exact

Exact Duplicate Finder finds and removes duplicates on the go

Duplicate file finders were critical back in the pre-gigabyte era, but in some ways, today's terabyte-capacity drives make the problem just as bad. Not for space reasons, obviously, but because duplicates clog up your file system with redundant data that your computer still has to process. Duplicate files can make your searches take longer and return confusing or contradictory results. Enough duplicates together can even cause your system to run more slowly. And if you boot from a solid-state drive (SSD), particularly a smaller one, you're probably just as concerned about duplicates as users were back when hard … Read more

How to rip high-quality MP3s in Windows without iTunes

iTunes is a convenient way to rip CDs into compressed audio files in Windows, but it certainly isn't the only way. LAME is an open-source encoder and is considered one of the best, if not the best, MP3 encoders available. It can be used with a free CD-ripping program called Exact Audio Copy (EAC) to create high-quality MP3s. Here's how:

Installation

Step 1: Download the Windows executable of LAME to a folder on your PC and unzip it.

Step 2: Download and install Exact Audio Copy. You'll need to have an audio CD in your optical drive … Read more

Atomic clock tool

Chronos Atomic Clock Synchronizer is a small utility that synchronizes your Windows system's internal clock with online time servers that use ultra-accurate atomic clocks. Yes, Windows already does that; Chronos adds flexibility and displays more information, such as latency and correction in fractions of a second. Best of all, you can specify a connecting interval instead of relying on Windows' unspecified "scheduled basis." By querying multiple clocks simultaneously, it returns the most accurate average of the current time.

Chronos has a small but attractively colored interface with a list of Time Servers as well as their latency … Read more