Compatible platforms: Win2k, XP, Vista, 7

Version highlighted in this post: 0.6

Portable version: Available at the page linked above. Just make sure to grab file (toward the bottom of the blog entry) that says “Texter Executable.” Throw it on your USB drive and you’re good to go.

If you’re the type who obsesses over shortcut keys and has people shaking their heads whenever they watch you use your computer without touching your mouse, text substitution app Texter is for you.

Texter is built for those efficiency-minded folks who find themselves typing out the same set of info over and over. The easiest way to understand how it works is through a simple example.

Let’s say you find yourself typing your postal address often. First, you’d type your full address into the large box seen in the above screenshot. Then, in the ‘Hotstring” field, you’ll want to define the trigger word to be something you’d never otherwise type. Let’s go with ‘addy’ for this example. “Trigger” tells Texter which action or key stroke will kick it into action. We’ll go with ‘Space’ here.

Now, anytime you type ‘addy’, irrespective of what program you’re working in, as soon as you hit the spacebar after typing a-d-d-y, your address (formatted just the way you entered it into Texter will magically replace the word ‘addy’.

The program is actually much more powerful than just the simple example highlighted here, but our example is how you’ll use the program most of the time. For more details on the advanced uses of Texter, be sure to check out its explanation at Lifehacker. (Lifehacker editor Adam Pash is the person behind the app.) In addition to a well-written description of Texter, the page also contains a couple of great videos that show the program in action.

Compatible platforms: Win2k, XP, Vista, 7

Version highlighted in this post: 2.5.0.0

If you find yourself creating or burning a lot of CD/DVD images, ditch your big, clunky burning suite and load up ImgBurn.

The beauty of ImgBurn is in its utter simplicity. It’s made for one purpose, and it absolutely excels at what it does. The screenshot alone almost says it all.

What you see above is pretty much the entire overview of the program’s capabilities. Once you click into one of the functions, you’ll get a dialog that lets you tweak the burn speed and a few little things, but overall, it’s really simple, straightforward, and fast.

One of the big benefits of ImgBurn is that it’s compatible with a wider array of image file formats than most burning suites out there. Some of the biggies are: .iso, .nrg, and .bin/.cue. But there are a ton of the more esoteric formats supported, as well. To see them all, just click on “Write image file to disc,” then browse for a file (the folder with a magnifying glass icon), and hit the file types drop down box.

Compatible platforms: Win2k, XP, Vista, 7

Version highlighted in this post: 3.6

Portable version: Available at http://portableapps.com/apps/office/pdftk_builder_portable

PDFTK is a utility that allows users to manipulate PDF files in all kinds of clever ways. Unfortunately, it’s a command-line tool that’s just not user-friendly enough for most people. Fortunately, that’s where PDFTK Builder comes in. It takes the command-line tool and straps a graphical front-end on it, making it nice and easy for just about anybody to use.

As you can see from the screenshot, there are four things PDFTK Builder specializes in:

Collate–Allows you to combine, reorder, and remove pages of two or more PDFs. Once you have this function, you’ll probably be surprised just how often it comes in handy

Split–Lets you take a single PDF and break it up however you want

Background/Stamp–Background works a lot like a watermark. The only tricky thing is that the background image you’re using also has to be a PDF file. Once you do the background operation, it’ll place that image on every page in the target document. The stamp operation works similarly, but instead of being in the background (like a watermark), it places the image on top of whatever is already on each page of the target PDF.

Rotate–Lets you rotate one or a range of pages so whenever the PDF is pulled up in a viewer, its pages will be in the right aspect.

One other function that PDFTK gives you that Acrobat is able to do, but can’t be found in all freeware PDF creation software is the ability to password protect any PDF file. It’s not something most users will use daily, but it’s nice to have when you need it.

If you work with PDFs pretty regularly, PDFTK should be in your toolbox, without a doubt. Even if you own a copy of Acrobat Pro, PDFTK’s ability to do some advanced functionality with incredible ease makes it one most indispensable pieces of open source software out there.

Compatible Platforms: Win2k, XP, Vista, 7

Version highlighted in this post: 0.95.2

Portable version: Available at http://portableapps.com/apps/utilities/clamwin_portable

Not long ago we took a look at ClamXav. Now, let’s take a look at the open source anti-virus program’s Windows-based sibling, ClamWin.

ClamWin is the sibling to two other great programs, ClamAV (the UNIX/Linux anti-virus scanner) and ClamXav (the open source Mac AV scanner). Their shared underlying scanning engine is what makes them siblings. The engine is the part of an AV program that tells it what patterns within a file are dangerous and which virus that pattern matches.

My favorite thing about all of the ClamAV-based apps is that they don’t insist on sitting on your machine running all the time. If you’re a power user and tend to be careful when trawling online, why waste the huge amount of resources most AV programs demand when you only need to scan from time-to-time? It’s much nicer to have those system resources open for regular computing and just run the AV program when you feel like you’ve made a mistake or just need to check out a specific file.

There’s one quick caveat that I always have to mention with the ClamAV apps, though. The first time you fire up the program, before you even run a scan, go into the preferences and under ‘General’ make sure you’ve got the radio selection set to ‘Move to Quarantine Folder:’, and verify that there’s a quarantine folder set. If that’s not done, the program will just run the scan and come back and tell you, “Hey, I found something!” But not actually do anything about any of the problem files. (See screenshot below for how I keep mine set up.)

Platforms available: Windows 2000, XP, Vista, 7

Portable version: Available at site, right below installer file

Current version as of writing: 1.2.1

Everything is a lightweight, speedy, and portable local file search utility.  There’s a ton to love about it, but it comes with one caveat that will make it a nonstarter for a small contingent of users. For everybody else, there’s nothing to lose by giving it a test drive; you just might come to find it an indispensable tool.

For a long time I thought nothing could hold a candle to the elegance and thoroughness of Google Desktop’s local search capabilities. While, there’s probably still nothing that can compete with its thoroughness, in all other dimensions, Everything comes awfully close.

Before going any further, let’s touch on Everything’s sole weakness so you can move on without wasting too much time if you discover that the app’s definitely not for you. Everything is able to run so quickly (and portably) because it makes use of a too rarely leveraged aspect of Windows’ native file system, NTFS. (If you’re not sure if you’re running NTFS or not, it’s pretty safe to assume you are. Unless you manually changed the setting when installing Windows 2000, XP, Vista, or 7, you’re almost definitely using NTFS.) NTFS is what’s called an indexing file system. One of the special aspects of an indexing file system is that it keeps something like a database of all the files and folders stored within it. By digging into that “database”, Everything gets near-instant access to everything on an NTFS volume.

Unfortunately, FAT-based file systems don’t have anything like that for Everything to use, so they get left out in the cold. How big a deal that is to you completely depends on the way you use your computer. If you have one hard drive that keeps everything you have on it, Everything is perfect for you.

In my case, I keep a lot of  external hard drives and USB flash drives floating around. Because of the relatively small size of the flash drives and my borderline OCD level of directory/folder organization, I usually don’t have much problem keeping what’s on them straight. I leave my smaller external hard drives formatted as FAT for maximum portability. But my bigger external drives I convert to NTFS because I tend to keep them as supplements to my notebooks’ small built-in drives. Also, those big drives tend to hold multimedia files, which, in my case, are always viewed/listened to on a Windows machine.

If your usage is similar to mine, you’ll love Everything. On the other hand, if you have external hard drives that you pack around to Mac and/or Linux machines, you’ll want those drives to be formatted with FAT for its near universal compatibility. The only downside to that is, of course, that Everything won’t work for you.

CDBurnerXP

Platforms available: Win2k SP4 & up, XP, Vista, Windows 7 (as long as .NET is present)

Portability: Portable version available <http://cdburnerxp.se/downloads/portable/>, but machine running it has to have .NET Framework installed

Version as of this writing: 4.2.4

Standout or unique feature: Can convert .bin or .nrg image files into .iso.

CDBurnerXP is a really well-made program. It’s probably not too much of a stretch to say it’s something along the lines of Nero Burning ROM 5, circa 2000-ish (but with fleshed out DVD burning capabilities and a prettier interface). Like old school Nero, it’s loaded with cool features and handy functions, but not overloaded. You get the basics like disc-to-disc copying, audio and data disc burning, and ISO image making and burning.

What’s more notable than what’s in CDBurnerXP is what’s not in CDBurnerXP. Unlike modern, “full-featured” burning suites, there’s no omnipresent control panel that just sits in your system tray taking up resources, no bundled media player software, no audio or video editing tools, or any other bloatware. The only thing that a few hard core optical drive loving geeks may miss are some of the drive and media performance measurement utilities. Nero’s DiscSpeed and DriveSpeed utilities can be pretty cool, but if you need that kind of utility, you either already have Nero or you know the standalone free utilities that can take the place of those apps.

The lack of all those add-on functions makes an enormous difference in terms of overall program size. The current full version of Nero can weigh in at up to a hard drive crushing 1.5GB! CDBurnerXP is downright svelte compared to that, coming in at under 10MB (installed).

So what’s not to like? The only thing that’s a slight negative to me is the .NET Framework requirement. Perhaps someone can convince me otherwise in the comments section, but I’m not a big fan of code frameworks like .NET, Java, and the like. The reason is that when developers use frameworks, it shifts developers’ burden of making clean, tight code to users’ machines in the form of increased resource usage. When you have to call up 100% of a framework for a program that only uses 50% of it, that seems like inefficient use of PC resources. Even though modern machines are powerful enough to run CDBurnerXP (and most framework-based programs) at perfectly acceptable speeds and without adverse effects on multitasking, I have noticed that it can be a little sluggish and prone to high CPU utilization.

Even with that tempering statement, though, CDBurnerXP is an excellent choice, and I honestly think it’s more useful on my machines than any of the commercial alternatives out there.

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InfraRecorder

Platforms available: Win2k, XP, Vista, Windows 7

Portability: PortableApps version and non-installing .zip version available directly from the InfraRecorder site.

Version as of this writing: 0.46

Standout or unique feature: Near-perfect balance of features, size, portability, and good looks.

InfraRecorder and CDBurnerXP are nearly identical from the features standpoint. The only sizable difference being that InfraRecorder lacks the image file converter function. Just like CDBurnerXP, when you fire it up, you get a quick launcher that’ll let you pick the type of project you want to work on, and from there you’re up and running.

What’s slickest about InfraRecorder has to be its no-nonsense interface. Something about it (maybe the icons?) is really Linux-esque. Its toolbar is less cluttered than CDBurnerXP’s, which helps you get in and just get what you need without a lot of visual noise. Even running off of a USB flash drive, it’s pleasingly snappy and reactive.  The fact that the whole program weighs in at around 7MB also has to aid in the responsive and light feeling you get when using it.

In the past, I’ve used CDBurnerXP as my main burning app of choice and kept InfraRecorder as my portable solution. That’s because once you get used to CDBurnerXP’s more cluttered interface, I actually find it nice to have one-click access to some things like media properties on the rare occassions I need them. But as InfraRecorder gets better and better version to version, I find myself even running it off of my flash drive at home when I have a really quick project and don’t feel like loading up the slightly slower CDBurnerXP.

While it’s not much concern to the majority of end users, it is interesting to note that InfraRecorder is a true open source app, licensed under the GPL. (CDBurnerXP, on the other hand, is freeware. If you’re curious about the difference, you can learn more here.)

If your burning needs go no farther than making data and/or audio discs, copying, and working with ISO images, my advice is to grab InfraRecorder and don’t look back. It’ll do everything you need without getting in your way or overwhelming you with extraneous options. Not to mention, it’ll do all that portably, too, if you need it to.

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Nero Freeware <http://www.nero.com/eng/downloads-nero9-free.php>

Platforms available: Win2k, XP, Vista, Windows 7

Portability: None

Version as of this writing: Nero 9 – Freeware Version

Standout or unique feature: Does everything possible to make you not want to use it

Maybe I’m dating myself a bit here (I’m not really THAT old!), but I grew up with Nero. I always loved it. It came bundled with almost every CD or DVD burner I’ve ever bought. I loved Nero so much, in fact, that if the top-rated drive at the time came bundled with Adaptec/Roxio EZ CD Creator, but the number two came with Nero, I’d buy the lower rated drive. It was really that much better. Unfortunately, as you surely noticed from my thoughts on the other two programs above, I don’t use Nero anymore. The reason for that is because it has become completely overrun with bloat. (Does a media burning app really need to blow up to 1.5GB with “features” of negligible utility in order to stay relevant and continue to sell copies?)

With that as a backdrop, you can understand why it pains me so much to take call this spade… well… a pile of crap. I’m not even going to bother comparing it feature by feature to CDBurnerXP or InfraRecorder because it’s easier to just give its entire feature set and let that speak for itself. What you get with Nero Freeware Version is the ability to copy discs and write CD and DVD data discs.

…

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Oh, were you waiting for more? Sorry, there is no more. In fact, here’s a direct quote from Nero Freeware Version’s download page:

“This version of Nero 9 contains simply data burning and disc copying features for CDs and DVDs. Additional features and functionality are available with an upgrade to Nero 9 full version.”

To add insult to injury, there have been reports of the installation defaulting to trying to install the Ask.com Toolbar. And! And! Wait for it… It tries to change your default homepage! Ugghh. When are companies going to learn that the goodwill they gain from putting out freeware offerings goes negative when they put in this kind of adware and/or nagware? What a colossal slip-up. For what it’s worth, I installed it twice, once under a ‘typical’ install and once under a ‘custom’ install, and neither time did I encounter either of those two issues. Maybe the user backlash was enough to make the developer give up that shady little revenue stream within just a day or two of its initial release.

By the way, above I wrote a bit about Nero’s bloat, right? Well how’s this for a little example of that? Below is a screen grab from Revo Uninstaller of all the crap that gets thrown on your machine when installing this inocuous-looking little app. And that’s just the stuff easily identified as Nero. I noticed the installer plugging in a bunch of Windows components as well, but I can’t even venture a guess as to where all that stuff is residing.

As you’ve pretty much figured out by now, my recommendation on Nero 9 Freeware Version is to just skip it. I’m 100% confident that you’ll be infinitely better served by either CDBurnerXP and/or InfraRecorder.