When a piece of software promises to make my life and work simpler, I'm eager to try it out. Each week, I get word of three to six small utility programs. Many of them are shareware, meaning you can try them out for free before you buy them. Most, in my experience, turn out to be of very limited use. But a few are extraordinarily helpful because they either do something wonderful or they do something fairly trivial but necessary in a tidy and efficient way.
Quick! Grab that address
The first of these programs is also the most recent I've found, Address Grabber Deluxe, by eGrabber Inc. (www.egrabber.com) in Saratoga, California. Suggested by a colleague, this US$49.95 program is one of the handiest items I've seen in a long time. Basically, you just highlight a name or address block in any window, then click on the Grabber button. The program captures the copy, looks it over and figures out what the name, title, company, phone number or e-mail is and presents it to you for an OK. Then, with a single additional click, it sends the information to your address book. Why didn't someone think of this before?
Disk housekeeping
As I put more and more data and applications on my hard drive, the amount of free space gets smaller and smaller, and performance begins to suffer as files get increasingly fragmented. Regular disk defragmentation becomes more important than ever. Built-in defraggers come with all versions of Windows, but they don't always work very well, and they don't work at all if you don't have a sizable chunk of free space (like 30 percent of your hard drive). In the past, I've turned to Norton Speed Disk from Symantec Corp. as an alternative, but I've since found a much better product: Executive Software International Inc.'s Diskeeper 6.0. This Glendale, Calif.-based company has produced the fastest, most intelligent defrag program I've ever used, and it can operate with an astonishingly small amount of free space. Better yet, it works with Windows 2000. It comes in both server and workstation versions, starting at $49.95. You can download both versions from www.executive.com.
The Oh Sh�! button
For years, the Undelete function in Norton Utilities was a valuable tool for any computer user -- and a lifesaver for someone who had accidentally deleted a critically important file. While the Recycle Bin that started with Windows 95 has eliminated some of the need for that, it's still true that some file deletes never get put into the Recycle Bin and are thus really unrecoverable -- especially if you're running Windows NT. But Executive Software has produced another useful $49.95 utility called Undelete 2.0. It works with Windows NT and Windows 2000, and it's available in server versions.
Virtual CD-ROM
OK, I confess: I'm a solitaire addict. Oh, not the standard Windows solitaire, but a package I bought for $10 at Staples some years ago. The only problem is, it won't run any of its 40 solitaire games unless the CD is in the drive. Now, because I review computer products, I normally use several different computers each day. And more than once, I've found myself with time to kill while on a trip, and the CD wasn't in the drive. It was in another computer or at home or maybe packed away in my checked luggage -- or the laptop didn't even have a built-in CD-ROM drive. But I've found a $30 answer to that problem, and it's also useful for carrying reference CDs with you. By using Paragon CD Emulator from Paragon Technologie GmbH in Buggingen, Germany, I can create a "virtual" CD drive on my computer, copy a CD image to it and run it anytime from the hard drive. Not only is it more convenient, but it also runs faster. This program is also available in a network version for running on a server. Check it out at www.paragon-gmbh.com.
Thumbnail specialist
Jasc Media Center Plus 3 is a well-done program for organizing digital graphics. Created by Jasc Software Inc. in Eden Prairie, Minn., which also produces Paint Shop Pro, this program uses the photo album metaphor, but it does a very fast job of creating thumbnails so you can really see what's in an album -- or what's in a folder full of images with meaningless, camera-generated file names like DC100243.jpg. There are hundreds of programs like this available, and I haven't checked them all. But of the ones I've seen, Media Center is the most useful. It lets me add comments and keywords to individual pictures, making them searchable. Media Center isn't a substitute for a full-blown image database like Portland, Ore.-based Extensis Product Group's Portfolio 5, but at $39.95 ($29.95 at www.jasc.com), it's not priced like a full-blown database.
