Taskbar Texturizer is a portable utility which does one thing – add textures to your taskbar. The application itself is straight forward to use. Taskbar Texturizer can use any image as your taskbar background. To help you get started, it comes preloaded with two dozen textures. To be honest, some of the included textures look pretty cool in Windows 7. Taskbar Texturizer also supports transparent textures, which allows you to come up with some fairly decent looking taskbar skins by playing with the with the opacity settings.

Techie Buzz Verdict

The application does have some usability issues and doesn’t confirm to Windows application development standards. For example, double clicking the system tray icon have any even associated with it. This coupled with the fact that Taskbar Texturizer doesn’t create any taskbar entry, leads to the application window getting lost among other open windows, once it looses focus. It also seems to have some compatibility issues with Winsnap. However, these are minor issues. Taskbar Texturizer does what it is supposed to. It uses very little resources and provides a quick and easy way to spice up your system.

Techie Buzz Rating: 3/5 (Good)
[ Download Taskbar Texturizer for Windows XP/Vista/7 ]

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7 Taskbar Tweaker is a simple portable utility which is functionally similar to Taskbar Overlord. It allows you to close application windows by simply middle clicking on them. It can also change the default left click behavior for grouped windows. By default, left clicking on a grouped button brings up the thumbnail list. But, this is pointless since hovering over the button also has the same effect. With 7 Taskbar Tweaker you can set the default left click behavior to “cycle through open windows”. This is a minor change, but once you get used to this, you will start wondering why Microsoft didn’t make this the default behavior in the first place. 7 Taskbar Tweaker also supports a few other tweaks, including disabling jumplists, thumbnail previews and application grouping.

Techie Buzz Verdict

7 Taskbar Tweaker is a simple tweaking utility which has some really useful tweaks. Its biggest strength is simplicity. It did everything it promised without any fuss. Give it a try if you want to improve you productivity by fine-tuning the Windows 7 Taskbar.

Techie Buzz Rating: 3.5/5 (Good)

[ Download 7 Taskbar Tweaker ]

via DownloadSquad

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Tar archives are files usually created in Linux environments, if you have downloaded a file with .tar extensions, you can easily open it with several softwares.

The Tar folder shell extension, makes is much easier to open and browse .tar files from within Windows explorer. Once you install the software, you can browse .tar files just like any other folder on your computer.

Techie Buzz Verdict

Tar folder shell extension allows you to open and view the content of files within a .tar file without having to extract them. This can come in pretty handy when you want to only copy a few files from the archive or want to browse the files before you decide to extract them.

The application is freeware, once installed it will automatically integrate itself into the Windows explorer.

Ratings: 3/5 (Very Good)

Download Tar Shell extension

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Dev man view, is a Windows device manager alternative which will allow you to view all the plug and play and non plug and play devices added to your system.

Dev man view is a handy freeware for people who are looking to view advanced information about their devices. In addition to that, dev man view is a portable software, so you do not have to install it.

Techie Buzz Verdict

Dev man view provides users with advanced information about devices, such as, Device name, device manufacturer, service provided by the device, device type code, device type name, device instance id, location, capabilities and more.

Having access to such advanced information can be helpful for advanced users who want to troubleshoot devices or view more information about it.

This tool will be useless to you, if you are not much into looking at information related to the components that form a part of your computer. It is a must download for advanced users and system administrators.

Rating: 3.5/5 (Very Good)

Download DevManView

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Rsync for Windows provides a graphical user interface for Windows users to backup their files. It uses the Samba network to share and upload the backup data to a Linux based system.

Techie Buzz Verdict

Rsync for Windows is a advanced tool for users who want to sync files between Windows and Linux without having to install Cygwin on their computers.

The application provides a simple interface with an option to add rsync shell arguments for all the backup jobs.

Rating: 3/5 (Very Good)

Download Rsync for Windows

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Windows Vista did have a similar feature, but it was only limited to the applications in the quick launch bar. We had covered more such shortcut keys in our Ultimate List of Windows button shortcut keys.

ActivateByNum is a freeware, which will allow you to use the Windows key + number, task switching functionality from Windows 7 in Windows XP and Vista.

Techie Buzz Verdict

The Windows key + number task switching comes in pretty handy when you want to navigate or open applications without using the mouse or Alt + Tab key combination.

This should definitely come in handy on Windows XP, however it might disable the Quick launch hotkeys on Windows Vista.

Rating: 3/5 (Good)

Download ActivateByNum

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Must Read: Techie Buzz Guide to Access Favorite Folders Quickly and Easily

NoDrives Manager is a handy freeware, which will allow you to hide logical drives from My Computer window and other file open/save dialogs. Once you download NoDrives manager, you can run it by double clicking on the executable.

To hide drives from explorer and other file dialogs, select the drive from the list, and click on the “Write current settings to the registry”.

Once you save the settings to the registry,a dialog will tell you to log off for the settings to take effect. Once you log back in, the drive should be hidden.

Techie Buzz Verdict

NoDrives Manager is a handy tool to hide your drives. However, the software is not foolproof, so any tech savvy person could simply type in the drive letter in the explorer window to browse the content.

Another issue with this software is that the results are not instant, so you will have to log off and log in, every time you want to hide a drive.

Rating: 2/5 (Good)

Download NoDrives Manager

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Unfortunately, Microsoft discontinued the tradition of releasing Powertoys with Windows Vista. Image Resizer Powertoy Clone is an open source application which brings the functionality offered by Windows Resizer to Windows 7 and Vista. It resizes selected images without altering the original image. You can use any one of the four preset sizes or specify a custom size. You can also ask Image Resizer to modify and overwrite the original image, in case you want to save space.

Techie Buzz Verdict

Image Resizer is good at what it does. If the specified output resolution doesn’t match the original aspect ratio, it will resize the image without altering the aspect ratio. In such cases Image Resizer will ensure that both the width and the height is less than or equal to the specified value. From what I could tell, Image Resizer doesn’t save images at 100% quality settings. This keeps file sizes in check without any perceivable loss in image quality. Image Resizer’s biggest strength is convenience. It has its own limitations, but is excellent for quick resizing tasks.

Techie Buzz Rating: 3/5 (Good)

[ Download Image Resizer Powertoy Clone ]

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Taskbar Meters consists of two individual utilities – a CPU meter and a Memory Meter. Both of these utilities utilize color coded bars to indicate system resource usage. You can configure the update frequency and define the thresh hold values for yellow and red color coding. Taskbar Meters also includes Jumplists support and provides you quick access to the task manager.

Techie Buzz Verdict

Taskbar Meters doesn’t do a lot. It is a simple utility, which provides a good alternative to sidebar gadgets. Taskbar Meters requires very little CPU resources and has minimal impact on your system’s performance. Give it a try if you want to add some extra zing to your taskbar.

Techie-Buzz Rating: 2/5 (Average)

[ Download Taskbar Meters ]

via Life Rocks

You might also like:

• Tweak Windows 7 Taskbar with 7 Taskbar Tweaker
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• Texturize Your Taskbar with Taskbar Texturizer
• How To Disable Windows 7 Taskbar Tab Preview in Firefox 3.6

The first solutions I used was simple file encryption. It works fine as long as the encryption programs could be stored on the USB stick. Other methods I’ve seen even go as far as special hardware built right into the stick. That makes them more expensive but still affordable by business users. If you look hard, you’ll find dozens of ways to keep the data on your USB drive safe from prying eyes.

Recently I’ve been trying out a great program called SafeHouse Explorer. It’s done everything I’ve wanted so far with few problems. Here’s what the home page for SafeHouse says about their software:

“What will happen to you when your private information falls into the wrong hands? It’s all preventable! SafeHouse Explorer is free security software for hard drives and memory sticks. Keep everyone out. Period. Get it now. Or be sorry later.”

Set up is simple. Download a 3mb installer file and agree to the terms of use as you run it. The SafeHouse program will appear in your Windows Add/Remove panel and start menu just like any other application. It can be used on your hard drives or USB drives and other portable media. To take it on the road, find the SafeHouseExplorer.exe file in the Program Files folder and copy it to a USB drive. It will now run as a “stand-alone” or portable program.

It works by creating an encrypted and password protected virtual drive (or volume) inside a single file. Simply click the “New Volume” button in SafeHouse and follow the volume creation wizard as it guides you through the process. It’s pretty simple and basically only needs to know the volume file name, location and the size you need.

The SafeHouse Explore interface looks a lot like a Windows Explorer file browser. It acts like Windows Explorer even down to dragging, dropping and right clicking on files. You’ll have no problem getting used to managing the files in your protected volumes.

SafeHouse Explorer has the following features and more:
* stand-alone on USB or other media such as iPods or floppy disks
* hides, locks and encrypts any file types
* 256-bit Twofish advanced encryption
* unlimited number of storage volumes
* volumes can be up to 2,000 Gigabytes in size
* password strength meter
* create self-extracting EXE encrypted volumns

Techie Buzz Verdict:
This is excellent free protection for your private data. It’s very easy to use and the stand-alone copy works even on PC’s that don’t allow you administrative rights. The only failing I saw is that when it’s run in stand-alone mode, each time you fire it up, it asks you to agree to the Terms of Use.

I feel good about recommending SafeHouse Explorer to anyone who needs to be a little paranoid with their private data.

Techie Buzz Rating: 4/5

Download SafeHouse Explorer

Do you have any questions about file security or encryption? Do you have any ideas you’d like to share? Be sure to add a comment below or email me. I’d love to hear from you.

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