Belarc Advisor - Free Personal PC Audit

So I have been reading a couple of computer magazines and it seems like their editors like the program alot.  So I decided I should give it a try.  I have to say, the program definitely does a fine and good job of auditing your PC.  Frankly, I think it does too good of a job.  So well in fact that I'm kinda scared to keep the report file the program generated anywhere on my computer in case it falls into the wrong hands.  So why was I scared.  Well, the report it generated had every software that I have ever installed on my PC.  Not only that, it was also good enough to show you all the Keys and Serial numbers associated with the software.  It also shows all the hardware that I have on my PC including model numbers and types.  So, I would probably not use this program on a normal routine basis.  What I would use Belarc Advisor for is to generate a report before I format and reinstall my operating system.  I would print out the report and delete the HTML report file it generates so you will have a paper printout to keep handy when installing your OS back.  And once the OS is back up, then you have the Serial Keys and the list of programs that you had installed on the previous OS.  Now you can see all the programs you need to install to get the PC to where it was before.  Of course, this doesn't mean you should install all the program again because some of those may have led you to the problems that you have and caused you to reinstall the OS in the first place.

Platform: Windows Vista, 2003, XP, 2000, NT 4, Me, 98, and 95.
Price: Free
Website: http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html

PureText (Copy and Paste without Format)

As a web developer, I’m amazed I didn’t try to find this before now.  Now that I have it, I sure I won’t be able to live without it during my working hours.  There’s many times that I would copy text from a Word document and try to paste it into my HTML editor and getting a whole bunch of garbage asscociated with text formating.  I would then open up NotePad, paste into it to clean the formating out, then copy it to paste it into the HTML editor.  Let’s just say it’s a big hassle when you do this as many times a day as I do.  PureText makes it much less complicated.  PureText is a simple program that constantly runs and lives in the Window System Tray.  It just sits there waiting for you to cut or copy text.  Once you copy a set of text, you activate the text cleanup process by hitting the "WindowKey + V".  It will then clean up the formating and paste your text into the current application you are using.

Check out Steve Miller’s website at the following URL: http://stevemiller.net/puretext/

Color Cop

There are many times that people would send me a mockup of a screenshot and telling me that they want the DataGrid to be highlighted in that particular color. Instead of having to pull it into Paint.NET, GIMP, or Photoshop, I fire up Color Cop. It allows me to take a sample of anything on my screen. Just grab the Pipette and drag it to where you want it to sample the screen and it will display the RGB of the color. If you right-click on the Pipette then you can also set the sampling size. I think it saves me a lot of time and wanted to share it with all of you.

http://download.cnet.com/Color-Cop/3000-2383_4-10047009.html