iTunes recently touted its billionth download. Steve Jobs is a modern day folk hero while record companies are starting to realize suing ordinary people for music piracy is not so productive after all. The music industry has finally taken notice that digital distribution is not to be feared. But all is not perfect in this scenario. Apple has two little known policies that just don’t make sense and could cost you more than you realize.
Sometimes you need to distribute an electronic document but want to preserve its contents in a form that cannot be edited by others, such as a user manual, a presentation, a brochure, a pamphlet or even an electronic scrapbook. The industry standard for this purpose is the PDF file which is the format generated by Adobe’s Acrobat software package. But not everyone needs the vast suite of features offered by a package costing hundreds of dollars. The free solution is PrimoPDF, which gives you the most commonly used features needed by those who generate PDF files, including a host of options for protecting your document. [Read the rest of this entry...]
Adobe’s powerful image editing software, Photoshop, is the industry standard. It’s wide ranging suite of features and plugin library makes it a very popular tool used in every profession where image manipulation is required. The downside is the cost is in the hundreds of dollars and most of those fancy features will never be needed by most users. Enter GIMPShop. Whether your computer is Windows, Mac or Linux, GIMPShop is the tool that allows you to perform all the common functions you’d normally need to accomplish. [Read the rest of this entry...]
If you have children in the house, then you’ve had your share of damaged, broken or missing DVD discs. You have two options; 1) buy a new copy of the movie or, 2) backup the DVD on your PC, store the original in your closet, and then burn a copy for your young ones to enjoy. If you prefer option 2, this great little utility from DVDFab is exactly the tool for the job.
Every once in a while, a piece of software comes along that establishes a new watermark on how things should be done and what others will soon be copying. You are about to read about one such program. Seaching for images on the web is pretty clunky and time consuming. But once you install Cooliris, a browser add-on, your image searches will become magical. [Read the rest of this entry...]
Many utilities have come through our labs, each claiming to clean and optimize the PC, fix registry problems and a host of other claims. But none provide the satisfying results of CCleaner, a freeware utility that removes unwanted temp files, detects and fixes registry problems, removes unwanted cookies and similar Internet tracing files, and helps remove software that may difficult to remove using the Control Panels Add/Remove applet. CCleaner even gives you full control over what kinds cleaning activity you want performed. [Read the rest of this entry...]
Capturing screenshots under Windows is fairly easy. Hit the PrintScreen button to capture your entire desktop or Alt-PrintScreen to capture the currently selected Window to the clipboard, and then Ctrl V to paste the captured image while using your favorite image editing program.
But if you’ve ever needed to capture screenshots or video from a 3D application (like a game), nothing Windows offers can reliably do the trick. Taksi is perhaps the best open-source tool to meet all your screen and video capture needs. And it does so using any CODEC installed on your computer. [Read the rest of this entry...]
Normally, PC Rebellion only reviews software that’s suitable for the average computer user. But here is a topic worth keeping tabs on. It’s a very ambitious project that just may allow you keep your favorite Windows apps around as you make the switch to Linux. The open source project is called WINE, which stands for Wine Is Not an Emulator.
When installed on a Linux computer, WINE acts as a program loader that provides a Windows-close-enough environment to allow a program developed for the Windows OS to operate correctly under Linux. WINE can run hundreds of Windows apps, including dozens of high end games, but usually with a bit of coaxing. This is one of those topics for the Linux savvy crowd. So read on at your own risk. [Read the rest of this entry...]
This is perhaps the coolest computing solution of the year! Imagine carrying all your favorite applications with you wherever you go. Now imagine when you use the application, it remembers your personal settings, bookmarks, or even passwords. What comes to mind to most people is that this can only be accomplished with a laptop or some kind of remote desktop solution.
But what if everything you needed existed on a single USB flash drive? PortableApps allows you to “carry your favorite computer programs along with all of your bookmarks, settings, email and more with you. Use them on any Windows computer. All without leaving any personal data behind.” [Read the rest of this entry...]
If you were an early adopter for the 64 bit versions of Windows XP or Vista, you will have encountered a desperate lack of third party support, both paid and free. Among the conspicuously absent utilities were non-Microsoft tools for optimizing defragmenting your harddrive.
To the rescue comes JkDefrag, a refreshingly simple but powerful utility that works as good or better than anything else out there. We can thank Dutch programmer Jeroen Kessels for this handy utility. [Read the rest of this entry...]
