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Software Reviews
by VikingMan
The reviews and opinions below are posted by SnapFiles visitors. They do not necessarily reflect our opinion, and are solely based on the experience of individual users.
- Freeware
98/ME/2000/XP/Vista
Keep this ready for when you need it 
Restoration version 2.5.14
- Interface: 3
- Features: 4
- Ease of use: 5
- Value: 5
- Overall:
I love these kind of apps - lightweight, simple, and incredibly useful. Everyone should have this utility sitting on your desktop, USB drive, or somewhere handy. Come the day when you wipe a file from the recycle bin by accident, use Restoration to get it back (hopefully). Thanks to the author for a wonderful tool.
Review date: May 09, 2008
- Freeware
- 98/ME/2000/XP
Fast, easy to use and it works
WinMerge version 2.6.12
- Interface: 4
- Features: 4
- Ease of use: 5
- Value: 5
- Overall:
This is a great utility for developers that highlights any differences between one text file and another. It works with any text file - XML, HTML, source files, config files. It compares not just visible characters but whitespace as well. It's much quicker and easier than SourceSafe, and so easy to use when you turn on shell integration - just select two files in Explorer, right click and choose Compare and Winmerge compares them.
Review date: May 09, 2008
- Freeware
- Win (All)
Powerful batch search and replace
BK ReplaceEm version 2.0
- Interface: 3
- Features: 5
- Ease of use: 2
- Value: 5
- Overall:
This is a powerful program for searching and replacing strings in a batch of files. I used it to update an HTML link wherever it occurred in loads of HTML files for a web site. The program is powerful and versatile but you need to set up a few options before you use it - it's not just like you run it and say "replace X with Y" and press the Start button. But overall it's the best freeware application I have found to do multiple batch replacements.
Review date: May 09, 2008
- Freeware
- 98/ME/2000/XP
Great for administering web sites
LeechFTP version 1.3.1.207
- Interface: 4
- Features: 3
- Ease of use: 5
- Value: 5
- Overall:
Although now rather long in the tooth, this app remains a great tool for uploading files onto a web server. I tried the other more famous ones but settled for this one - it's fast and simple and does everything I need. For web site maintenance the great feature is being able to compare local and remote directories so you can quickly see which files, from your local PC, need to uploaded onto your host web server. The multi-threading means you can upload a whole load of files really fast. You can view files from the server, change permissions, rename, delete, and carry out all basic file admin tasks.
Review date: Sep 15, 2007
- Freeware
- Win (All)
Must-have tool for web developers/designers
Color Cop version 5.4
- Interface: 5
- Features: 4
- Ease of use: 4
- Value: 5
- Overall:
A simple but incredibly useful tool for web developers or designers who need to reproduce or encode colours as hex codes. One of those tools that you get and then wonder how you managed without it.
Review date: Feb 02, 2007
- Freeware
- 2000/XP
Must-have for web developers
Web Developer Extension for Firefox version 1.02
- Interface: 5
- Features: 5
- Ease of use: 4
- Value: 5
- Overall:
If you develop web pages you must get this - it's free and will save you loads of time and also make your pages better. With this tool you can debug page errors and check that your page is really structured how you want it (not just that it looks like it should). It's great for designing modern accessible web pages that validate properly.
Review date: Nov 05, 2006
- Freeware
- Win (All)
The best password database I`ve found
KeePass Password Safe version 1.04
- Interface: 4
- Features: 5
- Ease of use: 4
- Value: 5
- Overall:
I wrote a positive review of another free password manager app but subsequently changed to this one because, hey, it's still free and it's better! This is the best password manager I've found so far. It's designed securely to combat keyloggers and is packed with features (even more via its various plugins). But still easy to use. It's also designed to be configurable enough for a network environment.
Review date: Feb 16, 2006
- Free Trial ($26.98)
- Win (All)
Fast and simple partition imaging
Image for Windows version 1.61
- Interface: 3
- Features: 3
- Ease of use: 5
- Value: 5
- Overall:
With this software it's easy to create an image of a disk partition either to a file or onto a CD/DVD. The uncluttered interface is a simple two-step wizard. It takes about 10 minutes to image 4GB and validate the image afterwards. To use this program effectively you also need to install PhyLock (available free from Terabyte's site) so that you can image your Windows partition. The problem comes when you want to restore your partition because you can't restore Windows while Windows is running. So you must restore from outside Windows using Terabyte's other DOS-based image restorer (which comes free with this program) or their boot manager. I personally prefer the latter - it's also available here on Snapfiles. But this Windows-based program has the advantage that it is easier for newbies and can be run automatically from a batch file or a scheduled task.
Review date: Feb 16, 2006
- Freeware
- Win (All)
Comprehensive versatile pc audit
WinAudit version 2.05
- Interface: 3
- Features: 4
- Ease of use: 3
- Value: 5
- Overall:
I tried three well-known apps to do a PC audit. This is the only one that covers both software and hardware audit comprehensively. It displays for example your partition structure, scheduled tasks, installed application versions and product ID's, BIOS settings, motherboard details, processes and services. Unlike other audit apps Winaudit produces an HTML report with hyperlinks to each section so you can quickly get to the section you're interested in. It can also save reports in PDF or text (although the reports are 100 pages long, so it's probably not practical to do so). However, Winaudit has one flaw: the interface is only in English and doesn't support Japanese language Windows systems. I ran it on a Japanese Windows XP system but its HTML report would not display Japanese characters properly in either Japanese encoding or Unicode. For English systems, I would definitely recommend it.
Review date: Jan 19, 2006
- Freeware
- 98/ME/2000/XP
Powerful focussed calendar/reminder
UK Kalender version 1.3.3
- Interface: 4
- Features: 5
- Ease of use: 4
- Value: 5
- Overall:
This small app does only one job and it does it very well. It takes time to learn but it's worth the effort because it's so powerful that it can handle practically any reminder task - stretching from annual events like birthdays to intervals of minutes. It's important to create sensible categories for your events to prevent the display becoming muddled. What's missing is the ability to define the holidays. You can download holidays for some countries but not many, but there's no way to register your own holidays (e.g. for other countries or your own days off) - you have to create events for holidays instead. Also it would be good if the year view could be set to start at a month other than January (e.g. teachers generally like to see the year starting from September). But these are minor gripes in an otherwise excellent app.
Review date: Nov 10, 2005
- Freeware
- Win (All)
Not just for passwords
Any Password version 1.43
- Interface: 5
- Features: 3
- Ease of use: 5
- Value: 5
- Overall:
Use this utility to remember those different passwords for sites that require a login. With this you can create stronger and more secure passwords and will stop the dangerous habit of using the same userid/password combination on multiple sites. It can also be used to record any information which you need to keep safe and secure, eg serial numbers for applications, bank accounts, PIN/phone numbers. Two points to remember: A) The password to access Any Password is the master key - that password must be a good strong one. B) Although malware probably can't read the encrytped data file, it could theoretically peek in when you open the file within Any Password and the passwords become visible, or if you copy passwords to the clipboard. So you should use anti-spyware apps to make sure your system is free of keyloggers or other spyware.
Review date: Oct 19, 2005
- Free Trial ($34.95)
- Win (All)
Versatile way to manage disk partitions
BootIt Next Generation version 1.75a
- Interface: 4
- Features: 5
- Ease of use: 4
- Value: 5
- Overall:
Amazing value for money. This tiny versatile utility gives you complete control over the partitions on your hard disk. With today's large hard disks it is important to partition hem correctly, and this utility can do it all. Image and restore partitions (everyone should do this regularly on the Windows partn.). Resize, move, delete, create, format, copy, partitions. Back up the master boot record (everyone should do this as well). Boot into any partition to run many operating systems on one machine. BootIT NG partition image files are compatible with other apps from the same company Image for Windows and DOS - together they make a great suite which will protect you in the event of hard disk meltdown. The interface is a bit clunky but the underlying app is solid and reliable.
Review date: Oct 19, 2005
- Freeware
- 2000/XP/2003/Vista
Especially good for search and syncronization
FreeCommander version 2004.10b
- Interface: 3
- Features: 4
- Ease of use: 2
- Value: 5
- Overall:
This is a generally excellent file manager - a good range of facilities additional to Windows explorer. It's search facility is better: you can fully specify date ranges and file attributes to search. The folder synchronize feature has a feature that I have not seen in any other synchronizer. Most synchronizers operate in both directions together, i.e. they synchronize two folders left->right AND right->left at the same time. Freecommander lets you distinguish either left->right OR right->left OR both. This is useful to create a backup folder when you want to copy from the source to the backup, but not vice versa. The only problem with synchronize is that you cannot set it to ignore small differences in timestamp, a feature that most other synchronizers have. It conflicted with Norton Antivirus on my Win98 system. It has some bugs when deleting folders: the view is not always updated correctly. But overall this is a program I use every day.
Review date: Jul 04, 2005
Create interactive Flash movies and tutorials to show how applications and systems work.
A powerful, yet easy-to-use tool to automate any series of tasks you can do on your computer.
