This program claims itself to be all-in-one tool for video conversion as it supports nearly all available video types such as DivX, XviD, MOV, rm, rmvb, MPEG, VOB, DVD, WMV, AVI to MPEG-I, MPEG-I, DVD NTSC , DVD PAL, Flash for Video (FLV) , AVI Video and Customized WMV movie formats. It even allows you to do batch conversion if needed. I assume that's why this program is named Any Video Converter Free.



The conversion process involves only three steps from selecting and adding your video files, choose the output files and, if necessary, configure some options like changing video size, bitrate, framerate, aspect, etc., and, finally, start the encoding task. There is a preview window by which you can play each file to ensure that they are the right ones to convert.

The easy applies to the batch conversion as well where various video formats can be selected, gathered in one window, to be converted into one format and saved into your pre-defined folder within one click.

OS supported: Windows

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PageDefrag is simply a free program to defrag your paging files and registry hives that most standard defragmenter fail to. It shows you how much the files and hives are fragmented after the scanning gets completed to let you decide what to do for next, whether it is to defrag all at the next boot or even at every boot, or just leave them if the fragmented size doesn't so high and you don't notice any degradation in your Windows system performance.



It moves furthermore by defrag the event log data and Windows 2000/XP hibernation as well. The scan runs automatically every time you run the program and shows up the result within seconds. Use it as a complimentary of your current defragmentation software to achieve the maximum defragmentation for a much better system performance.

OS supported: Windows NT 4.0 / 2000 / XP / Server 2003

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Dirkey lets you to bookmark your frequently opened folders as many as needed, and apply different hotkeys for 10 folders. You can launch the bookmarked folder not only from Windows explorer, but also inside the Common Open/Save File dialog, Browse For Folder dialog, MS Office 95 - 2003 File dialog, MyComputer, and Visual Studio .NET File dialog.

To associate a folder with a hotkey, you can use Ctrl+Alt+0 up to Ctrl+Alt+9. For example, choose a folder in Open/Save Dialog or Windows explorer and press Ctrl+Alt+2. Later on, you can launch this folder simply by pressing Ctrl+2 (no need to include the Alt anymore) in Open/Save As Dialog. But in Windows explorer you should press Ctrl+Shift+2.

Ability to apply a shortcut key to a folder is definitely the fastest way to open the folders we are used to work with though you undeniably have to remember which hotkeys open which folders. Besides, It uses only a tiny amount of memory, resources and disk space.

OS supported: Windows 98 / ME / NT4(SP4+) / 2000 / XP
License: Freeware

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Are you concerned with the privacy of your computer? What you may not know before is that a privacy risk can be caused by the default Windows setting itself. This small, free program called XP-AntiSpy lets you to disable those features that can possibly put you into danger in an easy way. Some of the Windows built-in features can increase system performance as well if disabled.



Every time you hover your mouse cursor over a feature, a brief explanation of its function will be displayed to prevent you disabling the features you still need.

What features can you disable with XP-AntiSpy? Check some of them below.

• disable automatic update
• uninstal windows media player and windows messenger
• disable error reports
• stop crawling the network at system start if your computer doesn't connect to any network
• prevent media player from automatically downloading any needed codec from the internet
• turning off the remote desktop support
• block access to registry
• disable autoplay when a cd is inserted
• history of recent files opened can be automatically cleaned every time you shut down computer
• block access to ActiveX control
• and many more...

Don't want to instal anything? Then use its portable version.

OS supported: Windows XP/Vista
License: Freeware

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Some programs like multimedia players still remain in autoplay list when you load a CD or DVD into the drive even though they have actually been removed. Those who are familiar with Windows registry might be able to delete the corrupted entries without the presence of a third-party software, but some of you might find it uncomfortable to do such manual tweaking and prefer to choose the instant solution.



AutoPlay Repair is a free program that, like the developer said, purposely designed to easily delete the obsolete handlers within the autoplay list. And now it can be already used to completely manage the list, whether you want to delete, add, or modify, it's all up to you.

What even more is that it allows you to create backup of your current autoplay setting, and it has a portable version so you won't have to install it. The operation is also very easy.

OS supported: Windows XP
License: Freeware
Additional Requirement: Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 or higher

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No need to use iTunes to view, play, copy, and organize your iPod contents. Thanks to Floola for this. Floola is a free program that needs no installation working on Windows (Vista is already supported), Mac OS X, and Linux. You can do many things with your iPod stuff with it. Creating playlist, scan and find duplicated and lost songs, convert incompatible audio and video format, make a list of your iPod content, download myspace and youtube videos simply by typing the page url, lyrics support, and more.

OS supported: Windows 98 or higher, Mac OS X, Linux
License: Freeware

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SpeQ is a free application created specifically for you to do simple as well as advanced mathematical calculations that includes many features.



Its simple design, well-organized user interface, along with its detailed help documentation that will guide you to be familiar with the program make it easy to use despite the bunch of features it offers.

SpeQ has a portable version that allows you to have it with you all the time. Its size is small as well as the system resources it consumes.

OS supported: Windows 95, 98, ME, 2000, NT, XP or Vista
License: Freeware

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Juice is a free podcast receiver that works on multi-platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux). The main thing it offers you is the ability to choose any audio files you like from the internet and download them automatically at the time you specify, which makes it a very practical solution to play the music whenever you want to instead of only waiting and listening to the music at its original scheduled time.

Juice is easy to use. It is rather like set it and forget it. All you have to do is make a directory to save the files downloaded into your computer, pick the podcasts you want, configure the schedule to be able to always download new files automatically from the sources, that's it. If you don't like the automatic way, it can be manually controlled. Every download process can run in the background.

There is no need for you to have iPod to use it.

OS supported: Windows, Mac, Linux
License: Free under GPL license

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Save-It is a free program letting you to easily backup important files and update the backup whenever you want to. It doesn't offer any automatic backup feature, but the simplicity it has allows a straight-forward way for executing a routine simple backup every time your files have minor or major changes.



It works by first defining a list of folders in which the files you want to backup are located within, and then selecting a drive to automatically create a destination folder. This list is called as source which you can give a name. When you create a list, actually you create a folder to place certain file backup. A list can consist of several folders. This means it is possible for you to backup all the files inside many folders at once into one place.

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All Firefox menu options within the menu bar are represented by text only. CuteMenus will add new icons for them, and also new icons for other seven applications: Thunderbird, SeaMonkey, NVU, eMusic Remote, Flock, Sunbird, and Netscape.

How does it look like?



It comes with other configurations as well like the possibility to replace the menu names with icons completely.

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Another great theme from DeviantArt. In my opinion this theme is minimalist yet giving a pleasant design particularly in how it modifies the graphical interface of the toolbar area in all applications using Windows built-in toolbar. I especially like how it beautifies the Windows explorer's look. However, the picture area in the Start menu is gone replaced by text only.

The funny thing is that though for me this theme looks cool and is one of my favorites, it is a little hard to find a good wallpaper from my wallpaper collection that matches the theme.

Link download of Black Messa

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PDF Creator is a free and open source software allowing you to convert your documents into PDF, Postscript, Encapsulated Postscript, or images (PNG, JPEG, BMP, PCX, TIFF) accompanied with some abilities like optimizing the conversion result, applying some protections on the file created, combining several documents into a single file, and many more.



The conversion can be executed either by add or drag-drop a document to the main window, print it directly from within any program that uses Windows printers, command line, or simply by using the right-click option. The program pops up a window where you can give unique identities on the document such as name and keyword, email it instantly as an attachment after the conversion is finished, or accessing the configuration menu to apply some specific settings.

It is free for both personal and commercial use

OS supported: Windows

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There are a lot of free color picker programs out there, but so far this one still my most favorite program to grab color codes on screen. The outstanding feature of it is that you can create your own palette as many as you like. Let's say you're grabbing color codes of a photo called "Family On Vacation 2". You can simply make a profile with the same exact name containing all the color codes you capture from the photo.

The most benefit of this custom palette capability is that you are possible to know instantly from where the colors are taken, and someday you can take a look at the sources again as a sort of reference to see how the colors are perfectly composed together. Keep in mind, however, that you only have up to 16 color boxes for each palette you create.

In case the colors you pick are for website design purpose, they can be changed to be the nearest web safe colors. And if you aren't satisfied with a color, there are multiple ways to do some mixing like by using the honeycomb of hexagonal shapes, rainbow or hue based mixer, individual color sliders, or experimenting with the code numbers themselves directly.

As you can see from the screenshot, the main window of this app, which is called ColorPic, is separated into different sections. To maximize its usage effectiveness and efficiency, each section can be hidden from display simply by pressing the tiny "x" buttons.

To start it, select an empty box of a palette, and press Ctrl+G to capture a color. If you want to delete the color you've taken, just select the box and press Ctrl+G again.

Up to now, I've never seen other similar free programs that allow you to make custom palette like what it does. This great feature, accompanied with its ease of use, simplicity, elegant look, small size, and portability, has won my heart over and over again to keep using it all the time.

OS supported: Windows 95/98/NT/2000/Me/XP
License: Free

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While there are other smaller PDF Readers that can load PDF file faster, Adobe Reader is still used by some people for some reason. Lacking of some features needed, or an occurred problem when opening certain PDF documents, are just the reasons among any other possible reasons. If you happen in any situation that forces you to back using the Adobe Reader, try to use this free program to help increasing the loading speed.



Adobe Reader Speed-Up offers multiple ways of the acceleration. In the Tweaks section, for example, you can disable several settings such as killing the display of the little advert located on the top right of the Reader window, disable the splash screen, and prevent automatic update. The other way, which is the main function of this program, is that it allows you to disable the plugins.

The plugins can be manually disabled just by checking the appropriate boxes. It provides you information about each plugin as well to help you deciding whether it is necessary or not and to know whether there is any dependency among each other or not. There are also several quick modes where you can apply some plugins arrangement in just one click.

All in all, this is a big help for anyone that has to use Adobe Reader for some reading purpose. And it will probably provide a greater help if on the next updated version it lets the user to save settings under different profiles. This way the user can make different profiles for different reading tasks, and activating the currently needed setting in one click only. Unfortunately, there is no update at all since 9th December 2006.

Installation: Not required
OS supported: Windows 2000/2003/9x/XP
License: Free

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Wanna see how fast you can type? Why? Just to satisfy your curiosity, or you want to improve your typing skill?

Maxtype Lite Typing Tutor
I have found this software a long time ago, but yet haven't been able to discover another better. Just to remind you, it's completely free. Use it if you want to have a comprehensive typing statistic and report, and if you want to learn or improving your typing skill to the next level.

How does it help you?
# The typewriter interface
The most useful part from it for a beginner is the virtual hands. It helps a lot in terms of fingers placement. If you're supposed to type "c", then the left virtual hand marks its middle finger with a mini red circle, telling you that it is the best finger to type it.

As for the most of the other parts, basically they serve as a real-time statistic. My suggestion is don't bother yourself with them as you will be able to see it later on the report section after you finish the typing.

# The typing mode

It has two of them: typing test and extreme. The first is made to help a beginner learning to type and for all user levels to produce reports and diplomas. While the second is to compete in speed against your own record.

The extreme mode requires you to already have completed at least one typing task. This typing task's record will be used as your opponent.

Need more challenge? The replay speed of your opponent's typing can be doubled so you'll have to type faster to come out as the winner.

Some other features you may want to know

• Keyboard layout supported: US QWERTY, DVORAK, AZERTY, Russian.
• Ability to create multiple accounts with separate configurable settings.
• Typing speed unit can be changed to CPM (characters/min), CPS (characters/sec), or WPM (words/min).
• It has some built-in training materials, but you can create your own. Each of the provided material has its own words complexity, you can even choose to learn typing codes of some programming languages such as Perl, Java, Pascal, Assembler.
• All your completed typing are recorded and archived
• The report includes your typing speed, accuracy, error amount, and some other details.
• Ability to replay your finished typing-process.

All in all...
It does have some notable limitations like the lack of the ability to compare the reports side by side, the text dialog box can't be displayed in full-screen, and some tiny errors when I chose one of my records to compete with in extreme mode.

But to gain the expertise of typing fast without looking at the keyboard... this is the free tool I'd recommend others to use--at least until I discover a better one.

By the way, you can also see the diploma of mine produced by Maxtype Lite.



OS supported:
License: Freeware
Version reviewed: 1.6.22

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Windows Explorer only supports thumbnail preview for several image formats by default such as JPG, BMP, GIF, and some others. This answers the question of why some image types like PSD and PNG can't be previewed in thumbnail mode even though you can view them in Windows default image viewer. This is where Thumbview plays the role.

It simply add other 19 image formats to Windows explorer. Once installed, you'll be able to view them in thumbnail mode without restarting Windows. An informational tooltip can also be seen if you hover your mouse over each image.

The developer provides two versions which both can be downloaded for free: ThumbView and ThumbView Lite. The main difference is that the ThumbView is created for programmer, and the another is for normal user who just want to automatically display in thumbnail the 19 image formats unsupported natively by Windows explorer.

The images that are supported by this program: .cut, .dcx, .dds, .mdl, .mng, .pcd, .pcx, .pic, .pix, .png, .pnm/.pbm/.pgm/.ppm, .psd/.pdd, .psp, .pxr, .sgi/.rgb, .tga/.vda/.icb/.vst, .tif/.tiff, .wal, .xpm.

OS supported: Windows XP/2003/2000, but may or may not work on Windows Vista
License: GPL (Free) for both versions
Version reviewed: Thumbview Lite 1.0

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Every image icon usually depends on the associated image viewer. This means that all image icons are only represented by one icon. When you change the association to another image viewer, the icon will usually change accordingly.



In this case, Xentient Thumbnails allows you to cut off the dependence. It will automatically replace the standard image icon with the image thumbnail. In other words, if you have an image of , let's say, Lindsay Lohan, this software will make the Lindsay Lohan image thumbnail as the icon face. So, each image in your disk will have a unique icon.

Here are the things it does:

• After the installation is finished, open your folders which contain images. You will see that the icon of each image is replaced by the actual image thumbnail no matter your view type whether it is in tiles, icons, list or details view.
• This program adds its configuration panel into the Control Panel, which offers 3 options: to enable/disable it generating thumbnails, to control the size of the thumbnail's cache, and to delete the cache for the whole thumbnails.
• It supports JPG, JPE, JPEG, JP2, J2K, GIF, PNG, BMP, WBMP, EMF, WMF, PCX, PBM, PGM, PNM, PPM, RAS, TIF, TIFF, and TGA.

Xentient Thumbnails does exactly as it promises, and I like it. I like how my image icons look like, and the most important is that I like how each of my image and its dimension information are side by side in the tiles mode.

OS supported: Windows 98/98SE/ME/2000/XP
License: Freeware

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Recuva is a small-size freeware for Windows that can recover your lost data from both fixed and removable disks. The developer even claims that the data still can be recovered even if they've been deleted by bugs, crashes and viruses.

The good things

• The user interface design is minimalist and elegant, producing a simplicity but professional sense. Easy to use.
• The recovery ran relatively fast when I tested it. On my 7.81GB partition it could bring back around 51.712 files within approximately 7.9 minutes. It ran well, too, on a removable disk of mine.
• You are given information about the state of each file, accompanied with some other information such as the creation and last modification time. This info is useful to figure out whether a file is fully or partially recoverable.

Other features you might want to know

• You can optionally choose to display files found in hidden system folders, recover also the folder structures of the deleted, and display zero byte files.
• The information given include the header info, which I think only suitable for the advanced users to have more specific info on the files.

What I wish from this software
# File-type-based filter

The most feature I want it to be added is the capability of files filtering so the users can freely decide what kind of file types to be recovered. Without the presence of a filter, the user is forced to do a complete file recovery, which I'm sure often give more than what is needed.

Imagine you have to scan a 10GB partition resulting in thousand restored files, while actually you only need a few tens of them. Somewhat inefficient use, isn't it?

Fortunately, there is a little help provided by the search box. With it you can easily find and show only the specific files of your target. Though it cannot solve the inefficient scanning problem, it can help you a lot in displaying only the files you want to be restored.

# File-condition-based filter

Among the scan result I found some files were marked as unrecoverable, but they were kept displayed. I'm not an expert in this recovery field, so I don't know whether this is useful or not for a recovery specialist. But for a general user who just want to have their files back this may look like somewhat misleading result.

For example, on the test I got around 51.712 files. Actually, the number of the recoverables were less than that.

It would be great, then, if the developer provides a way to sort the files based on their conditions.

All in all...
I recommend you to use it immediately whenever you lose your important data. This is a very handy tool to be kept all the time. In case you don't know yet, Recuva comes from the same developer who creates the popular CCleaner.

Website : Recuva
Version reviewed: 1.09.194
OS supported: Windows 2000/XP
License: Free for commercial and personal use
Download link: Recuva

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It is great to have a built-in spell checker within your word processor or text editor program, but unfortunately not all have it. I myself use Keynote (highly recommended) all the time, occasionally WordPad or Notepad, to create posts for my blog and to write long emails. At the current version I'm using (1.6.5), Keynote doesn't have the checker. So this tinySpell helps me a lot to monitor any misspelled word and correct it instantly when I'm typing.

How does it help you?
Every time you incorrectly type a word, it immediately sounds a beep error warning. Then you can replace the word manually, or press the hotkey to open up the list of replacement words to choose the most appropriate one and hit Enter to replace. If the most top word isn't the right one, easily pick and click another with your mouse.

If a word doesn't recognized by the built-in dictionary, you can add it so the app won't beep anymore in the future when the word is typed.

Can it check and replace more than one word at once?
You can scan a whole document, or a list of words, by copying it to the clipboard. Press Ctrl+C and tinySpell will beep when any misspelled word is found. Left-click the program's icon in the tray or hit the hotkey to display the incorrect words one by one.

The bad is that here you can't click any of the suggested words; you have to do the replacement manually. And after you do it, the same word--that has been corrected by hand--is still displayed on the list. The only way to go the next found word is to select the "ignore" option.

Other features you may want to know

• Hotkey is available and customizable for enabling/disabling the beep and the program itself, and to display the list of the replacement words.
• The beep sound can also be personally customized.
• On the developer's page it is stated that the built-in dictionary has more than 110,000 words.

All in all...

For me, this is a great program to fill the lack of the built-in spell checker of a word processor. It saves my time a lot as I can immediately correct the misspelled. Before using tinySpell, I had to scan and re-scan each of my finished document for any mistakenly typed words. Highly recommended.

OS supported: Windows
Version reviewed: 1.6.010
Memory used: around 240KB
Download link: tinySpell

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Xinorbis scans folders and/or drives to analyze how they occupy your disk space and exposes the result in chart and text. To get more detail information, several display options along with the comparison feature are ready to use.

The main thing to note from this freeware is that instead of displaying the files themselves in the scan result, it shows them in several groups. For example, doc and txt are grouped within "office", while zip and rar are arranged into "compressed" section. There are several groups available by default, but you can also add some custom groups. The extension included for each group can be freely deleted or added.



The scan speed itself was good for the 5.13GB partition of mine with not so many files, but it took a few minutes to get completed when scanning the 7.81GB partition with more than 7000 folders containing extremely huge small-size files. In other words, the speed depends on how many files are kept within the drive, not on the size of the files.

The scan result can be saved in several formats such as html or xml document as well.

You don't have to open the main window to analyze a folder since Xinorbis integrates itself with Windows explorer right-click menu. Every time you right-click a folder, a command says "Examine this with Xinorbis3" appears.

All in all...

Since files are categorized in groups, the only way to find out the actual large files is from the "Top 50" display option. This view enables you to quickly find the top 50 largest and the top 50 smallest files. From this point, I can conclude that Xinorbis is perfect only when you want to check out what file types are actually consuming the most of your disk capacity, or if you want to view the files structure based on the file types.

In short, Xinorbis can provide a quick answer to a question like, "is it 'graphic' or 'multimedia' files that are responsible for the large use of my disk space?" or "Which folder has the largest file size?"

OS supported: Windows 98/ME/2000/XP/Vista
Version reviewed: 3.4.2
Download link: Xinorbis

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How to archive emails to removable disks like CD or DVD? This question probably arose often when someone needs to save important messages from multiple email applications into one single container. And this is the purpose of why a free software like MailStore Home is made.



MailStore Home lets you to do the backup easily both to your hard disk and external drive, and you can save email messages as many as you want together with the attachments. What even better is that it also has an integrated CD/DVD burner software.

All messages saved can be previewed in MailStore, which is equipped with a fast search functionality so that you can find one that you need quickly. You can also use the advanced criteria for a better search result. All emails are saved MIME-compatible, and can be restored safely whenever you want.

OS supported: Windows

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Easy Cleaner offers easy ways to wipe out all unnecessary files safely. It bundles a bunch of eraser utilities in one place, which most can be executed with only a single click. Once you install this program, you can choose to clean the junk files from your drives, sweep registry trashes, find duplicate files, scan and delete broken shortcut, or clear history, cookies, and most recently used files.



Easy Cleaner also provides tool to check your disk space usage to help you locate which files that actually occupy the most space. Another tool lets you to uninstall programs and produce a list of the whole installed applications within your system.

In case you experience a problem with your system after fixing your registry, you can restore the deleted item back to the location using the Undo facility. By default it saves undo files up to ten. To increase the number you should go to its option panel.

OS supported: Windows 95/98/ME/NT 3.51 (or newer)/2000/XP

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DriverMax is a free program helping you to deal with Windows drivers. The most benefit you can get from such a program like this is that you can have all drivers under your control in one place. You can display the whole installed drivers within your system, backup all or only the selected ones, reinstall them without having to search your original driver CDs, and you can print a complete report of the driver list. All can be executed only in a very few clicks.



On its main window, a list of commands are presented. If you click on 'export drivers' command, for example, DriverMax will scan the drivers at once and display the list of all afterwards. It is very easy to run all the commands even for an average computer user.

Other things to be noted from this software:

• the drivers can be selected by manual selection or applying some available filters
• all or only selected drivers can be exported to a folder of your choice
• to reduce the backup size, an option is available for you to compress it in a single zip file
• it runs relatively fast
• free registration is required to continue its use after 30 days

OS supported: Windows XP / Vista / 2003 (all service packs)
Download link: DriverMax

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Imagine you have to select the most perfect fonts to use for a design project. Or, imagine you have to view certain fonts, each in different sizes, to find out how they look like in various sizes. What will you do? Open up your favorite text editor, type some phrases, then change the fonts and sizes one by one? Or go to your font folder in the control panel and click one after another to display each?



The real values of this software, Cfont Pro, is that it lets you to add, delete, backup, view, and compare fonts in one place. Its many features makes you possible to do almost anything with fonts. You can even know who designs and the license of each of the fonts, and some other additional related information.

I myself like the fact that I can preview all installed fonts at once with text, size, and color of my choice. Or, preview only my favorite fonts for a more specific comparation.

With all of its capabilities, Cfont Pro is eventually also helpful for you to reduce the size of installed fonts in your system. Since you can display the whole fonts installed much easier than the usual way, you will know which should be uninstalled and which should stay in a quick glance. What is more, you can preview fonts from external drive storage to help you making decision of whether to install the fonts or not.

OS supported: Windows NT / 2000 / XP / Server 2003 / Vista
Download link: Cfont Pro

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