Thunderbird Beta 3 Review

Thunderbird is already an excellent e-mail client that has steady yet slow improvement over the years. Its plugin structure has really made for a far better email client than many alternatives and its open nature makes it easy to plug into other email systems and of course for backing up. Integrated compression allows it to save lots of space, as text frequently compresses by 50% or more.

Great updates:

• Threads - A fix on the problem with Thunderbird 2.0 staying in the "thread" format (like Gmail's system) when you restart. Do this by selecting "View - Sort by - Threaded".
  

• Integration with Gmail. Allows you to get both POP and IMAP settings, which download all your email and download just the headings respectively. This was very welcome and seems to work beautifully.
  
• Activity Manager gives you a rundown of the actions Thunderbird has taken. A problem in the previous Thunderbird left me wondering if it was actually checking my e-mail every 5 minutes -- now I know.
• Message Summary View - extremely cool. From the release notes: "Selecting multiple messages will give you a summary view of the emails you have selected." Just try it -- its terrific.

• Similarity with Firefox
  

• Tabbed View - really slick -- I'm surprised this wasn't already present. Overall the interface is much smoother and cleaner.

• Back and Forward buttons -- awesome.
  

More updates are on their way and I look forward to the finished product. Notably, a global search and index tool will be included in the final version. (I'm assuming global means all Inboxes, not the rest of the computer.)


Wishlist:

• User Interface: the formatting of email for 2nd and 3rd layer quoted text is a big "loud" and cluttered. Should be grey rather than blue.
  

• Same for the progress bar: a light grey is more than enough.

• To get messages in Plain text only, you have to go to "Options - Format - Plain Text only" Doesn't appear to be an option to set this by default in the Preferences like there was in Thunderbird 2.0.
  
• Selecting "File" and "New" should allow you to add an RSS/Atom feed.
• "Import" should allow you to import from file, as well as directly from Outlook and other email clients. That way you can grab stuff from backups rather than having to reinstall apps.
  

Plugin options that should be standard:

• Calendar and TodoList integration, like Lightning. Should be something you check to enable at startup or in the options menu. Who wouldn't want that?
• Better security options such as easy PGP/GPG tools and integration or just an "add a password" option of some kind. I know there's Enigmail and its very robust, but I think its important to have something beyond the very inaccessible "certificate" security.
  
• Want a "delete duplicates" option somewhere in there to clean up inbox.
  

• Download

System Requirements: Win 98 or above and very basic hardware
Version: 3.0 Beta
Size: 30 megs
RAM Usage: 6 megs
License: GPL, MPL
Score: 8 of 10. Very voluntary about not being ready for prime time, but a real step up in mail readers. In some ways very superior to Outlook. Looking forward to using it daily when it gets out of beta.
In Kitchen Sink Collection? No, simply because their trademark won't let me redistribute it.

PicPick Review

Image freeware too good to be free

Gleefully bleeding across boundaries in software categories, this outstanding tool is much more than a color identifier or image capture software, beating out a number of other portable freeware titles in one unified package. The developer(s) clearly know something about writing good software.

Graphics editor

The Image Editor will find a home on many computers. While it lacks power features of many other titles, its fast, simple, and clean. The warmth and usability of this software is undeniable and its easily a match for advanced editors, fulfilling the vast majority of user needs. With rotation, color tools, sharpen, blur, frame effects, this basic editor would make PicPick worthwhile software all by itself. The tabbed format is very welcome and holds the various different images that come up as the user takes one or many screen shots:

Most of the remaining tools present are likely for a more narrow group mostly made up of web developers or technical writers:

• Screen Capture - Although the program is extremely flexible, the basic focus of the software seems to be its Screen Capture ability, which it does beautifully. Screens can be grabbed in many shapes and sizes, then handed off smoothly to the internal editor for more options, or further cleaning.
  

Alternately, users can skip the internal editor altogether by right-clicking the taskbar icon and selecting "Capture Settings" - "Output Format," allows captured files can be sent to an external editor like Photoshop or GIMP, auto-save, or "Save As" dialog, or simply put on the clipboard to be "pasted" elsewhere.

• Color Picker - Uses a small cross-hair window to help a user find the exact pixel whose color is needed. This is great for taking a logo and turning out a whole design based on its theme, or visa versa. One problem with this problem is that the Print Screen button (which saves the code for the color chosen) doesn't exist on some laptops. This cannot be changed under the settings.

• Pixel ruler - similar to the On-Screen Ruler program, a semi-transparent ruler that allows users to see in pixels how wide something is on screen. Mostly needed in web design, as in this example where its measuring a stone at Stone Henge.

• Protractor - helps you find angles on screen. Pick a center, then a location, then the angle in degrees away from the first. Can be used in a variety of photography, math, and graphics applications. Would like to see a function where those values are saved to clipboard or automatically in a screen capture. As it stands, users need to find a spare piece of paper or memorize the angle.

• Crosshair - place one mark and then move your cursor to see where the placement is relative to the first. This can be useful for example in developing HTML image maps. Just dragging the crosshair around shows you the number of pixels (starting at 0,0 in the top left). Negatively, as users near the left side of the screen, the coordinates could move to the opposite side of the X and Y axies as they just go off screen when you reach the bottom or right side.

• Whiteboard - works right over top of your current desktop, a sort of an interactive image capture tool. Use it in meetings where groups must have input on a given area. Works before a screen capture to help modify or highlight areas of importance on your screen.

Problems: missing an undo function -- if you make a mistake, you can only clear the screen and start over. A metered bar on the bar doesn't control transparency dynamically.

(Example of some over-image edit tools including arrow and draw tool.)

• Magnifier - Gives a closer look at small pixels on the screen, useful either for vision impairment or to see small pixels on very large screens. Integrated into many of the tools above. Other tools exist that do this, but PicPick's window can be enlarged and can zoomed in and out.

Simply put, PicPick has no competition. The only benefit that the out-of-date FS Capture has is a slightly cleaner drawing system that has a nice, friendly shadow on all of its drawing tools. Otherwise, this tool has swiftly replaced FS Capture in the Kitchen Sink.

Customization

• Space Saver Trick: Users can also delete all non English files from the "language" folder if drive space is an issue.
• Reset All Settings Back to Defaults - delete "picpick.ini"
  

Download

• PortableFreeware
  
• Official homepage

System Requirements: Windows 2000 / XP
Version: 1.8.1.0
Size: 1 meg (without non-English .ini files)
RAM Usage: 2.8 megs
License: Freeware (donate!)
Score: 10 of 10. The few bugs in the program and annoyances couldn't keep this software off the short list of oustanding Portable Freeware.
In Kitchen Sink Collection? Yes - will replace FS Capture in the next release as well as On-Screen Ruler.


Update: PortableFreeware user Yucca strongly disagrees with my 10 out of 10, pointing to issues discussed on this thread.

Edit: Further testing has found a few reasons FS Capture has yet to be replaced, including a delayed capture, capture options that don't lean on hotkeys, and demonstration tools. This would have brought the review probably down to a 9/10 but continued updates by an active developer may easily address these issues.

WinSplit Revolution Review

There's research on the productivity bonus of multiple monitors (estimated at 44%), but if you have a larger or wide-screen monitor, there are ways to leverage your screen real estate. Just dragging windows around can create a way to compare different information screens and more, but this process is tedious.

There's been a screen-sorting method in Windows for a long time where the user can right-click the taskbar and select "Tile Windows Vertically / Horizontally" (as below). However, windows never quite fit and always seem to overlap just a little bit. Resizing the windows in any format seems to constantly cause problems and right-clicking repeatedly becomes painful.

Window "pockets"

However, there's a better and much faster method to do this with windows that snap into predefined places. The excellent WinSplit does just that. Although there's supposed to be an interface system that does just that to be built into Windows 7, you can do it now with Windows XP and Vista.

You can move windows into different regions (left half, right half, lower quarter, upper quarter) while holding ctrl+alt and it will pop into place. If you scroll your mouse wheel during this process, it will rotate through several different available options. The smooth warmth of a clean window-snap isn't there yet but its more than good enough.

Problems

The only negative for this program is that most of the hotkey items require the number pad on standard keyboards, expecting that laptop users wouldn't be interested. However, many laptops have larger or wide-screens that can also use software like this (especially the note + window look below). Fortunately the ctrl+alt system described above is more than adequate and may be all you use anyway.

Another more minor concern for some users will be that, although there is a portable option during install, this program has not been accepted as truly portable by the PortableFreeware collection. See the forum on this topic.

• Download

Version: 9.02
Size: 4 megs
RAM Usage: 5.3 megs
License: Freeware
Score: 9 out of 10 - One of the reasons portable software exists and is so important. The minor flaws with key combinations don't prevent this from being absolutely essential.
In Kitchen Sink Collection: Waiting on acceptance to the portablefreeware collection.

Related:

• A somewhat rough video describing the program.
• Lifehacker and FreewareGenius have also reviewed this software.
• Another similar tool.
• Mac equivalents exist but either way behind or non-free.

SearchMyFiles Review

Find it for sure



Excellent file search software that leverages an extremely customizable find menu to help track down very specific information. Search using a long list of conditions:

• Contents (binary AND text)
• Size
• Multiple dates (last accessed, created, modified)
• File type (hidden, compressed, encrypted, read-only, etc.)
• Can fiind folders OR files

Often, if you know where your software ISN'T this software can save you lots of time and energy, especially with very large, dynamic databases.

These conditions make up the bulk of the program's interface but there is a "stop searching after ___ files" item at the bottom, which performs a great "parking brake"-type feature, preventing endless searching.

Non-Indexing

The program does not try to make an "index" or a breakdown of information included on a drive. This offers several advantages to this because "the quality of the index and search quality may be degraded due to the mixed content and improper word proximity" (wikipedia), a problem present in programs like the outstanding portable Everything software and non-portable DK Finder.

System Requirements

If you can run Windows 2000, you can run this software. Works with all versions of Windows after Win2K.

Download

• Portablefreeware's listing (recommended)
• Official Homepage

Version: 1.15
Size: 67 k
RAM Usage: 5.3 megs
License: Freeware
Score: 8 out of 10 - In testing, was able to find files other software wouldn't. Wish there were still more options to find files including an easy way to add drives and exempted folders. Also, may scare away non-technical people.
In Kitchen Sink Collection: Yes

See also: Lifehacker's comments

PDFTK Review

Control digital documents

In the continued effort to bring reduce paper usage with digital tools, ways to modify and rearrange digital documents are becoming increasingly important. Although the portable document format (PDF) is thought of as something you only use at the office, tools such as the Kindle are coming out that might also make this the book distribution format of choice. PDFTK is just such a program.

Although far from the smoothest software I've worked with, its packed with easy-to-use and very useful features. If you work with PDFs and don't have a lot of money for all the Adobe software out there, this program is indispensable. Even if you do, the password control system may make it required to have for your computer

Features (from the webpage):

• Collate - allows you to rearrange (reorder, delete, & duplicate) pages in a single document and/or merge pages from multiple PDF documents.
• Split - cut long documents up into pages (each page getting its own numbered PDF file)
• Insert - once you've split, you can add the new pages and coallate.
• Stamp - (a.k.a. watermark)
• Rotate
• Add or remove Password Protection

Unfortunately, the last update was over a year ago at the time of this writing but this software is still chock-full of useful items.

Download:

• PortableApp's version (recommended)
• Portablefreeware's listing and how to make portable (requires Universal Extractor)
• PDFTK (regular download) Homepage

Version: 3.5.3
Size: 2.7 megs
RAM Usage: 3.5 megs
License: GPL
Score: 8 out of 10 - May scare away non-technical people -- help file is fairly sparse but most of the controls are self-expanatory.
In Kitchen Sink Collection: Yes - I use it regularly

GPG4USB Review

[Too] simple PGP encryption

Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) has been an outstanding system for security. There are many, many applications for this great technology.

Unfortunately, leveraging this amazing tool has been difficult. Using Pretty Good Privacy for email and file protection should at this late stage be an easy: GPG was created to make a free version of the commercial PGP software, its been ported to almost every operating system, and its security over time has been very solid.

I've been begging for a simple, clean program that makes things ultra easy. Simply put, nobody will use anything else -- even my very security-conscious friends. GPG4USB could have been that program but unfortunately, it went so simple that it left out important features.

• Doesn't create or manage keys -- you need an external program for that. I had to use WinPT the author has a few other ideas to handle this but they may be too complex for some users.
  
• Text only - no file encryption.
  
• Only encrypts, doesn't "sign" messages -- sometimes its not necessary for a message to be private but it is necessary to confirm the identity came from who sent it. Signing does just that.
• Not fully stealth -- this issue is covered in the PortableFreeware Forums (1 and 2). This is only at install, however. After that, doesn't write any settings to anywhere but the program folder.

Hopefully the authors will continue work on really the only real effort I've seen in a while to make PGP simple, accessible, and clean. There's definitely a need for it and I don't think anyone else can or will.

Download GPG4USB

Version: 0.1.1
Size: 25.6 megs
RAM Usage: 10.4 megs
License: GPL (he might take donations)
Score: 6 out of 10 - For lack of alternatives, this is the best portable PGP tool. It does one thing and it does it well.
In Kitchen Sink Collection: No -- and because this isn't a good PGP intro tool, I'll probably leave it out.

Update: this program has continued development and has addressed many concerns in this article, especially regarding a basic key manager.

Making Digsby Stealth

Update: Digsby should be considered spyware and running it under some kind of protection, as described below, is the only way it should be run at all. Real shame the developers of this fine software didn't try to make money in other ways.

----

When portable chat software misbehaves

[image source]

One of the great things about portable software is that it doesn't write a bunch of garbage to your computer -- part of the reason I started this site. However, there is some software out there that claims to be portable, but isn't "stealth" portable, meaning it writes all sorts of information locally. The amazing IM tool "Digsby" has been reviewed elsewhere and its greatness at unifying your social world is well known. Although the software will behave portably, its not there yet. I had to find a way to use this software without the pain.

Unfortunately, the only way I could find to do this was with a a non-portable program, Sandboxie. There may be a way to make it work with the portable API Guard (which would be much more portable), but that's for another time.

Get Digsby stealth:

1. Download and install Sandboxie
2. Download Digsby -- get the version at the bottom of the page that mentions installing to a USB.
3. Right-click the Digsby installer and select "Run Sandboxed"
4. Go through the install sequence normally but save the install to the Desktop (you can move it if you want but it will affect the following steps)
   
5. Close Digsby or just don't select "Start Program Now"
   
6. Expand the folder list by clicking the "+" symbol next to the directires until you get to your desktop. Right click on Digsby and select "Recover to Same Folder"
7. Right click "Sandbox Deault" and select "Delete Contents"
8. Open the Digsby folder on your desktop (delete the uninstall.exe file if you like -- its useless)
9. Right click on the desktop and select "Create Shortcut"
   
10. Create a shortcut and put this in the "Target" feild: "C:\Program Files\Sandboxie\Start.exe" C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Desktop\Digsby\digsby.exe
11. Right click "Digsby" and select "Run Sandboxed"
12. In the "Start In" feild, put: "C:\Program Files\Sandboxie"
13. Now you have an icon on your desktop that will always run Digsby portably.
14. Done!

The only negative is that the program won't save the username and password. Almost all of the software's settings apart from the window-docking trick are saved on Digsby's servers so you can log on using their software anywhere and get the same experience. For extra privacy, delete all contents of the sandbox (see in step 7) whenever you close Digsby.

Other advantages of this system:

1. If it turns out there are security flaws with Digsby, Sandboxie will prevent a security compromise from harming your computer.
   
2. Not writing system settings to your registry means that, over time, your computer will run faster and cleaner. Sandboxie blocks registry writes.
3. Of course, its not just Digsby -- other programs can be "Sandboxed".
   

Users interested in the other capabilities of Sandboxie may wish to look through the explanation on the site for more details. The software itself is not very elegant but if you're willing to work with it, you can do quite a bit.