) and now it�s more a browser than a small and simple chat client.

Messenger Companion
Since I do not use Messenger I did not bother installing this. In the description is says that it allows you to share links to websites with your friends. I wonder what happened to the good old �Select URL, CTRL+C, click on chat window, CTRL+V ?

Family Safety
I have tried this myself and have set it up to block only �adult� websites. However, it was also blocking me from viewing regular sites and I had to constantly allow access to sites that do not contain �adult� material. Also sometimes the online service was down and I could not allow access to a regular website until the online service was back up. I highly recommend using K9 Web Protection instead of Family Safety.

Bing bar
Just what the world was looking for, another toolbar to add to the Internet Explorer clutter. If I want to use Bing I rather go to the website or add Bing search to my FireFox search box. I have even tried Bing myself instead of Google and too often it did not find what I was looking for. The difference with Google is that usually the first result in google is exactly what I have been looking for. In Bing it is usually the fifth or never.

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ClipDiary

ClipDiary can save a history of text and images you copied to your clipboard. This can be very useful if you frequently copy and paste items to the clipboard. As a programmer, I use the clipboard a lot and usually I have to paste the same code that I copied a few minutes ago (after I have copied something else). Using ClipDiary I can quickly paste one of my previously copied items by either using the quick search key combination (I get a preview of the clipboard item that I want to paste and to me this is the most useful feature) or using the main window and either clicking on the item or searching for it.

The program can be evaluated for 30 days (fully functional) and costs only $19. I have tried many other free clipboard managers but none were as stable, clean and useful as ClipDiary. In one of my earlier posts I talked about Ditto (free clipboard manager). However after using Ditto for a while I found that the program sometimes did not respond, it started playing the �copied to clipboard� sound rapidly out of nowhere (like it was catching up with all my copy actions) and the interface looked like it belonged in Windows 95.

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DriverBackup! 2

DriverBackup! 2 is a simple tool that does not need installation, so you can also run it from a USB drive. It allows you to backup all your hardware drivers into folders. The drivers will not be packed in a special type of archive file, but rather copied into their own device name folder. This allows you to easily install the (missing) drivers when you do a reinstallation of your Windows system.

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NetWorx

NetWorx is a simple and free, yet powerful tool that helps you objectively evaluate your bandwidth situation. You can use it to collect bandwidth usage data and measure the speed of your Internet or any other network connection. NetWorx can help you identify possible sources of network problems, ensure that you do not exceed the bandwidth limits specified by your ISP, or track down suspicious network activity characteristic of Trojan horses and hacker attacks.

The program allows you to monitor all your network connections or a specific network connection (such as Ethernet or PPP) only. The software also features a system of highly customizable visual and sound alerts. You can set it up to alert you when the network connection is down or when some suspicious activity, such as unusually heavy data flow, occurs. It can also automatically disconnect all dialup connections and shut down the system.

The incoming and outgoing traffic is represented on a line chart and logged to a file, so that you can always view statistics about your daily, weekly and monthly bandwidth usage and dialup duration. The reports can be exported to a variety of formats, such as HTML, MS Word and Excel, for further analysis.

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Freemake Video Converter

Freemake Video Converter is a very slick looking and easy to use free video converter. Simply drag and drop your videos and / or pictures to the interface and click on one of the buttons to select what you want to convert it into. It also allows you to quickly edit the video or stitch videos together. You can also pick the target file size and it will make sure the video will be converted to fit the target size.

Upon testing I have tried to convert one .mkv video into an avi, but I found the output quality to be a bit disappointing even though the target file was 1.5Gb for a 2 hour video. Instead I have used Format Factory to create the same avi file with the same codec in the same size, and the result was a lot better but it took longer to convert as well.

Personally, I love the simplicity and beauty of Freemake�s interface but I feel it still needs some more work on the quality of the encoded videos. Also the �to YouTube� option does not not more than upload the video to your YouTube account. They could ask for video details and convert the video to a high quality before uploading (like Microsoft Movie Maker does) to make the file size smaller and save time on uploading.

Another interesting feature I found is that it can also convert audio files into mp3! So far I have tested it with M4A and FLAC files, and amazingly enough it worked perfectly!

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DreaMule

DreaMule is a p2p (peer-to-peer) application that allows you to download files shared by other users who use one of the many eMule-type clients and DreaMule is one of them. DreaMule is in many ways an improvement on eMule and even eMule Plus. For years I have been using eMule Plus to download stuff and one day I decided to switch to DreaMule. I noticed that all the files that took ages to download suddenly downloaded a lot faster. Also the interface looks better and is more efficient. The only downside is the banners in the start page of DreaMule, but on the other hand I understand that the developer deserves some money for creating this fantastic mod on the original eMule in the form of non-intrusive advertising. You can search for files from within the program. However, I recommend using specialized �ed2k� link sharing websites to easily find and download stuff as the internal search usually results in fake search results.

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FireFox Addon: Brief

Brief is an RSS reader addon for FireFox. With Brief you can keep track of all your favorite RSS feeds. It integrates in the FireFox sidebar and status bar. The status bar icon show how many new undread RSS posts there are for you.

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FireFox Addon: TamperData

TamperData is an addon for FireFox that allows you to track and modify HTTP requests. This can be very useful for web developers. For example, if you wish to send form data to a server that is not allowed by a javascript restriction, for example using characters that are not allowed.

Another scenario that TamperData can be used for is for example if you are developing a flash based game and send the score to the server. You need to have a specific score to get a certain response from the server. Getting that score can be a pain to test over and over. Using TamperData you can catch the HTTP request that flash is about to make and modify it (example change your score) before sending it to the server.

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FireFox Addon: QuickJava

QuickJava is a Firefox extension that allows you to easily enable/disable Java, JavaScript, Images, Flash and more directly from the toolbar and/or status bar. Very useful for developers if you want to test your no-javascript support messages or simply want to surf without having to deal with javascript popups and window resizers. Blue icon means that the javascript or flash support is active, red means that it is inactive. Toggle between active and inactive by clicking once on the icon of the service you wish to disable or enable.

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FireFox Addon: FireSizer

FireSizer can show the current browser resolution and allows you to change the resolution of the browser to any format. Ideal for web developers and designers.

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FireFox addon: Add to Search Bar

Add to Search Bar allows you to quickly add a search service to your quick search bar. Simply right-click on a search field and select �Add to Search Bar� in the context menu.

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