Volumouse allows you to customize the settings as to when the wheel will be used for changing the volume. For instance, you can configure Volumouse to use your mouse wheel for volume control when the Alt key is held down, or when the left mouse button is down and so on.

I find that enabling the ‘when the mouse cursor is over the taskbar’ option is the most convenient for me as I can control the volume with a single hand.

When the conditions that you define are not satisfied, your mouse wheel will be used for the regular scrolling tasks, exactly as before.

Download Volumouse

Anyone who has a computer has time saved information that they may consider important; and if it is lost then they would have a hard time getting it back.

You might say, ‘Oh, I don’t need to worry, I always have all my important data backed up on a CD’. But you can never be 100% sure that the CD would be readable when you actually need it. And there is always a possibility of losing your data before you take a backup.

Ultimately, it boils down to one thing. You need to be able to recover lost data if and when the situation demands.

Enter Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery.

Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery is a complete data recovery solution that helps you to search, locate and recover your lost, missing, inaccessible or deleted data. This non-destructive and read-only utility helps you to recover your data lost due to accidental format, virus problems, software malfunction, file/directory deletion, unexpected shutdown, or even sabotage.

Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery  has a very simple and intuitive interface.  With the software’s fully automated wizard using it is a breeze. The interface includes Find File, File Mask and File Filter options to help you search, view and recover any specific file type.

The recovery of your data involves three simple steps.

1. Evaluate - Phoenix identifies the device, locates all partition on the inaccessible drive and list them.
2. Analyze - It examines the remains of file structure (boot sector, FAT copies or MFT and root directory) and the data area of the inaccessible drive and works the best path out to recover your files and directories.
3. Recover - All recoverable files and folders are presented in a tree structure. You can select your data files and directories and move the data to a safe location.

Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery can help you recover lost data in most situations. Here is a short list of what the software can do for you.

• Recover deleted files after recycle bin has been emptied or use of Shift+Delete key
• Recover missing and lost logical drives (volumes)
• Recover formatted hard drives (even after reinstalling operating system)
• Recover re-partitioned hard drives (even after file system has been changed)
• Recover lost files and folders

Stellar Phoenix recovers data from Windows Vista partitions and also supports partition recovery from Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows 98 and older operating system hard drives. It recognizes & recovers more than 300 file types including documents, spreadsheets, web content & images.

You can download the demo software from http://www.stellarinfo.com/spwdr.exe

Learn more about Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery.

Changing the color of icons is easy with Rainbow Folders. Just right click on an icon an select ‘Rainbow Folders’. You can then select any color for the icon.

You can even select more than one folder at a time and change the colors of all the selected folders simultaneously. So, for example, you could mark your favorite folders with green color, your work folder with blue, your personal folders with red etc. This definitely makes navigation quicker and helps you to easily find the folder you want. You can also choose from three icon styles: Classical(9x), Typical(XP) and Modern(Vista).

The colorized folders are visible in every Explorer window, every open/save dialog and in every folder selection tree as seen in many programs. You can even add a custom tool tip to the folders.

Download Rainbow Folder

But if you have this tiny free utility called One Click App Killer, you could kill frozen programs with a single click. That’s assuming you don’t count the double click needed to run the program first. Upon double-clicking on the program icon, your mouse pointer changes into a bull’s eye. Now, click anywhere on the frozen application’s interface to quickly eliminate it from your screen and memory. That’s it.

But do note that a wrong click and you could end up killing the wrong program. Though rare, clicking outside the frozen program’s interface could close Windows itself.

Download One Click App Killer.

Karen’s Directory Printer is a free utility that can help you do the above and more.

Karen’s Directory Printer can print the names of every file in a folder or drive. It can also print a file or sub-folder’s size, date of creation, date of last modification, date of last access, attributes (read-only, system, hidden, compressed, etc.) and more. You can select what other information about the file should be included in the print.

With the File Filter option, instead of printing all the files in a location, you can choose to print a particular type of file, like say images, audio files, document files etc. You can create new filters and specify which file extensions should be included in the filter. You can even edit the existing filter.

Karen’s Directory Printer even lets you save the list to a file instead of printing it. This is quite useful if you don’t have a printer installed or if you want to email the list to someone.

 Desk Drive a free tool that offers a very quick and convenient  way of accessing your removable media. Once you have Desk Drive up and running (shows up on the system tray), as soon as you insert a pen drive or a CD, a shortcut to the drive is automatically created on the Desktop. You can then easily open the drive anytime through the shortcut. Remove the media and the shortcut goes away.

Right-clicking on the system tray icon brings up a settings window where you can choose which drives to monitor.

A very simple tool, but can save you quite a bit of time and clicks.

Note: Desk Drive needs .Net Framework 2.0 to work.

Download Desk Drive.

Lupo PenSuite is one such utility.

Lupo PenSuite is a portable collection of over 185 applications and tools. All the applications have been neatly categorized and can be started through the bundled ASuite application launcher.

You don’t need to actually install Lupo PenSuite. Just download the setup file and either extract it directly on your portable drive or extract it on first your desktop and copy the extracted folder to the portable drive. First, spend some time and check out what applications are included. Unless you know what’s included you can’t take full advantage of them.

Lupo PenSuite is available in two version, Full and Lite. While the Full version has around 185 applications and needs 290 MB of space, the Lite version has much fewer applications and needs just 40MB. I would strongly suggest that you go for the full version. You may not be using all the applications everyday, but with the full suite of the applications in your pocket, you feel like you are fully armed.

Apart from the included applications, you can add more applications to the suite from here or any other portable application you want.

And best of all Lupo Pensuite is completely Free.

Download Lupo Pensuite

Apart from speed, Copy Handler offers some interesting options. Like for instance, when you copy a folder containing lot of files, while pasting you can filter the files that you want copied based on the extension, size, date etc. So you don’t have to waste time selecting the correct files, just copy all the files and choose the desired filter while pasting.

Copy Handler allows full-control over the copying/moving process by allowing you to pause, resume, restart and cancel the process. It can even automatically resume all unfinished operations when system starts. Copy Handler limits count of simultaneously processing tasks (copyings/movings). The tasks are set into a queue and are processed in order it was inserted into queue.

Copy Handler has lots of settings that you can configure according to your requirements. Once you install it, spend a few minutes exploring the various options and you would be on your way to working faster and smarter.

Download Copy Handler

Apart from the huge storage that Adrive offers, there are quite a few other features worth mentioning.

• The largest file size that can be uploaded is 2 gigabytes (2048 megabytes).
• No restriction on the file types that can be stored. You can store any type of files.
• The files are virtually stored for ever. Neither the files nor any user accounts are deleted.
• You can share any of the stored files with anyone on the internet.
• Utilizing the partnership with Zoho, ADrive offers the ability to edit Word and Excel files online. Click the “Edit” button next to the file you would like to edit, make all your changes, and then save the file. You don’t even need to have an account with Zoho to carry on the edits.

ADrive is a great way to backup your valuable files and access your stored files from anywhere.

Visit ADrive.com

OldVersion.com is a collection of previous releases for many widely-used programs such as Acrobat Reader, ICQ, MSN Messenger, Winamp, Winzip, Yahoo! Messenger and more. As of writing of this post there were 2421 versions of 181 programs.

Do note that, while the older versions of purely standalone apps might work fine, the same cannot be said of applications such as the instant messengers and the like. Since these applications connect with online services, unless the services still support the older version you may not be able to use the earlier version.