CamStudio

CamStudio is able to record all screen and audio activity on your computer and create industry-standard AVI video files and using its built-in SWF Producer can turn those AVIs into lean, mean, bandwidth-friendly Streaming Flash videos (SWFs).

CamStudio also has it�s own video codec (you have to download it also from their site) to keep the file size of the captured video�s small and reduce the load on your hard disk while capturing / editing the video. You can easily edit the captured video in Windows Movie Maker.

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Game Booster 2

Game Booster 2 from IObit can boost your PC�s performance for gaming sessions by checking for driver updates, closing applications that are not needed while gaming and tweak your system for optimal performance. When you are done gaming you can switch the gaming mode off and all closed applications and processes will be restarted.

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SKTools

SKTools is a multi-function application that includes more than 60 tools and allows an easy but powerful maintenance of Windows Mobile devices. Clean up your registry and file system, free-up RAM, backup and restore, find duplicate contacts, appointments and tasks. SKTools can manage installed applications, Today plugins, software keyboards.

The most useful feature that I use is the complete system backup option. It can create a single .exe file (can only run on Windows Mobile) that contains the entire backup of your system (excluding data on storage card). I save this backup on the storage card and then backup the entire storage card on my computer, including the self installing backup file. In case my phone is damaged or lost, I will still have a complete backup of my entire system including contacts, photos, videos, etc�

I did use Microsoft�s MyPhone service before (free online phone backup). However, it has a few drawbacks. The online storage is only 200Mb which is not enough if you have photos and videos. Because the backup is over the internet, it can be very slow and sometimes I get strange sync errors and crashes.

Backup your phone using SKTools is super fast and very stable. There is no size limit except for the free space on your storage card.

Compared to other offline phone backup solutions out there, SKTools is the best deal considering that it also comes with 60 tools to optimize your phone.

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Paragon Backup

Paragon Backup is one of the best free system backup tools. It offers all the functionality you need to keep your entire system backed up. Use the �entire system� backup option to create an �image� of your entire system into one (or multiple split) files. It can exclude �auxiliary files� like the Windows hibertnate file and memory file (can be gigabytes in size) and you can also add your own categories and exclusions to speed up the backup and save on backup disk space. You can schedule the backup plan so that you won�t have to forget backing up your system.

I would advise the following setup if you want to be able to restore your system no matter how damaged or unbootable your system has become:

1. Get an extra hard disk. I would advise an external (USB) disk and use it only for backups. External disks you can unplug or power down so that it is not available if you are not backing up / restoring. The advantage is that your backed up data cannot get deleted by accident or a virus, so it is always safe.
2. Clean your system with CCleaner (with CCEnhancer) and System Ninja. This will remove all unneeded files from your system that you do not need to back up and thus speed up your backup and make your backup file smaller.
3. Scan your system for malware using your installed antivirus software and other tools like MalwareBytes, DrWeb and HitmanPro. Make sure your system is clean before backing up. You don�t want to backup an infected system.
4. Create a backup plan in Paragon Backup and exclude the auxiliary files and other folders that you do not want to be backed up to reduce the backup file size. The location for your backup files will be your external (or internal) hard disk. Never backup on the same physical disk even if it is on another partition on the same disk. If for some reason your hard disk fails, you will not be able to restore your backup. Always have your backup on another physical disc than where you have Windows installed. Also never backup your stuff on optical disc, as the chances of data loss are a lot higher due to corrosion.
5. When the backup is done, power down and unplug the external disk. Also create a bootable rescue CD using Paragon in case your system becomes unbootable.
6. If you know your system is always clean because you have a good antivirus and you don�t fall for the fake virus alert popups online and never run unknown files, then you might want to use an extra internal disk or leave the external disk always plugged in and on so that you can create an automatic monthly backup plan in Paragon. If you do manual backups instead, then just repeat steps 2 to 5 once every month or so. It is very important then to make sure that your backed up system is clean of infections. You do not want to restore to an infected state.

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PWGen

PWGen is a password generator. It can help you in creating random passwords or a list of random codes. This can be very useful for programmers for example if you need a huge list of random codes for use in vouchers or if you need random codes for an encryption system you are writing.

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Virtual Image Printer Driver

Virtual Image Printer Driver allows you to print to image files. This means that you can export a print as an image file. This can be useful if for example you receive a PDF document that you need to use as an image. Simply open the file, print using the image printer and you have converted your document to an image or series of images (per page).

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Nitro PDF Reader (and printer)

Nitro PDF Reader is a free PDF viewer and printer. Yes we all know about Adobe�s Acrobat Viewer that is also free. However, Adobe�s PDF viewer has become heavier and slower due to the many added features that perhaps only 1% of user will actually use. It has become so heavy to load that they even had to add a �speed launcher� that always runs in the background when you start your computer to speed up the launch of Adobe�s Acrobat viewer. Not to mention the countless large updates.

There are many free alternatives to Adobe�s Acrobat viewer and Nitro PDF is one of them. What I really like about Nitro PDF viewer is the use of Microsoft�s �Ribbon Interface� (like in the new Microsoft Office). It blends in very well with Windows and makes the the program very easy to use.

Nitro PDF also gives you the ability to add on-screen notes to existing PDF documents, add text, stamp your signature and a lot more. This is ideal for commenting on PDF documents you received. You can even extract images from PDF documents.

Nitro PDF also comes with a free PDF printer. You can print any document to PDF format and thus create PDF files.

The software is available for 32-bit and 64-bit Windows. I did not manage to make it work for my 64-bit Windows 7 (Home Premium) machine because the installer keeps encountering an error. Other users did not encounter this error so I suppose it must be an anomaly with my machine only. Leave a post here if you have any problems with the 64-bit version.

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