Free Download Manager

These days almost all decent managers have turned to being shareware. One of the remaining few download managers is Free Download Manager. It recently became fully open-source, which means it will remain free forever. Being free doesn't mean it has very few features. In fact, it is one of the most feature-rich download managers available. With features such as Pause/Resume downloads, Segmented Download, Audio/Video Preview during download, Flash video download (from sites like YouTube, Google Video, Blennus, MySpace etc.), BitTorrent support, Scheduler, Site Explorer, Site Password Manager, HTML Spider etc.

Interface

The interface can't be simpler than this. Just the simple set of buttons. The left side tree structure contains ways to filter out the downloads you want to see. It can be based on type, status, etc. The right side, on the other hand, is a split view between the list of downloads (on the top) and the details of the download in the bottom. The details section is further categorized into tabs to show the Log, Progress, Media Preview, and Community Comments (Extra tab might appear for Torrent downloads).

Flash video download

The Flash video download section is a relative new section to Free Download Manager. It allows you to download video files from some online video sites such as Google Video, YouTube, Blennus, MySpace, Dailymotion, LiveDigital etc. This section also has the option to convert the downloaded file between avi, wmv, mpg, mp4 and mp3 files.

Torrents

Torrents have become the hottest way to download stuff on the Internet. Torrent support is a brand new addition to Free Download Manager and you shouldn't expect much from it. But still, it does a quiet descent job with torrents. Please note that the "Torrents" section might only be available in the latest beta release. The latest version has support to select the files with a torrent files that you would like to download. You can also prioritize the files you want to download. Options are also available to restrict the Seeding of the file.

Scheduler

Free Download Manager comes with a very advanced scheduler which can do tasks such as Launch Program, Start/Stop download, Establish/Hang-up dial-up connection, Change traffic usage mode, Shutdown/Hibernate/Sleep system, etc. It can also be triggered on various events such as A given date/time, Certain days of every week, Every few intervals, At start-up, download completed etc. Tasks can also be deleted/disabled after completion.

Site Explorer

The Site Explorer is a unique part of Free Download Manager which allows you to view web sites in a folder structure. This allows you to download files more easily. It also facilitates in the browsing of FTP sites.

Site Manager

A section that stores the User Name/Password related to a web site. The user name and passwords are stored from the different sections of the application.

HTML Spider

Ever wanted to download a complete website or a part of the website. HTML Spider helps you download an entire section of a given website to your hard disk by following the links in the given page and the links within those pages and so-on.

Summary

Free Download Manager is one of the best download manager you can come up with. It has almost all the features you can expect from a download manager and more. It is also highly customizable using the Options available. Although, I have to admit it, the Options section might get a bit confusing for starters. Anyway, the free download manager can be downloaded from the Official Site.

 

Related Links

• Free Download Manager at SourceForge.net

Media Player Classic

Many people mistake Media Player Classic for an older version Windows Media Player and simply tend to ignore it. This confusion is because the interface looks very much like Windows Media Player 6.4 . This open source media player for Windows was created by a programmer called "Gabest".

Installation of Media Player Classic is quiet simple because it does not have an installation. It is just a single EXE file and can be run without any installation. Media Player Classic can be downloaded from SourceForge.net . The only issue here is that the original product is not under active development since 2006. A separate group had been working in fixing major issue found in the Player and adding new features. This modified version can be found at a separate website Guliverkli2.

You must note that although it can read most of the popular audio formats, it is only able to read most video formats if the correct codec is present on the system. It appears to have built-in support for VCD, SVCD and DVD formats. It also has support for DVD menus and sub-titles. But apart from that, the function as a complete Media Player suite, it is recommended that you install it with some of the popular Codec Packs such as K-Lite Codec Pack and Codec Pack All.

Interface and Speed

One thing you would love about this media player is it's speed and simplicity. The startup speed is quiet quick and the interface is quiet responsive. You wouldn't have any problem to start using this media player because the interface is quiet common. The plain old seek bar and the standard player button with the standard volume control. The volume can also be controlled using the wheel of a mouse. Most other keyboard shortcuts are similar to that of Windows Media Player. For eg. Space can be Used to Play/Pause and Alt+Enter can be used to toggle the Full Screen Mode.

The palyer interface comes in 3 modes. Minimal, Compact, and Normal mode. It can be changed from the View->Presets sub-menu.

Options

Media Player Classic are extensively customizable.

•  Player - This section has the basic options such as the Single/Multi Media Player window mode, Show/Hide Taskbar icon, Format association, Autoplay configuration, Keyboard configuration, Logo to be used when the player is idle, and the Web Interface (The web interface module appears to be a work in progress and wouldn't work)
• Playback - All basic playback options are available in this section. This includes the playback repeat rate, default zoom level, DVD/OGM advanced settings, Video rendering mode and Audio Output device.
• Internal Filters - Various settings related to Internal Filters are done here. The Audio Switcher sub-section can be used to filter out the audio output.
• External Filters
• Subtitles - All settings related to how sub-titles are rendered.
• Tweaks - Some basic tweaks like disabling XP-themes, Free Window Resizing etc.

Finally

Media Player Classic is a great add-on player that can be installed along with any other Media Player you might be using. For one thing, it doesn't use much space. Hope you have a great video watching experience.

Further Reading

• Media Player Classic on WikiPedia
• Media Player Classic Homecinema Home Page

Sandboxie - Try-out new software without messing-up your System

If you love to download, install and try out lots of Software, then this software is for you. The basic problem when installing and trying out lots of Software is that, the software tend to leave behind several additional files. It also makes lots of modification to the system, which might sometimes be undesirable.

What is Sandboxie?

Sandboxie is a software that helps you run an application in a Sandbox type isolated environment. To be more plain, you can install and try-out new software without affecting other parts of your system.

How does it work?

At the base level, any file operation done by an application run within the Sandboxie program will be intercepted by the program. The modification of the file (no matter which file it is) will not be allowed and instead a new file is created in a private folder of Sandboxie. Usually, the Sandboxie files are stored in C:\Sandboxie directory. Any future access to the file from within the Sandbox is re-routed to the file within the Sandboxie directory.

Application Usage

The application usage is apparently quiet simple. It has a very simple interface with a list of available Sanboxes. To run an application in the Sandbox, simply right-click the Sandbox and from the "Run Sandboxed" sub-menu, choose the application you would like to start. When an application starts running, you can see its process in the main list view window of Sandboxie.

When an application is started using the Sandboxie program, it's title bar will contain [#] symbol in the beginning and end.

Limitation / Problems

Not all programs are compatible with Sandboxie. You should take special care when running system level applications like anti-virus from within the Sandbox. Also, most Games would probably never work in Sandbox.

Another issue would be with speed. All these application intercepting can really slow down the application. You shouldn't be using an application within a Sandbox if you intend to use it quiet often. It would really slow the application as time goes.

Conclusion

Sandboxie is a great program if you like testing out the different applications available on the net. The most important thing it provides is security. Even if a virus is run from within the Sandbox environment, it can never affect the system.

Read This Review and More At SoftReview.co.cc

Related Links

• Sandboxie Homepage
• Sandboxie on Wikipedia

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Google Chrome Beta - At Last......

At last, it's here. The browser I have been waiting for ages. The browser from Google. Google Chrome. I had heard a lot about it. Yesterday, I was surprised to see the news of its launch at the official Google Blog. After seeing and using all the other products from Google, I was sure this one would also be one of its kind. I went forward and downloaded it from the Google Chrome site.

Interface & Appearance

The interface looked quite simple. No fancy animations or other such affect. Just a basic skin, with the standard browser buttons. Of course, like all other browser, it too has a tabbed structure. That is one of the best thing I like about the modern browsers. No menu bars are available. All the menu items are stacked in to the last 2 buttons to the right of the address bar. Most of the menu items are the standard ones found in any other browser. So, I am not going deep into it.

The tab structure does have a very unique feature not found in any other browser. You can simply drag a tab out of the browser to create a new window containing that page. In fact, dragging tabs between various open windows of Google Chrome is a breeze.

Speed & Memory Usage

At first use itself, I felt it has more speed that most other browsers I used (Internet Explorer 8, Mozilla Firefox 3, Opera 9, Flock 2,...). All pages seem to load quickly. Of course, my calculations could be wrong, considering the fact that, my Firefox and Flock browsers are clogged with dozens of Add-ons installed. Next, I decided to check the memory and CPU usage using Process Explorer. Here, I got a real surprise. I had around 7 chrome.exe running in my system. After a bit of study, I understood the fact that, for each tab you open in the browser, a different EXE is launched. In simple worlds, if you have 10 tabs open in the browser, it is (I assume) equivalent to running 10 instances of the browser. I am not sure about the implication of this on the system resources over time.

Webpage Compatibility

I didn't have much problem loading most websites. But, many Ajax based sites like Hotmail are not likely to work. I was surprised when the Yahoo! Mail's Ajax interface did work in the browser. The explanation is simple, Google Chrome uses the WebKit rendering engine used by a few other browsers such as Apple's Saffari. Gmail worked perfectly with the browser. Of course, no surprise there, what else would you expect from a browser created by Google itself.

Security & Stability

From what I have heard, it seems Security is one of the main focus of Google Chrome. In fact, I guess this is the reason why each page is run as a different process. Each process runs like a sandbox with very limited access to the outside world. The browser also maintains two separate updated blacklist (one for phishing and the other for malware).

Stability is also one important part of the browser. Most users love to have lots of webpage open and running. Here again, the benefit of running each webpage in a separate process is that, if a webpage gets crashed, it would not affect the other open pages. To make things even better, it also has an integrated taskbar that displays all the open page instance of the browser. It also displays Memory Usage and CPU usage for each separate page.

Standards

Being a Google product, I was pretty much sure that the Web Standards support would be perfect with this browser. But still, to test it out, I just ran the Acid test. Here are the results:

Acid 1		Acid 2		Acid 3

As you can see, it didn't pass the Acid 3 test. Put it did come pretty much close. And anyway, most other browsers do not pass the test. So, I guess that's fine.

Few More

The browser does have a few other unique features integrated into it. Google Gears is one of them. It is a most promising standard from Google to support Off-line storage of data for supported websites. The best use of this is for the various web applications being created that need not have a server to run, but will need to store various data on the local system. Google Chrome also has a "Create Application Shortcuts" used to create shortcut for your commonly used Web-application on the Desktop, Quick Launch, or Start Menu. When run in this mode, the application will not display tabs or address bar. In effect, you get a full-screen display of the web-application.

Read the Original Review and More at SoftReview.co.cc