Windows Software

Silent and invisible, some malware sneaks up on you to quietly wreak havoc on your system resources and possibly mine your files for personal, bank account-cracking information. Shudder.

Other types of Trojans more helpfully announce their presence by lobbing pop-ups, disabling your Start menu, or in Matthew's case, playing puppet master with your browser.

Matthew has a few ideas for wresting back control. Find out which he tried, which he should he have tried, and which ultimately worked in this week's Spyware Horror Story, "Browsers behaving badly".

When Winamp 5.3 came out a year ago, it impressed many who had written it off, although that may have been simply because it hadn't died a quiet death of obsolescence. Long-needed steps to improve the old-school media player were implemented, with support for AAC encoding, CD burning, and a robust file-management system.

Thirteen months on, Winamp 5.5 ups the ante again with strong support for portable devices, including iPods, the ability to sync non-DRMed files to your PC from your device, an optional new interface layout, a built-in browser for media discovery, and other nifty tricks.

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When you need to paste text--and just plain text--without any fonts, pictures, or style markers, what do you do? Microsoft Word users might employ the Paste Special feature in the Edit menu. And if you're not using Word? Then you might copy the source text and paste it into Notepad, TextPad, or another top-rated text editor. Then you would copy that unformatted text and paste it to the destination document.

What bother. PureText is a scrappy clipboard app that cuts out the busy work. It assigns a hot key combination to facilitate format-free pasting from the source to the destination without you ever needing to launch an additional app or detour to Word's Edit menu. Holding down the Windows key while pressing "V" is the default setup, but users can choose from a number of other hot key options. Note though, the ALT key isn't one of them.… Read more

Over the weekend, I found myself on a digital precipice. My laptop's hard drive had maxed out its 90GB, there were less than 5 to go. My external hard drive, The Tank, was about to get tanked: Out of the 250GB it could hold, I was down to less than 4. I still needed to upload a bunch of RAW format photos, with each image closing in on 10MB. What to do?

I remembered a recent article we ran about good system utilities and identifying where your precious gigabytes are going. Sure enough, WinDirStat came up. I was hoping that there was some unknown cache taking up all my space, or at least enough to be able to save without fear of outrunning the hard drive's limits.

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No matter what kind of computer you're running--a brand new dual-core Alienware model or your aunt's old Dell laptop--it's hard to gauge the performance of your machine by factory specs alone. Especially with all the versions of Windows PCs out there using any number of hardware configurations; it's tough to really know how your computer measures up to today's fastest systems.

Finding complete system specs is especially important to gamers of course, but they're not alone in their need for system speed. Today's release of the graphics-intensive specs for Crytek's Crysis (from Crave, CNET's gadget blog) surely has many gamers praying their computers have what it takes to really bring the long-awaited game to life. But even if you're not a gamer, you might want to know, for example, whether your computer can handle the latest image- or video-editing software. Fortunately, you can find out in advance using a good benchmarking app. This category of software runs several diagnostic tests which check everything from processor speed and drive efficiency to the output of your graphics and sound cards.… Read more

Like most of us who spend considerable time in the Web 2.0 universe, I love to embed content on blogs and social-networking home pages. YouTube is loaded with countless hours of entertaining videos, but it wouldn't be nearly as popular without the ability to embed those wacky movies all over the Web. Now, a new online service called Yoink'd hopes to capitalize on the embedded-video craze by providing a free method of compiling, presenting, and sharing Web videos with your friends.

Yoink'd is essentially an online media player that uses AJAX and DHTML to search for, collect, and share online video files. It is an entirely self-contained, Web-based application. All of your preferences and playlists are saved within the Yoink'd Mediabox itself. There's no profile page or settings page you have to visit each time you want to add videos or change your preferences. To me, that's the beauty of Yoink'd. The entire application lives in the embeddable widget. Once you pop it on your blog, you'll never need to visit the Yoink'd site again.… Read more

I love my Archos Gmini 220. It doesn't play movies, make phone calls, or take snapshots, but it provides me 20GB of digital music and files that I can take anywhere and transfer to any computer. It also only cost me $150 two years ago and is still going strong (with the help of one critical rubber band). It's also very solid as a lo-fi recording device for live shows.

While I don't need a portable music player that massages my back or sorts my laundry, I do need one that can shuffle my tracks randomly. Unfortunately, … Read more

You likely use iTunes (download it for Windows or Mac OS X) to synchronize your music and movies from your PC to your iPod, but there's so much more you can do with Apple's powerful jukebox software. Digital-music master Molly Wood offers some excellent insider tips on using iTunes, including how to equalize tracks and create cool CD covers.

If programs were people, the sleeker, trimmer-looking Camtasia Studio 5 would be the guy or gal who, after emerging from a months-long stint with a personal trainer, has now stretched out on the sand to enjoy the response.

Behind the scenes, TechSmith's Camtasia team has been pumping serious iron into a handful of new features for each of Camtasia's major recording, editing, producing, and playback functionalities. The final result is a more robust screen recording and producing app that's gained significant muscle without added fat. While there are still some flaws to work out, Camtasia Studio 5 offers streamlined performance for the same price as its predecessor--$299 new; $149 to upgrade.

Here's a look at the new and enhanced features in order of appearance.… Read more