If you do a lot of data import and exports, you are probably very familiar with using comma or tab delimited files. If you have to edit these files, however, using a text editor can be challenging because typically these types of files are difficult to work with in just plain text. While Excel is a good tool for working with delimited files, a powerful utility which specializes in this task is CSVed.

CSVed is a free (see below) utility which does a lot more than a text editor or Excel (without some macro/formula magic that is) does, including:

• change separator
• save filtered items
• remove duplicates
• add prefix and suffix

CSVed is designed for working with delimited files only, so it should do just about anything you would need. This tool is postcardware, so if you use it and like it, let the author know.

Today’s tip is more of an open question.

My thought is typically to go with the lesser freebie. For the most part, commercial packages do offer more, but I typically don’t really need it. For example, I swapped from Quicken to GNU Cash about 2 years ago and I haven’t looked back. Quicken has a fancy interface and a bunch of wizards, but I found I just preferred a simple register view which GNU Cash does very well.

Additionally, for tool/utility programs, freebies almost always do what I need. Notepad++, Keepass, CutePDF, Sysinternals, Winpatrol, etc. are pretty top-notch in my opinion so I can’t see any compelling reason to pay for something which does basically the same thing. I don’t use tech support (I prefer to Google it), so that isn’t even a consideration.

Now there are a couple of exceptions that I will always go with when it comes for business use:

• Windows over Linux
• MS Office over OpenOffice/fill in another free office suite

So what do you think? Do you lean more towards the commercial offering or the freebie?

I ran into the situation recently where I had to run a wi-fi scan due to the fact some other routers near me were using a channel that was getting too choked up with traffic. On attempt to use NetStumbler with my Dell mini 10v, the software simply wouldn’t detect my wi-fi card at all.

At this point I was forced to seek out an alternative. It had to be free and had to be at least at good as NetStumbler. I found one: inSSIDer. Free? Yes. Just as good? Yes, and in fact it’s better in some instances (it will scan both 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz.) Did it detect my wi-fi card? Yes, and did on first try.

For those wondering, yes it also does have GPS capability like NetStumbler does (for those that like to pinpoint exactly where the best spots for sources are.)

Those graphs you see aren’t just fluff. You get some good useful information out of this concerning signal strength. The interface is also much more agreeable to work with compared to NetStumbler.

The best feature about inSSIDer is that it’s stupidly easy to use. Just double-click and go. There’s nothing to configure other than selecting the wi-fi card you have. And being that most of us only have one of these in our laptop or desktop, you usually don’t have to bother with that setting either.

If you were looking for a really good wi-fi scanner tool, inSSIDer is definitely it. I give it two huge thumbs up.

Have you ever had an image in a standard format (PNG, JPG, etc.) which you wanted to convert to an icon? If so, the freeware program, SimplyIcon is for you.

Simply create windows icon files (.ICO format) by drag-and-drop images on to this program. [...] This program generates down-sampled 32×32, 24×24 and 16×16 levels automatically. It will also generate the 128×128 level if your source image is equal to or larger than 128×128.

The program is ridiculously easy to use (here is a good at-a-glance review) and sure beats creating them by importing into a graphics program and converting the format. I have used this program several times to make icons (using the company logo) for programs I have developed at work and it works beautifully.

If you are a Windows XP user but really like the visual glass effects of Windows Vista, then Border Skin is for you.

Border Skin is a new free program that skins the windows
borders by skins composed of png images with the support
of 2 famous windows vista & 7 effects ( Blur and reflection )

Nothing much to really add here. When you run Border Skin, there is a control panel available in your system tray which allows you to control the settings. Additionally, you can set program exclusions in the event this effect causes problems on certain applications.

While this does not work 100% the way Vista does, it is an easy way to get the same eye candy effects.

Whenever you have a large number of folders, inevitably some will be more important than others such that you want them to stand out in the list. Typically, you accomplish this by using special characters, caps or punctuation in the folder name. An alternate way to do this would be to change the color and/or icon of the folder. A free tool to make this process simple is Folder Marker.

Folder icons can be customized using the standard Windows method, but with Folder Marker Free you can do this on the fly from the right-click menu of a folder. So there is no need to go through additional dialogs or run Folder Marker Free itself! Simply select the folder you want to mark, right-click on its icon and select a color-coded icon from the drop-down menu. The icon will be assigned to the folder at once.

This tool makes the required folder changes a simple one or two click process. A tool like this is a quick way to organize all your folders.

Rarely do I come across a utility that is absolutely ridiculously easy to use, is efficient and just plain works. ISODisk is one of them.

ISODisk is so easy you’d think there would be more to it. This app simply mounts ISO images as drive letters, and creates ISOs from CDs or DVDs. There are no options in the software; it doesn’t need them.

For any drive letter not in use, you click the folder icon next to the letter, pick your ISO (I’m using PC-BSD distribution for my example above), close the app and that’s it. Want to have a whole bunch of drive letters as different ISOs all at once? Go right ahead. Want to unmount a drive letter or two? Just run the app again and click the red X (also shown above) next to the currently assigned letter.

For creating an ISO, click the tab "Create ISO from CD-ROM", choose the physical drive letter you want, click the small disk icon and an ISO is created.

When you download this, don’t be surprised at the super-speed you get it. The installation file is nothing more than a tiny 527k single EXE.

The only, and I mean only, drawback to this software is that it doesn’t work in 64-bit Windows Vista or 7. But it does work for all Windows 32-bit editions, including 98/ME/2000/XP/Vista/7. Being that most people are still in 32-bit world, this isn’t a problem.

It doesn’t get any easier or faster than this when working with ISOs. I give this app two huge thumbs up.

In the past I have posted several tips about tricks and utilities which allow you to copy text and paste it without any formatting. Typically this involves either a specific setting or plugin which is unique for the respective application. Now you can do this globally with the free program, PureText.

Have you ever copied some text from a web page or a document and then wanted to paste it as simple text into another application without getting all the formatting from the original source? PureText makes this simple by adding a new Windows hot-key (default is WINDOWS+V) that allows you to paste text to any application without formatting.

This utility is small and runs seamlessly in the background. Since I now have this, I no longer need my browser plugins and do not have to go through notepad to paste the text. To me, this is a must have.

The vast majority of times when I post tips to software, the respective product is free. However, just because it is ‘free’ doesn’t mean it has no restrictions as there are different models of free software. The primary ones are freeware, shareware and open source.

It is a good idea to know the difference between these release models. For a good plain English explanation, check out this article. To quote on a brief overview of the differences:

• Freeware is usually a very small program, released by a student or enthusiast.
• Shareware is usually a mid-sized utility or application, written by a professional developer or small software company. The developer or publisher does not have the resources to market it, so they release it as shareware with a “try-before-you-buy” business model.
• Open source spans the gamut, but the largest “free” software out there are all open source–Linux, FreeBSD, PostgreSQL, Apache. Before the advent of VCs in the “free software industry,” collaborative development around a shared code base was the only way a large free application could be built.

Have you ever wanted to hide certain programs from people that may be looking over your shoulder? If so then the free program, Window Hider is for you.

You give Window Hider a list of programs and a shortcut key then when it detects you pressing that shortcut key it hides those windows in your list.

While the author makes the case of using this to hide programs from your boss (which I do not endorse by the way), I could certainly see this being useful for quickly hiding password programs or when you are looking at banking information on a browser.

If you have problems with your Windows computer freezing due to the system being overloaded, then a utility which might help is AntiFreeze.

This free utility offers a way to shutdown processes which consume so many resources that the system becomes completely unresponsive. The scenarios where this utility will help are listed under the “When Will It Work?” section.

Understand, however, this program will not be able to unlock your system in the event of a hardware crash or OS level crash (i.e. blue screen). Still, if it saves you just one time, it is worth it.

When most people think of apps that run from the USB stick alone, they think of PortableApps. However there is another choice, and it’s called LiberKey.

I will admit up front that this doesn’t look as good as PortableApps does, however I will say it runs faster and is easier to get to the apps you want quicker.

The first notable difference is that there are categories for apps, which PA doesn’t have (or if there is, I didn’t find that feature).

Secondly you can create both categories and groups. A quick right-click anywhere in LiberKey shows these options:

I even appreciate the fact you can add separator lines, too.

Like PA, there are different installations you can download. I chose to go with the largest, that being "Ultimate". It is jam-packed with apps. Lots of them. It will take time to go thru them all to see what you get.

In addition there are plenty more besides that. I honestly had no clue you could stuff this many apps on a USB stick – even for video editing.

As said above, LiberKey doesn’t exactly look good but wow does it perform well.

LiberKey doesn’t have to be installed to a stick. You could easily push it to CD or DVD instead and run it that way alternatively.

If you ever have a need to track down and analyze network traffic, a tool you need to have is Wireshark. This tool is actively developed by industry professionals around the world and has an impressive list of features.

Network analysis tools are essential for tracking down less than obvious internet traffic issues and can assist with malware diagnosis, so the more detail you have the better. To help prevent ‘paralysis by analysis’, Wireshark offers the ability to color code packet types and export to multiple formats.

Wireshark is free and works on every major OS, so this is a true one-stop solution.

I have posted many tips in the past on system utilities available from both Sysinternals and Nirsoft. While these programs are excellent, on drawback is they lack any kind of auto-update functionality meaning you have to check for updates manually. To always make sure you have the latest version and are notified of new releases, check out Windows System Control Center.

Their description says it all:

WSCC is a free, portable program that allows you to install, update, execute and organize the utilities from various system utility suites. WSCC is only an interface, you need to download and install the utilities separately. Alternatively, WSCC can use the http protocol to download and run the programs.

The included Update Manager can check for newer versions of the utilities already installed and can download and install the missing items.

The setup packages are downloaded from the author’s website!

This is completely awesome as it allows you to have the latest version of the utilities always available on your system with minimal effort. Additionally, you can put this program on your USB drive as a gateway to always access the latest version without having to maintain them yourself.

One of the eye candy functions that Mac OS offers is a feature called Expose. Wikipedia describes this feature like so:

Exposé allows a user to quickly locate an open window, or to hide all windows and show the desktop without the need to click through many windows to find a specific target.

It is very similar to the tab view function offered by browsers where all your open tabs are displayed as a thumbnail and you simply click on what you want to open.

If you would like to add this functionality to Windows, you can do so with the DExposE2 utility. Simply put, this freeware eye candy program imitates the Mac functionality in Windows XP and Vista. There is a short video on their web site which shows how one user utilizes the utility on their Vista machine exactly as they would on a Mac.