free software

[Download] Internet Explorer 9 Release Candidate

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Internet Explorer 9

Microsoft has just released the release candidate version of the Internet Explorer 9 for Windows 7 and Windows Vista operating systems. The first public beta of Internet Explorer 9 was released in September 2010. So that was like nearly five months ago. Microsoft has stated that there were more than 2,000 changes incorporated since the release of IE9 beta. Here are the few new feature improvements in the Internet Explorer 9 release candidate.

>> Improved JavaScript Engine (Chakra) Performance

>> Dynamic GPU Usage

>> Lesser Power Consumption Levels

>> ‘Do Not Track’ feature

Other minor improvements include the increase of temporary internet files size from 50 MB to 250 MB.

Download IE9 RC:

Download the Internet Explorer 9 RC (Build 9.00.8080.16413) online setup (from the below links) which needs an active internet connection to download and install the browser on your Windows.

Windows 7 32-bit

Windows 7 64-bit

Windows Vista 32-bit

Windows Vista 64-bit

For more information on IE9 RC release, read this blog post on official IE9 blog.

[Download] Free Excel 2010 Ebook From Microsoft

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Microsoft has released a new eBook for Excel 2010 users who have upgraded from earlier versions like Excel 2003. Titled Rev Up to Excel 2010: Upgraders Guide to Excel 2010, the book is authored by Bill Jelen of MrExcel.com. This 250-page ebook covers every nook and corner of the latest Microsoft Excel 2010 software.

Excel 2010 ebook

The book is divided into 20 chapters.The first 11 chapters of the book deal with all the new changes in the Excel 2010 interface. Chapter 12 speaks about the new features and functions in Excel 2010. Chapters 13 through 20 are about data wrangling and business intelligence.

This book is a must and will be of great help particularly if you are upgrading from an earlier version of Excel to the latest Excel 2010.

Download Rev up to Excel 2010: Upgraders Guide to Excel ebook [16.2 MB]

Microsoft Download Manager [Downloads]

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Microsoft logo

There are enough number of download managers available already. But I have a reason to checkout this one, it is that this one is coming from Microsoft. Microsoft Download Manager does what it’s supposed to do: download files, managing multiple downloads etc.

This download manager has been specifically built to manage file downloads from Microsoft websites in a more reliable way.

You need to add the URL of the file to start the download:

Add a download in Microsoft Download ManagerMicrosoft Download manager completed download

Sometimes you may get errors like these while downloading files from non-Microsoft websites:

Microsoft Download Manager error

Overall, you may just use it if you are one of those who download a lot from Microsoft websites.Also note that download man

Download Microsoft Download Manager (MSDownloadManager.msi, 1.1 MB, direct link)

[Downloads] CD-DVD-BlueRay Recovery 1.0

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CD-DVD-BlueRay-Recovery

Till date CDs and DVDs are the most widely used media to store data (although USB flash drives are fast replacing them). If you want to keep some important data for a longer duration, we prefer them more than any other media types.

Although these optical disks are reliable, sometimes may get scratches and other types of damages, if not maintained and stored properly. This may lead to loss of the whole data stored on the particular disk.

If in some essential case, if you need to deal with a damaged optical media disk and need to recover the data stored on that particular CD or DVD or Blu-Ray in office, you can think of the free tool CD-DVD-BlueRay Recovery.

This software is designed specifically for Windows Operating System for recovering corrupted files on the CD/DVD/BlueRay. This is particularly useful for retrieving digital media files, documents and text files.

Download CD/DVD/BlueRay Recovery 1.0 (566 KB)

Mirror Link

Download Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection Manager

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Remote Desktop manager

Remote Desktop Connection Manager (RDCMan) is a small program from Microsoft intended to manage your multiple remote desktop connections effectively.

With RDCMan, you can easily manage several labs when you need access at regular intervals to each machine in the lab (ex: as in a data center).It  is more or less similar to the built-in MMC Remote Desktops snap-in, but RDCMan is more flexible.

Supported OS: Windows 7, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008, Windows Vista.

Download:

File Size: 789 KB

Download Link (RDCMan.msi)

Dell Inspiron 1546 Notebook Conexant D400 Modem Driver A00

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dell inspiron 1546

A driver update has been released to Conexant USB modem driver for Dell Inspiron 1546 Notebook users running x64 Windows 7 version.The latest update Conexant D400 external USB modem driver A00 (released on May 25,, 2010) is an initial release with WHQL and  is a highly recommended download for Dell Inspiron 1546 users worldwide.

Download the latest driver from the direct download link given below.

Download:

Direct download link (file size: 1.92 MB, file: Conexant_D400-External-USB-5_A00_R223361.exe)

Note:

Don’t forget to create a system restore point before installing the driver that you have downloaded, System restore point, if set, can be used to roll back the wrong driver installation that may happen sometimes.

Download Picasa Web Albums Without Installing Picasa Desktop Software

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Picasa logo

Are you using Picasa web albums to store your pictures online, but doesn’t have Picasa desktop software installed in your system to download the Web albums to your hard drive? Well, here is a solution available if you want to download entire picasa web album of any user (albums set to public only).

Thanks to Bradley Beach, for coming up with Picasa Webalbums Assistant, who has developed this simple Java program primary to help his dad who is a Mac user to download photos from Picasa web albums when Picasa was not available for Mac OS.I’ll help you out in using this tool to download picasa web albums of any user that are available publicly.

1. Download Picasa Webalbums Assistant 3.1 and extract the zip file [You will see PWA3.jar file and a lib folder].

2. Now you need to run the .jar file in Windows.Here I’m going to run it using command line.Go to Start Menu and type cmd in the search.Right click on the cmd.exe and click Run as administrator.

run cmd as administrator

3. Now in the command prompt, type java –jar followed by the file path, as shown in the following screenshot:

Running a .jar Java program in command line

Here G:\\Soft\\PWA0_3_1\PWA3.jar is where the .jar file is located in my system.

4. Just click Yes (accepting the terms)when you get the Welcome message of PWA as shown here:

PWA welcome message accept

5. Now you will the main PWA program running with basically three options.If you know the user ID of the Picasa Web albums, click Get User Public Albums and enter the user ID and click OK.

PWA screenshot

User ID in PWA

6. Now you will have a list of all the public albums of that particular user ID.Use CTRL + Select to many albums and click select to get the thumbnail previews.

Select an album in PWA

gathering information PWA screenshot

7. From the thumbnail previews generated, select the files that you want to download and click Download Selected at the bottom.

Thumbnail preview in PWA

8. Select the location to save the pictures and wait till the pictures have been downloaded completely.

Select Save Location in PWA

Downloading PWA Picasa web albums

That’s it, you have now downloaded the entire Picasa Web albums of the user without even installing Picasa desktop software in your system.

Tip: Close All Your Open Applications At Once In Windows

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Windows logo

Are you the one who extracts the most of the multitasking from your computer by simultaneously opening too many applications and switching back to one another.But when it comes to closing all application, it’s a bit difficult to close the each application one by one , isn’t it?

What about closing all the open application windows at once with a single click ? Yes, that’s what the tiny program “CloseAll” from ntwind has too offer.

Just download the latest version of CloseAll from the links given at the bottom of the post and extract it to the program files (C:\Program Files\) on your hard disk.For easier access drag the CloseAll.exe to your desktop or Quick Launch Bar pin to the taskbar in your Windows 7.

CloseAll drag to taskbar

Now just click on this shortcut to close all application windows that are currently open.You calso make use of the advanced option to exclude certain programs to be closed by CloseAll, by adding a exclusion list,

to add a simple exclusion list, go to the CloseAll shortcut properties and go to Shortcut tab, find Target under this tab.Add -x="app-to-exclude.exe": for example:

-x="explorer.exe|firefox.exe|msnmsgr.exe"

CloseAll properties

Click OK and save the settings.So now if you click CloseAll, all application windows except the Windows Explorer, Firefox and MSN Messenger will be closed.

Download CloseAll (Zip file, 36 KB)

WSUS Offline Update: Update Your Windows And Office Offline

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Windows Update

It’s very much essential to keep your Windows OS up-to-date when it comes to securing your OS from security threats which may cause damage to your private data.Microsoft knows the importance of the same, hence release Windows update patches more often.You need to be connected to the internet to download these updates from Microsoft.

But what about those innumerable number of people who still can’t manage to get an internet connection for them? Microsoft used to offer AutoPatcher,unfortunately this service was discontinued from 2007.Luckily there are some third party software available on the internet which provide the similar offline update facility, the one which I’m going to talk about is WSUS Offline Update.

WSUS Offline Update:

WSUS Offline Update generator

WSUS Offline Update lets you download the patches and updates for Windows and MS Office without requiring an active internet connection on the target computer.All that you need to do is go to your friend’s computer which is having an internet connection, install this WSUS Offline Update, download the Windows updates on an USB drive (or some other removable media) and transfer them to your machine and install them using WSUS Offline Update.

Features:

1. WSUS Offline Update supports: Windows XP, Windows Vista & Windows 7.

2. Supports MS Office 2003 & 2007 versions.

3.You can create an ISO of the updates.

4. Supports copying updates directly to USB

Download:

You can visit the Homepage of the WSUS developers or follow this direct link to download the WSUS Offline Update version 6.51

Schedule Shutdown Based On Advanced Options With Shutdown Timer

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Shutdown Timer For Windows:

Many a times, you may need to keep your computer on, until it completes its task like downloading a movie or ripping an entire DVD for instance, these tasks take a considerable amount of time (and considerable amount of CPU usage in some cases), so much so that you just can’t wait until the task gets completed.This where Shutdown scheduler programs will help you.

Even though there are quite a number of shutdown scheduler programs available on the internet for download, the one which I’m talking about is more than just a scheduler.Shutdown Timer, as the name speaks out, is basically a shutdown scheduler for windows.

Shutdown_timer_by_time

But unlike other schedulers which will only offer you to schedule your shutdown to a predefined time, Shutdown timer offers to schedule your computer’s shutdown based on a wide variety of scenarios.Bundled with a neat and clean UI, Shutdown timer allows you scheduler your computer’s shutdown based CPU memory usage limit or CPU temperature threshold or on network traffic basis besides scheduling your shutdown on a pre-defined date and time.The program continuously monitors your CPU usage and once it reaches the thresholds defined (temperature or memory usage), it will trigger the shutdown event.Scroll down to the bottom for the download links.

Shutdown timer by CPU usage and temperature

Shutdown timer by memory

Shutdown timer by network traffic

Download Links:

Shutdown Timer (Windows 32-bit)

Shutdown timer (Windows 64-bit)

Related: Read how to create desktop shutdown shortcut