Normally, we don;'t do free reviews, but one company called Real Basic has caught our eye with their flagship product, Xojo. Xojo is a simple, drag and drop, developmental tool for software engineers. As a matter of fact, it is so simple, even the average XetoWare user (you) can use it. Xojo let's you drag and drop components such as buttons, textboxes, option boxes, etc from a 'palette' on to the program you are designing. Take a look below at what Xojo can do. The best thing about Xojo, on top of its simplicity, is its portability. Xojo really encompasses the write once, run everywhere concept. Simply code your app in Xojo, and then deploy it to Linux, Mac or Windows. One downside of Xojo however, is that it costs a lot of money if you intend to use it for cross-platform development. More information can be found be using a simple google search!
When it comes to computer speed, there are so many factors to account, however in this post, we will discuss the bare esstentials that every optimal operating computer needs.
Startup items This is the biggest factor on your computer's speed. 99% of slow computers are clogged with unnecessary start up programs such as 'Yahoo Toolbar Updater' or 'Conduit Search Toolbar', and the more there are, the slower your computer will get. So to figure out which programs you need starting up with your PC and which ones you don't, simply type in 'msconfig' in the Windows 7/8 search box or Windows XP run box and click the 'Startup' tab
Now here's the tricky part: determining which programs you need starting up and which ones you don't. An ideal Windows PC will have nothing checked at startup except its Antivirus and some accessories (ie, Google Drive, Dropbox, Skype). For example, items such as DAEMON Tools Lite, DVSSkypeRecorder, Adobe Updater Startup Utility should not startup with the PC unless it is essential for your purposes.
To remove some unnecessary startup items, simply uncheck them in the list and click the 'Apply' button. If you have any trouble deciding if a program is necessary, drop us a note in the comments and we will give you our advice on it. Malware and Viruses Simply put, malware and viruses are just programs that are plain evil. They steal information, may turn your computer in to a bitcoin miner, etc, etc and they slow down your computer. Luckily, there is a solution to this and best of all it is free. Download Malwarebytes Antimalware, a free tool to scan and remove almost all viruses, worms, trojans, malware, etc. Start Malwarebytes and run a 'Quick Scan'. After a few minutes, the program will display a list of potentially malicious items, and all you need to do is click 'Quarantine' to remove them from your computer.
Adware
Although they are not malicious, Adware are plain annoying and hog your computers resources. Adware range from bloated products such as System Optimizer Pro to Conduit browser toolbars. However removing them is easily than you think, instead of going through them manually one by one, there is a much simpler solution: AdwCleaner. AdwCleaner is a simple one-click clean utility. Simply open the tool, scan for adware and click 'Clean'. Unnecessary programs Previously, we have talked about unnecessary startup programs and unnecessary programs are similar, just that they don't startup with your computer, but hogs CPU/RAM usage and slows down your computer. However its hard to decide which programs to remove, but luckily, theres Google. Simply do a Google search of 'is [this program] essential]' and read the reviews posted by previous or current users. Then if it is unnecessary, remove them by opening Control Panel and clicking 'Uninstall a program'. In conclusion, a slow windows pc can be caused a lot of factors, however it is almost always due to the unnecessary startup programs, malware, viruses, unnecessary programs and adware. If you still find your computer running slow, maybe you are using a system that is too new for your hardware if not, drop us a note below and we'll respond with our advice.
If you lost a partition or disk due to accidental formatting, viruses, etc, don't worry: there's a viable way to recover all your files.
Similar to file deletion, when a drive or partition is formatted, the files are still present on the disk: they are just not shown. Hence, to recover files from a deleted partition, you will need to use specialized software for non-accessible file recovery. The best utility we recommend to use for this case is Active Undelete. Although the utility is not free, it does give you a free demo to verify if your files are recoverable and it does work very well. Simply open Active Undelete and click on 'Data Recovery Wizards' and then choose 'Recover files from a deleted partition'.
You will then be taken to an on screen step by step process to select the drive to scan and files to recover.
Note: Recovery takes between 1 to 5 hours depends on your drive size and number of files to recover. Yes, we've actually tried it!
Sometimes your computer stops working because of viruses, corrupted boot loaders, whatever the reason may be. But there's a problem, your files and sensitive data are all stored on that device. What should you do?
When you are facing a computer that just won't boot, you have three options, listed in order of easiness. Option 1: Startup Repair Running Startup Repair solves nearly all of your problems. To run Startup Repair, tap the F8 key continuously until you see a screen with a list of boot options. Highlight 'Repair Your Computer' and hit 'Enter'. Once you're in Startup Repair, simply follow the onscreen instructions and you'll be back in your PC in a few minutes! However Startup Repair may not work, in that case, follow the instructions in Option 2.
Option 2: Boot using a live CD/DVD.
We recommend booting from a Windows PE DVD/CD when your system doesn't boot and Startup Repair fails. Simply download the ISO, burn it to a disc and boot from it. Then you can explore the contents of your C drive and copy those files in to an external medium such as a 1TB HDD. A link to a website which tells you how to download the ISO is available here. If you have any questions about this process, don't hesitate to contact us. Once again, sharing is caring.
Losing all your files is certainly the last thing any computer user would want, but what if that does indeed happen? Don't worry yet, but be careful not to overwrite the affected files as they may still be on your hard drive.
This phenomena is credited to the way your computer stores files. Once a file is deleted or a drive is formatted, your files aren't lost, they are simply 'ignored' by the drive and may be still recoverable given that you did not overwrite them (e.g. by installing a new OS or reformatting the drive multiple times). OK, so to recover your files, all you need is to be able to log in to your Windows system and install Recuva. Recuva is the best free file recovering software, and can recover virtually any lost file. Simply open the program and follow the on-screen instructions.
It may take from 10 minutes to several hours recover your files depending on the type of scan you choose and the number of files you recover. It is recommended to start a Quick Scan first, and then a deep scan if you don't see your files listed in the quick scan results.
So recently, we were trying to do a bit of housekeeping on our software, resigning the code with a valid certificate, fixing grammatical errors; just stuff like that. So when we scanned our Fast Shutdown installer against 60 antivirus engines, we were shocked: one of them detected Fast Shutdown as a 'high risk' threat. Fast Shutdown doesn't do anything malicious. We reviewed the code and analysed all its actions: we didn't find anything that even came close to malicious. So why did AVG detect it as a 'high risk'? After an hour of looking over the code, we decided to use a guess, check and elimination strategy. We removed certain aspects of the program and scanned it against AVG again. After a fair amount of trial and error, we found it: the problem was the icon. How can an icon be malicious? It's just a picture after all. Confused, we consulted AVG, and soon enough they gave us a solution that made enough sense. AVG sometimes uses specific signature points in a file to determine if its a virus: in this case, it was the icon. For example, a previous virus happened to use the same icon as Fast Shutdown, so when AVG scanned our software, they immediately flagged it as a virus. Good strategy AVG, but it could be much better. For example, what virus is digitally signed like Fast Shutdown is? If you ask us, determining if a file is a virus based on its icon is a bit absurd. What if a photo you took on your vacation was detected as a 'high risk' threat? Hi, its been a while since we posted on our blog, but don't be too mad: we have a surprise. uZip, short for unzip, is released and can be downloaded at this page. It's a tiny but powerful and extremely convenient ZIP, RAR, 7z, ISO, GZ, etc extraction tool. Forget the old days of opening WinZip or WinRar and manually finding, clicking or selecting archives you want to extract: uZip does all that and does it it in one nifty click. Simply download and install uZip and you're good to go. Extracting files is made easy by uZip's integration in to the right-click menu. Simply right-click on a ZIP, RAR, TAR or 7z file, click 'Extract with uZip' and uZip will do the rest! Find out more about uZip at it's official page.
Ace Video Converter 2.7 is out and is a must have freeware video conversion software if you want to convert any video. Ace Video Converter supports over a hundred video and audio formats. You can convert most/all media formats ranging from 3g2, 3gp, 3gpp, 3gpp2, aac, ac3, aif, aifc, aiff, amr, amv, ape, asf, asx, au, avi, awb, cda, cdg, dat, dif, div, divx, dv, dvr-ms, f4p, f4v, flac, flc, fli, flv, gvi, ivf, ivr, m1v, m2t, m2ts, m2v, m3u, m4a, m4v, mid, midi, mjpeg, mjpg, mkv, mod, mov, mp+, mp2, mp3, mp4, mpa, mpc, mpe, mpeg, mpg, mpp, mpv, ms-dvr, mts, mtv, mw, nsv, nut, ogg, ogm, ogv, qt, ra, ram, rm, rmi, rmvb, rv, snd, swf, tp, trp, ts, wav, wm, wma, wms, wmv, wmz, yuv and more. Additionally, the software comes with some nifty features aimed to make life easier:
To top it off, Ace Video Converter only takes up at maximum 50% CPU usage. Talk about efficiency! If you need a video converter that works properly and is free, fast and gentle on your CPU then Ace Video Converter is the tool for you! Hang on to your paint brushes because there's a new form of art in town! Yeah that's right. It's ASCII Art! Otherwise known as text art or drawing pictures with notepad! ASCII art, unmatched in its beauty, simplicity, and uniqueness to use the common keyboard characters to graphically draw a picture, amazes every computer user! If you don't know what I mean, take a look at what I did in a few minutes!! How did I do it?
Fine. I admit that I didn't completely make this piece of art by myself, but I did get some help from a very useful piece of software. ASCII Artist! ASCII Artist simply takes a picture and spits out an amazing text artwork. To get started:
Download ASCII Artist now! It's normal to be tired of staring at your Windows shutdown screen for minutes everyday or even worse: doubting that your computer is ever going to shutdown. After using our computer, some of us have an unlucky computer that just takes a long time to shutdown, but what if I told you there was a faster way?
Yes that's right. What if there is a way to shutdown your computer in less than a second? Sounds crazy right? Today, at XetoWare, we have released a free software than you can download and install within seconds and intuitively, it's called 'Fast Shutdown'! Fast Shutdown allows you to:
Download Fast Shutdown and stop spending your waiting for your machine to shutdown. |