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5.2

JPEG data extractor

JPEGsnoop is a free image decoder that wrings every drop of data that can be extracted from JPEG images. It's compact and fully portable, so you can take it along with you on a USB drive or other memory device and run it from any compatible Windows machine without having to install it. It can open not just JPEGs but also AVI, DNG, PDF, and THM files, and it also extracts embedded JPEG files. As for the data it extracts, we didn't know that JPEGs contained so much information.

We extracted JPEGsnoop's compressed download and opened the … Read more

Powerful portable photo editor

We just love portable applications, which let you carry a wide range of useful tools around with you and run them on virtually any Windows PC without having to install them or modify the registry. PortableApps creates portable freeware versions of open source programs designed to be easy to save and run. We recently tried their PhotoFiltre Portable. It's a compact but full-featured digital image-retouching suite. Among its many capabilities are an Image Explorer browser, automatic batch processing, and the ability to import TWAIN data from a scanner or other device.

After we'd selected our installation language and … Read more

Free Mimosa for teachers

Mimosa is well known in the education community as a versatile scheduling and course-planning application that's used in schools and universities around the world, but it's also suitable for business, industry, nonprofits, and any place that can benefit from better scheduling and planning. Though the full package is a substantial purchase, Mimosa Small School Edition is freeware. It's fully functional but has some limitations, such as saving only 100 "codes" compared with the full package's 8,000 plus. However, that's more than enough to help smaller schools and institutions improve their scheduling and … Read more

Partition magician

MiniTool's Partition Wizard Home Edition is a free disk utility that adds powerful partition management capabilities to both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows installations. It can create, delete, resize, format, copy, convert, and hide partitions; change drive letters; convert dynamic disks back to basic disks; and perform critical tests and maintenance duties. It supports most disk types, including removable storage devices like flash drives and memory cards.

Partition Wizard's interface resembles recent Windows editions, with a familiar blue-toned navigation pane and color-delineated bar graphs for each disk partition. It opened with a detailed display of our system's disks … Read more

Audi sets R8 Spyder 5.2 Quattro price at $161,000

Tony Stark drove the 2011 R8 Spyder 5.2 Quattro supercar in "Iron Man 2," now you can too for a mere $161,000, Audi today announced. The first open-top Audi supercar, which has a top speed of 195 mph, will begin rolling into U.S. showrooms as soon as next month.

The R8 Spyder 5.2 Quattro differs from the classic Audi look--there are no signature sideblades on the Spyder. Another significant difference on the R8 Spyder is the use of dramatic Aluminum Optic vents on the new rear engine cover and aluminum a-pillars. Last year, CNET'… Read more

Task master

For some professionals, keeping track of what's going on in the workplace is as simple as using the calendar and to-do list in Microsoft Outlook. For others, there are numerous employees, clients, projects, tasks, and details that need to be managed. Easy Tracker 2009 Enterprise - Time & Billing Manager is a comprehensive project management tool that gives both employees and supervisors the tools they need to keep track of what needs to be done and the time spent doing it.

Easy Tracker is actually comprised of a suite of applications, including the Pro and Lite versions and a … Read more

Mount up

Personal computers have become mini entertainment centers, useful for listening to CDs, watching DVDs, playing games, and much more. Optical drives can get worn out with a lot of use, though, and CDs and DVDs are subject to wear and tear as well. A disc image is exactly what it sounds like: a virtual copy of a disc's contents that's stored on the computer, eliminating the need for physical media and the use of the optical drive. The average media player, however, can't handle disc images, and that's where Phantom CD comes in.

First, a word … Read more

Site saver

WebCopier Pro promises to speed up your Web browsing by downloading entire Web sites to your hard drive, freeing you from the sluggishness of your Internet connection. In this age of high-speed Internet, however, we're not sure how relevant this is. While it might be better than no Web access at all, we found it to be significantly slower than browsing a Web site with a cable Internet connection.

The program's interface is not the most intuitive we've ever seen, but it looks nice and isn't terribly difficult to figure out with a little effort. Downloading … Read more

Intuitive file converter

DVR-MS Converter is a basic program that allows users to convert DVR-MS files to MPEG2 files, which can then be burned to DVDs. Although the program works easily and quickly once everything is set up correctly, we first had to do some futzing with Windows Media Player in order to get the MPEG2 files to play. This really has nothing to do with DVR-MS Converter; first-time users of DVR-MS conversion software should be aware that this is a Windows Media Player issue and not a downfall of the program.

The program's interface is quite simple and intuitive, with large … Read more