AeroDesktop is a free program that enables you to add transparency to menus, windows, start menu, and system tray on Windows XP and Vista. Very easy to use. You can easily set how much transparency you want for each object. You can also turn off the transparency for one object while turning it on for other objects. The other option lets you to automatically start the program with Windows. Download AeroDesktop from the developer's site.

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ExtractNow is a free program letting you to extract multiple rar files at once easily. Within a single press of a click, you can extract numerous rar files into your specified folder regardless of where the files are located, even if these archives are located in different folders. Moreover, you can optionally choose to integrate it with your Windows explorer so the archives can be extracted from the right-click menu while in Windows explorer as long as the archives are located in the same folder (if they are in different locations, you should drag and drop them into the main program window to be able to extract them at once).



Other features:

• Beside rar, the archive formats supported are zip, iso, bin, img, ima, imz, 7z, ace, jar, gz, lzh, lha, tar, sit
• Easy to use
• If the extraction has been completed, the files can be deleted
• Optionally display the program into the tray when it is minimized
• Optionally make it always on top

Visit the homepage to download Extractnow.

Source: How To Open RAR Files For Free

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I've been posting about free software here since this blog was first created a year ago and there have been quite a lot of software sites under my monitoring. I read some of them daily through feed and visit some others daily if there is no feed available. Today, I'll let you know where I get these software.

Here you are the sources to find free software:

My top 4 free software sites:

• Softpedia.com
Softpedia is a very fast updated software site. You can get many software updates every single day. To prove it, visit this page: win.softpedia.com. Make sure that you remember the first software appearing first on the list, then refresh the page after around five minutes. You will likely to find a new update.


• SnapFiles.com
SnapFiles makes you easy to search only freeware or shareware. Each has its own categorization so you can find what you are looking for relatively fast. There is a search function as well. However, its software list isn't as many as Softpedia and the updates come slower.


• FileForum.betanews.com
What I love the most about this one is its advanced search function. For example, I visit one of its specific category and use the search feature to find software that works only in certain OS like Windows XP or Mac OS X, licensed as freeware or shareware only, has a size of not less than 40 KB and not more than 40MB, has a good rating, and released in certain period.


• All4you.dk
It contains only free software. There is a newsletter that lets you to get daily or weekly updates.

Other software sites I read daily:

• Freeware-guide.com
• MajorGeeks.com
• Nonags.com
• New Bear Wear

Don't forget that you can get free software update in this blog, too :)

There are more in my list but it only fits to a collector. If you need only to find or get software, the 4 top software sites above are sufficient already.

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What is done by this free program called Rohos Mini Drive is actually creating a separate, hidden and encrypted partition on your USB flash drive. After installing this program into your system, you just need to direct it to the drive and it will create the partition.

The partition will not be displayed when you insert your flash drive. The only way to access this partition is by double-clicking the Rohos mini.exe in your flash drive which is created automatically in the process of partition creation, and insert your password. After typing the correct password, you can work with the non-encrypted and encrypted partition at once.

Interestingly, instead of using your keyboard to type the password, optionally you can use its built-in virtual keyboard to prevent any keylogger software taking a record on your password typing. Type your password and save your sensitive data into the partition. The data will be encrypted on-the-fly using the AES 256 bit algorithm. As to the partition, you can enlarge the size up to 1GB if you feel need to.



Other features:

• Autorun Folder. Saved program’s/file’s shortcut will automatically start/open up upon disk connection.
• It doesn’t require Administrator Privileges to open password protected USB drive partition on the guest computer.

Requirements:

- Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista
- USB 1.1/2.0 port
- USB flash drive or U3 Smart flash drive with 1 Mb or more free space

Download Rohos Mini Drive or go to the download page.

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With Vista Flip 3D Activator, activating the Vista Flip 3D is as easy as moving your cursor to a corner of the screen or simply pressing the middle button of your mouse. You can choose any corner you want like what you can see in the screenshot.

However, you need to install .NET Framework 3.5 to get it works. This program is free and can be downloaded from the developer's homepage.

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If you think the usual Windows procedure in installing fonts isn't efficient or even annoying, with ClickFont you can install fonts directly from the right-click menu. Easier and faster. Even if the fonts are located within a folder, you still can install it simply from the menu.



ClickFont is a GPL licensed software. That means it is completely free to download and use the application. It works with Windows NT / 2000 / XP and can be downloaded here.

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Google Chrome browser has attracted so many attentions and there are various opinions about it. For you who likes it, Carsten has done a great job by creating the portable version of this browser so you can carry it anywhere in your USB drive.

The portable version has been successfully tested on Windows SP3 and Windows Vista SP1 without any error occurred. There is no installation required. Just download and unzip it into a folder inside your USB drive to run it directly from the drive. Go to Carsten's site to download this portable Google Chrome.

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Have you ever curious about how fast your central processing unit (CPU) is? CPU Speed Professional is a free software dedicated to measure the speed of your Intel or AMD CPU. Just click the 'Test My Speed' button to start it. You can view the detail information of your system as well.

Beside its cool interface, another interesting feature is that it lets you to submit the result of the test to the CPU speed online worldwide ranking site to compare the speed with others. Click here to see the current ranking.

Download CPU Speed Professional

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Picasa 3 has just been launched with quite a lot improvements that enables you to view your images with its new image viewer, automatically save screen captures and webcam captures into the program, creating movies from your multimedia files, adding text or watermark to your images easily, print every photo caption, control your Picasa Web Albums settings through the corresponding folder or album in the program, and many others. Click here to get the details.

One of its new features that attract me the most is its image viewer. I just can't tell you how amazing it is. It has a sleek, innovative appearance that I have never seen in other free image viewers when I made a review of the top nine free image viewers. It displays my photos better than those viewers as well.

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The addictive Command & Conquer Red Alert can now be downloaded for free legally. Electronic Arts says that it is to celebrate the 13th anniversary of the Red Alert series, but seeing from how this game is put inside the promotional page of the new Red Alert 3 I believe that it is simply a promotion strategy using the old game as the teaser. However, who cares about it? The most important thing is, for you who loves free stuff, you can download the original Command & Conquer Red Alert for free.

From what I read, you don't need to buy Red Alert 3 to get this game for free. Just go to the page and download it from the links provided. There are two available versions:

Command & Conquer Red Alert Soviet - download size: 500MB
Command & Conquer Red Alert Allied - download size: 500MB



Both works only with Windows XP / 98 / Me / 95.

Thanks Ludwig.

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When it comes for us to remove our USB by clicking the icon on the tray, Windows often gets confused. We have closed all our portable programs launched from our USB and all open files, but Windows thinks there is still something running so that it cannot allow us to remove our USB. There are two ways to solve this problem.

First option is to make sure that your USB has been set up to optimize for quick removal. To do this simply double-click the USB icon. Once the Safely Remove Hardware window appears, find an option "Display device components" and check it. Right-click the USB device and choose "Properties". Find tab "Policies" and make sure the option optimize for quick removal is checked.

By enabling this quick removal, you can remove your USB directly without having to get through the safe removal procedure.

The second one is by using a free program like EjectUSB. You can use EjectUSB to eject your USB if WIndows refuses to do so. It will also remove all the flushing caches, closing windows, and cleaning up Registry entries and Recent Document shortcuts that point to your USB.

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One of the ways in saving your money for shopping at Amazon is to wait until the price falls down. With PriceDrop, you don't have to check the products regularly by visiting Amazon. It will alert you everytime a product's price drops through a pop-up notification window in your Firefox browser.



After you install this extension, it enables you to track prices of any product you choose from amazon. It can help you to get a refund from Amazon as well. All of your tracked poducts can be managed directly in Firefox window.

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