My Technology Guide: Windows, Mac, Linux, Internet, Software, Review

SSDownloader is an open source application which makes downloading current versions of popular antivirus, anti-malware, firewall, and other system utility software a snap. It is basically a special download manager built to download the latest version of security suites or system utilities directly from the manufacturer's website.

This app offers some advantages of its own, like a user don't have to check the manufacturer or developer website to download the latest version of his favorite security or utility app. It also protects users from downloading rogue security softwares as it gets all the apps from the respective developer/manufacturer's site. Also, since there are many popular security software available for Windows, some of which are free and others are paid versions. So, lots of people don't know which anti-virus and anti-spyware software they should use in their systems.

Opaloflux Clock and Calendar Application is very a stylish freeware application, and a very good alternative to the default Windows system clock. This powerful app includes all the same functionalities as the default system clock but does comes with many additional features such as notes, a fully functional appointment calendar, and an alarm clock. You can customize the look with over 20 clock skins and a skin mode feature.

After installing the app and launching it, on the main user interface, you will be easily able to switch from analogue to digital clocks with just a click of the mouse, you can also add notes that will be saved when the app is closed, and also shows you the current date and time.

After upgrading to Windows 7 or Vista you may miss the classic network activity indicator, as the default one that Microsoft has built for these operating system is pretty lifeless and doesn’t show any activity. If you want back the classic good old’ network activity animator of the Windows XP era, then you can get it back easily using a small application named NetAnimate for Windows 7, Vista, and 2008. Previously, we have talked about a similar application which is portable, Network Activity Indicator, which also lets you get back classic network activity.

NetAnimate is a very small application that monitors and indicates network traffic of your computer. The program runs as a system tray icon, providing a visual sign of network traffic of the selected network adapters. Holding the pointer over the tray icon will display the total number of bytes sent and received by your network adapters.

AeroTweak is freeware application for Windows 7 and Vista that allows you to easily change about 50 system settings and tweak Windows. The settings includes those that affects the user interface, system performance and system security. It is a standalone portable utility and does not need any installation as such.

AeroTweak also lets you recover your Windows 7 or Windows Vista product key. You can also view general system information. It lets you create System Restore point using only a click of a button before you make changes to your system, so that you can later revert back to old settings if you face a problem.

I have noticed most of my friends don't use or rather avoids any defragmentation applications as they think that these applications are very resource hungry and time-consuming. If you've too avoided defragmentation of your computer hard drive like them, then you should give this fast hard drive defragmentation application a try: Glarysoft Disk Speedup is a free simple, efficient hard disk defragment tool.

The user interface is pretty appealing with easy-to-follow buttons, thus a perfect choice even for the novice computer users. It offers the option to analyze the hard disks before starting the defragmentation. Thus if you do the analysis first, than based on the result of the analysis, you can easily decide if defragmentation is required or not.

CCleaner is a very useful tool to clean temporary files and other junk data in the Windows operating system. CCleaner Enhancer updates the popular system cleaning utility with support for cleaning up after 270 more applications, so you can keep your system even more free of junk.

Once you've downloaded CCleaner Enhancer, start the utility, and your CCleaner installation will be updated with support for the extra applications. If you want to update the portable version of CCleaner, you'll be prompted to select the folder to install the rules in. Windows Vista and Windows 7 users need to run the program as administrators, as it otherwise fails to work properly. You'll find the new rules on the Applications tab in CCleaner. You won't actually find all 270 new rules in the list, since you'll only see the rules that actually apply to your system.

Microsoft introduced the Ribbon UI since Office 2007, now this productive user interface is extensively used for many in-built apps of Windows 7 and is also adopted in many third-party apps. For some reason, Microsoft has kept the Notepad application in Windows 7 and has not changed it like Paint or Wordpad which now comes with the Ribbon UI.

In my opinion, it is a good decision taken by Microsoft as I like the straight, simple, classic look of the Windows Notepad app. But, if you love the Ribbon UI available in Microsoft Office and other applications, you'll definitely love this alternative to the in-built Windows Notepad that comes with a Ribbon user interface, called "FluentNotepad."