Techiy

Sometimes I need to merge, split or extract my pdf files, and even rotate some of the pages for a better viewing experience. I do not like Adobe Acrobat. Well, it is not free and bulky. Pdfsam , will just do all the above-mentioned tasks for free and it allows the tasks to be done visually. Another great tool for documents processing, love it.

Tried: CCleaner, Comodo System Cleaner. Yes, everyone knows unused files and registry entries are increasing as you use Windows for a longer time. In fact, CCleaner is actually Crap Cleaner. There are many system cleaners/optimizers around in the net; the reason I chose these two softwares is they are almost fool-proof. It means you can just follow the instructions and clean the system without causing system errors. CCleaner removes unwanted files and registry entries in Windows system in a safe way. I have been using CCleaner for quite a while now and it is not causing me any problem.

Windows XP has a PowerToy that is very useful to those who want to resize their pictures by just a right click. However, Vista miss it (again). Luckily, there is some one named Prish make a substitute with even more functions. Miss the right click and resize? The official link is gone since Windows Live Space is no longer available, you can download it at download.com now. (If you need the 64-bit version, just leave a comment here and I will post it up for you.) I also found out that there is a Vista clone for Image Resizer XP (usable for Windows 7 too.) Note: Prish Image Resizer offers more functionality than the vista clone, such as jpg quality selection and saves resized pictures into custom folder, and makes resizing job quicker with its  pre-defined jobs in the context menu. For the reasons stated in the note, I chose Prish Image Resizer. Edited 27 Apr 2011.

Cannot delete files in Windows because some programs are using it? Don't even know which process is locking it? Fear not, for the Unlocker is here. Unlocker is a good example of my definition of good freewares. After you have installed it, it gives you an extra option after you right click on the file you wish to delete/move/rename. You can view all the processes that are locking your files now, choose to kill all the process and do what you intended to in the first place. This is the homepage for it. Update: Looks like the new version of Unlocker setup file (I am using the 64-bit version) is detected as a malware. Although the main site mentioned that it is a false positive, I am still not convinced. Use at your own risk. Edited 27 Mar 2011.

I first found this light and useful software because I had a problem with Office 2007 icons (those with extensions of xlsx, docx, pptx, etc.) Instead of showing the original and prettier icons, they shows a blank document icon with a small corresponding office symbol in it. I tried many methods and finally figured it out that I needed to dissociates those filetypes and Windows will replace the wrong icon itself. The catch is, there is no explicit (GUI, at least) way of doing dissociation of filetypes, unlike in Windows XP. (What is wrong with Windows?!) This program is mainly for Vista/Win7 because it can be easily done in XP. You can download it here .   Edited 21 Sep 2010.

Tried: Digsby, Miranda, Trillian Astra; Also known: Pidgin, Trillian 5. I just got Digsby recently and I love it. I remembered those days I had to sign in separately to MSN, YM, facebook, etc. I was looking for other IM software that integrates at least all the IM. I tried Trillian, too bulky; tried Miranda, too limited. Finally, I found Digsby!

I do not want to change my whole Windows environment to Chinese because some symbols would be substituted  as weird characters (often as uncommon Chinese characters). Most new applications can display Chinese characters well because they are using Unicode. For those that don't, I would use Applocale to open the applications in their local language environment. In fact, this program allows your application to run in local environment of different language, more than you can think of.