REPLACE WINDOWS TOOLS WITH BETTER ONES
DEVICE MANAGER What to replace it with? Devmanview www.snipca.com/24964 What it does that Windows doesn’t
Device Manager has been hidden away in the bowels of your PC since Windows 95, and remains more or less unchanged. Devmanview from the ever-reliable Nirsoft really shows up Microsoft’s neglect, with tons of brilliant tools and options that really let you dig deep into your PC’S hardware to diagnose problems. For starters, all hardware is listed in a flat table instead of a tree view, so you don’t have to hunt for important information.
Really useful abilities, such as opening relevant registry keys or running a Google search, are just a right-click away (see screenshot right). And as long as you have administrator access, you can remotely see the device list of other computers on your network.
NOTEPAD What to replace it with? Docpad www.snipca.com/24965 What it does that Windows doesn’t
Whichever way you look at it, Windows’ Notepad is a bare-bones affair. If you do lots of coding, you might want to look at Notepad++ ( www.snipca.com/24967), which has lots of useful options, including syntax highlighting. But if you’re just looking for a way to make quick notes and edit documents, then install Docpad. It has loads of useful features that Notepad doesn’t, including a built-in character map, indenting, bookmarking, and a spellchecker (though this needs to be installed separately from www.snipca.com/24966).
Crucially, it’s still being maintained by its developers, and the new version adds a welcome screen of recent files and line-spacing options. See page 40 for our Workshop on how to use Docpad.
CALENDAR What to replace it with? My Calendar www.snipca.com/24968 What it does that Windows doesn’t
Windows 10’s built-in Calendar app isn’t bad, but it’s missing one vital feature: the ability to add tasks. Most calendar tools – including Outlook.com and Google Calendar – let you create tasks as well as appointments. You can’t do this in the Windows 10 app though you can view tasks created in other tools.
If you find tasks useful – for creating to-do lists and reminders, for example – then switch to My Calendar (see screenshot below left). It’s free but you can gain further features and lose the adverts by upgrading to the Pro version for £2.29.
CALCULATOR What to replace it with? Moffsoft Freecalc www.snipca.com/24969 What it does that Windows doesn’t
Windows 10’s Calculator app does have advanced tools. Click the menu button (three lines) to reveal a number of extra functions, including Scientific and Programmer modes as well as a few measurement-conversion tools. But one very useful feature it lacks is the ability to print. Moffsoft Freecalc is a pretty basic alternative, but it has one huge advantage – a brilliant ‘tape’ function. Like virtual ticker tape it lets you review, save and print your calculation history (see screenshot below left).
WINDOWS SEARCH What to replace it with? Everything www.snipca.com/24970 What it does that Windows doesn’t
Windows’ search function lets you look for files and programs from the Start menu, but it also clutters your searches with Bing results which – let’s face it – just get in the way. More recent versions of Windows 10 have made it harder to disable these.
The solution is to install the lightning-
fast Everything. Not only does it banish Bing (and any other web searches), but it also lets you easily carry out advanced searches, such as by all words, exact phrase and by upper or lower case. A recent major update added some excellent new features, including a preview pane and thumbnail view, as well as sorting and file-renaming tools.
START MENU What to replace it with? Classic Shell www.snipca.com/24971 What it does that Windows doesn’t
There was a time when Classic Shell was all but essential, back in the days of Windows 8’s woeful Start Screen. Thankfully, the Start menu returned in Windows 10, but it’s not very customisable, except for a little tile rearranging.
Classic Shell offers plenty of customisation options that Windows 10 lacks. Tick the ‘Show all settings’ box at the top of the screen to reveal 14 tabs of options (see screenshot above right), such as the ability to change the size of icons and tweak your mouse’s scroll speed. The latest version (4.3.0) adds the ability to change the colour and text style of the taskbar, and the font and size of the status bar in Explorer.
REGISTRY EDITOR What to replace it with? Regcool www.snipca.com/24983 What it does that Windows doesn’t
Windows’ registry editor has always been lacking one vital feature: the ability to undo (or redo) any changes you make. Regcool provides this, along with a number of other advanced options, such as custom searches, comparison tools, drag-and-drop support and the ability to open multiple registry windows at the same time. Regcool is still being actively supported by its developer and a new version (which tweaked the interface) was recently released. A portable version is also available.
VOLUME CONTROL What to replace it with? Eartrumpet www.snipca.com/24972 What it does that Windows doesn’t
Windows’ volume control is a bit of a blunt instrument. Click the speaker icon in the notification area and all you get is a single slider to lower or increase the overall system volume. But Eartrumpet provides individual volume sliders for each program you have open – all from its bugle-like icon (see screenshot above).
The ability to control sound levels on a program-by-program basis is extremely useful if you want to quickly silence noisy web pages, or turn down music when you want to make a Skype call. You can also right-click Eartrumpet’s icon to switch between audio outputs quickly – from your PC’S speakers to your headphones, for example.
READER What to replace it with? Pdf-xchange Editor www.snipca.com/24974 What it does that Windows doesn’t
Windows 10 defaults to Edge as its PDF reader, which isn’t great at the job. And Microsoft’s built-in alternative – the Reader app – isn’t much better. So, if you want to do more than rotate or print your PDFS, try Pdf-xchange Editor. You’ll have to pay for some of its advanced features (you’ll see a shopping-cart icon
next to menu items you can’t use for free). But that still leaves a huge selection of great tools that you can use for nothing, including highlighting and annotating. Best of all is a very handy optical character recognition ( OCR) tool (in the Document menu), which lets you turn any non-editable PDF (such as a document you’ve scanned) into an editable one (see screenshot bottom left of page 52).
RESOURCE MONITOR What to replace it with? Hwmonitor www.snipca.com/24975 What it does that Windows doesn’t
If you’re trying to diagnose a problem with your PC’S performance, you could launch Windows’ Resource Monitor, which shows CPU, memory, hard drive and network usage in real time. Or you could run Hwmonitor (a free tool from the makers of CPU-Z), which monitors much more of what’s happening inside your PC, including temperatures, fan speeds and voltages, as well as CPU activity – all in real time. The latest version of this essential tool adds support for new CPU types and graphics hardware.
TASK MANAGER What to replace it with? Process Hacker www.snipca.com/24976 What it does that Windows doesn’t
Want to find out what’s draining your CPU’S power or hogging your system memory? Windows Task Manager will let you do this, but the information it provides is limited. Process Hacker gives you a much more detailed tree view of
active processes, instead of a basic list.
The colour coding takes a little getting used to (see screenshot below), but it’s actually very useful – check under Options, Highlighting for a guide to the colours used (or turn it off, if you prefer). If you don’t know what something is, right-click it and select ‘Search online’. Unlike Task Manager, Process Hacker displays GPU activity in its real-time performance monitor – click ‘System information’ and this will open in a separate window, letting you compare activity and processes at the same time. Plus, there’s a portable version.
UNINSTALLER What to replace it with? Wise Program Uninstaller www.snipca.com/24978 What it does that Windows doesn’t
We all know that Windows’ built-in uninstaller has a nasty habit of leaving junk behind. Much more effective is Wise Program Uninstaller, which includes a Forced Uninstall option (something that’s absent from Windows entirely). It also automatically carries out a deep scan for leftover files and registry entries after every uninstallation. In fact, Wise Program Uninstaller is so powerful that it won Gold in our recent group test on uninstallers (see Issue 504, page 50).
PRINT SCREEN/ SNIPPING TOOL What to replace it with? Greenshot www.snipca.com/24977 What it does that Windows doesn’t
Windows effectively has two built-in screen-capture tools, and neither are great. Pressing Prntscr on your keyboard copies what’s on screen to your clipboard, letting you paste it into other programs, while the Snipping tool offers a handful of further features, including the ability to capture a specific area of your screen.
Greenshot does all this and much more. It outputs to a variety of different file types (including PNG, JPEG, GIF, BMP and TIFF) and lets you specify what happens to the screenshot when you take it. You can allow Greenshot to open the image in its own editor, set it to automatically upload your photos to your online service (see screenshot on page 53), and more. A recent update improves Windows 10 support and adds the ability to save screenshots as ICO files.
ZIP TOOL What to replace it with? Peazip www.snipca.com/24979 What it does that Windows doesn’t
Windows offers very limited options for compressing or archiving files. It supports just one format – ZIP – and there’s no dedicated tool, only a single ZIP option in File Explorer, which is strangely hidden away in the Share menu. A lot of third-party tools cost money, but Peazip is free and supports more than 180 formats, including rar and 7z, both of which are common online formats.
The latest version of Peazip includes an improved file manager with tabbed browsing and tools for converting formats.
NIGHT LIGHT What to replace it with? f.lux www.snipca.com/24980 What it does that Windows doesn’t
Introduced in Windows 10’s Creators Update (CU), Night Light’s intentions are good. It switches your monitor to ‘warmer’ colours after dark to reduce blue light and ease eye strain. You can set it on a schedule and choose the level of warmth but, basically, it’s either on or off.
F.lux is a free alternative that lets you set your schedule based on your location, to coincide with sunset (see screenshot above). It also gradually changes your screen’s colour over a period of an hour. Plus, you can disable, delay or customise the colour from its notification-area icon.
START UP MANAGER IN TASK MANAGER What to replace it with? Whatinstartup www.snipca.com/24982 What it does that Windows doesn’t
The Start-up tab in Windows Task Manager doesn’t provide much information about programs that might be causing your PC to start slowly, so use Whatinstartup instead. One of Nirsoft’s older tools (it hasn’t been updated since 2013), it tells you the type of item (whether it’s registry-based or in the Startup folder), its command-line string, full product name, file version (see screenshot above), company name, location in the registry and more.
WINDOWS MEDIA PLAYER/ GROOVE MUSIC What to replace it with? Musicbee www.snipca.com/24973 What it does that Windows doesn’t
Music lovers get a bit of a raw deal in Windows 10. Groove Music often feels like a dressed-up advert for Microsoft’s paid-for subscription service and Windows Media Player (WMP) hasn’t been properly updated for years. Musicbee knocks them both into a cocked hat. For a start, it has a much more modern look compared with poor old WMP, plus you can configure the layout so it’s just how you want it.
Sound quality can be customised in ways that Groove Music and WMP can only dream of, thanks to a 10- and 15-band equaliser (see screenshot left) and support for DSP plug-ins. Crucially, there’s built-in support for podcasts and an easy way to add missing album art (simply right-click), both of which are missing from Groove Music.
VIDEO EDITING TOOL
First Microsoft dumped Movie Maker, then killed off its replacement – the version that came with the now defunct Windows Essentials 2012 package – leaving Windows users with no easy way to edit their home videos. The Pinnacle Studios and Adobe Premiere Elements of this world aren’t cheap, either (between £40 and £80, depending on the version).
Thankfully, there’s also Shotcut ( www. snipca.com/24984), a comprehensive, free open-source video-editing tool, complete with timeline editing, filters, transitions and so on (see screenshot right). It’s relatively easy to use once you’ve got the hang of it, though our one quibble is that the program’s help files are fairly useless. Instead, watch these video tutorials at https://shotcut.org/ tutorials.
MEDIA CENTRE
Another recent victim of Microsoft’s axe was Media Center – the built-in software that effectively turned your PC into an all-in-one smart Tv/video recorder/ music jukebox/photo viewer. Into the vacuum steps Kodi ( http://kodi.tv), an excellent free media centre that lets you do all of the above and more.
The latest version (17.3) restores the PVR (personal video recorder) lost in a recent update and adds improved security features. Recently, Kodi has developed something of a dubious reputation, but it’s completely legal, so long as you don’t install any add-ons that let you stream paid-for movies and TV for free. There’s also a Windows app now: www.snipca.com/24989. For a complete guide to Kodi, see Issue 498’s Cover Feature.
VIRTUALISATION
Running a virtual PC within a real one is incredibly useful for safely testing new software, or for running older programs in earlier versions of Windows.
You could, for example, create a virtual Windows 7 computer to run an old program that isn’t compatible with Windows 10. Or at least you could if Windows had a built-in virtualisation tool. Unfortunately, unless you happen to be running a Pro or Enterprise edition of Windows 10 (which includes a tool called Hyper-v), running virtual PCS isn’t something you can do without the help of third-party tools. Virtualbox ( www. snipca.com/24986, see screenshot below left) is our favourite free option, because it provides numerous features that Hyper-v doesn’t, such as support for USB sticks.
PASSWORD MANAGER
In Windows 10, Edge will offer to save your passwords for you (as will Chrome and Firefox), but we’re not keen on browser-based password management because it isn’t particularly safe. Last year Opera admitted its Opera Sync service, which syncs user data – including saved passwords and logins – was the victim of a hack that affected 1.7 million users.
Instead, it’s best to use a dedicated password manager, such as Lastpass ( https://lastpass.com), the recent winner of our password manager group test (see Issue 506, page 50). It is very secure, using a mix of strong algorithms, two-step verification, and local encryption (meaning your passwords are stored on your device and can never be accessed by Lastpass). Recent updates have improved the password-generation tool (see screenshot below left).
SMART MONITOR
All hard drives (and SSDS) provide SMART information (or ‘Self-monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology’), which can help diagnose errors, such as those caused by overheating. The trouble is that Windows doesn’t offer an easy way to view or monitor your hard drive’s SMART data. Thankfully, Nirsoft does in the shape of its portable tool Disksmartview ( www.snipca.com/ 24987). If your PC is in rude health, all the items listed in the Attributes section will show an ‘OK’ status (see screenshot below).
A FILE SHREDDER
We all know that deleting a file doesn’t safely remove it from your hard drive. Its ghost lingers on, making it potentially
retrievable with the right software until it gets overwritten with fresh data. But, for some reason, Microsoft has never provided a way to safely shred data within Windows. The free tool Eraser ( www. snipca.com/24988) plugs this gap.
Eraser is simple to use – right-click a file, select Eraser, then Erase to obliterate it from your hard drive. You can also set it to automatically erase all unused hard-drive space on a schedule (click Erase Schedule, select Recurring, click Add Data, then select ‘Unused disk space’ from the ‘Target type’ dropdown menu). Note that shredding files stored on SSDS isn’t necessary (or even advisable).