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Virus.gr has released the results of Antivirus shootout conducted on June 21, 2008. Forty-nine antimalware products were tested by them using 246705 virus samples. This test was conducted by virusp, a private virus collector.

Top 5 single-engine Premium Antivirus products :

4. Kaspersky version 8.0.0.357 – 97.95%
5. eScan version 9.0.742.1 – 97.44%
6. The Shield 2008 – 97.43%
7. AntiVir version 8.1.00.331 Premium – 97.13%
8. Ashampoo version 1.61 – 97.09%

Top 4 single-engine Free Antivirus products :

10. AntiVir version 8.1.00.295 Classic – 95.54%
11. AVG version 8.0.100 Free – 94.85%
13. Avast version 4.8.1201 Professional – 93.78% (virus.gr claims avast free uses the same engine hence would have identical result)
16. BitDefender version 10 Free – 91.32%
Continue reading “New Antivirus Shootout by Virus.gr”

The regular uninstaller of an application often leaves behind useless files and registry entries. This is one of the primary causes behind loss in performance of Windows over time. Not only that, the default Add/Remove applet is slow and as bare-bones as it gets. Here are five alternatives you should consider.

MyUninstaller from Nirsoft is a no-frills add/remove replacement whose main objective is to give you a light weight replacement to the default interface with a few extra features thrown in. You can delete invalid entries, save list of installed programs, sort the installed programs according to various parameters etc. Its certainly not feature rich but hey its only a 43 KB download and is still better than the default add remove interface.

Download MyUninstaller (42.42 KB)
Platforms Supported : All versions of Windows
Version Reviewed : 1.40

Free Uninstaller is another simplistic Add/Remove programs alternative.

It provides a vastly improved interface which highlights system entries in blue and invalid entries in red. You can lookup more information about any software or its manufacturer from the web (Google, Yahoo and Live Search are supported). Other features include the ability to uninstall multiple programs together, to delete invalid entries, to backup registry, to export list of installed, to sort installed softwares according to various parameters.

Download Free Uninstaller (311 KB)
Platforms Supported : All versions of Windows
Version Reviewed : 1.1

MyUninstaller and Free Uninstaller are better than the default Add/Remove programs. But they simply provide a new UI and doesn’t improve the uninstall process as such. Now, I shall move on to more serious options.
Continue reading “Five Free Alternatives to Add or Remove Programs”

Time for another edition of Tiny Utilities : Small is Good. In each edition I review 3 tiny but extremely useful freeware. Do check out the previous editions if you missed them.

For a software that’s smaller than 400kB, XNeat Windows Manager is incredibly feature packed. Here are some of the things it does –

Allows you to re-arrange the taskbar buttons (ala Taskbar Shuffle).
Allows you to pin a window i.e. make it always appear on top.
Allows you to send any taskbar button to the system tray. This is a very handy feature, if you do a lot of multitasking, as this prevents the taskbar from getting crowded.
Allows you to make any window transparent (opacity can be set to any value between 0 and 100).
Allows you to hide a window. A hidden window can be restored via the taskbar context menu or Hot Menu.
Replaces the default Task Switcher (Alt+Tab) in Windows XP and Vista (Flip3D) with something similar to Expose (found in OSX) which is much more intuitive and productive.
Adds a hot menu (accessible via Win+Space hotkey) to quickly launch and switch between programs.
Modifies the “Save As Dialogue”. Adds a Date button which appends the date to the file name. Additionally when you try to save a file with same name as an existing file you get a clone option. This appends a number to the file and saves it.

The extensive feature list along with it’s incredibly small memory footprint makes XNeat Windows Manager a must have software.

Download XNeat WIndows Manager (373 KB)
Platforms Supported : Windows XP , Vista 32 bit
Version Reviewed : 2.5.0.85

Continue reading “Tiny Utilities : Small is Good – VI”

By default Windows Explorer recognizes and generates thumbnails for a few pre-defined formats. It doesn’t generate thumbnails for many common file formats – which includes FLV, RM, RMVB, MOV, MP4, MKV. Luckily, there is a very simple fix for this.
Follow these steps –

Enabling Thumbnail For Generic Video File

Open Note pad and paste the following text :

Replace .EXT with the desired extension (e.g. flv).

If you want to enable thumbnails for multiple file types you can do so by adding the appropriate registry entries as demonstrated below :

This file would enable thumbnails for flv, mov and mp4.

Save the file with extension .reg (make sure save as type is “All Files” and not “Text Documents”).

Double Click on the saved registry entry and confirm the action. After this reboot.
Continue reading “Enable Explorer Thumbnails for Custom File Types”

Opera v9.5 (codenamed Kestrel) is finally here! It was supposed to be a minor update to Opera – a precursor to the major update Peregrine (v10), that most fans expected to be released by the end of 2007. The wait turned out to be much longer than expected and kestrel definitely turned out to be a lot more than a minor update. Let’s take a look at some of the new features :

History Search : Opera is the first browser to provide integrated History search. Opera not only stores address of web pages you have visited but also the textual content of the web page. So even if you don’t remember the url you can revisit the website by simply entering some keywords. History Search works with the normal address bar, but also has a separate full-fledged interface.

New Skin : Opera v9.5 features a brand new skin – that makes it the best looking browser (at least on Windows). Its glossy and metallic texture gives Opera a futuristic look while being easy on eyes. I had covered it over here.

Continue reading “Opera 9.5 Is Here”