Complain all you want about bloated Microsoft software, but some of their best tools are free little utilities called PowerToys that do all kinds of cool tasks — everything from letting you tweak the XP interface to resizing single or multiple images with a single click.
The newest PowerToy is out, and I think it’s the best one yet. It’s called SyncToy, and it does exactly what it says — it lets you synchronize files and folders with a simple click or two.
I work on several computers, and often transfer files between the two. Countless times I’ve overwritten newer files with older ones. And even when I don’t do that, it takes me far too much time to copy files between the two machines.
SyncToy lets you create “folder pairs,” and then define how they should synchronize. There are far too many options than I can go into here. Suffice it to say that if you want to do a simple synch it’s a breeze — and the advanced options are similarly easy.
Little utilities like this often make computing worth the occasional pain. If you have a favorite freebie, let me know, below.
Tell me about your favorite free utilities.
Ninotech Path Copy
I use this one quite often:
Ninotech Path Copy is a shell extension for Windows 95, 98, NT4, 2000, and XP that enables to copy the path of a file or directory to the Clipboard. You can then paste the path in to your document, e-mail, etc. You copy the path of a file or directory by right-clicking it in the Windows Explorer and choosing Copy Path from the context menu. The context menu then offers nine standard ways of copying the path, in addition to the user defined copying methods that you create yourself:
http://home.worldonline.dk/ninotech/freeutil.htm
.Net 1.1 requirement
Yet another utility where you have to have the .Net framework installed, which is all well and good if .Net installs correctly, but a nightmare if .Net breaks. I am coming to loath .Net. The idea is fine, but it is so difficult to fix if it breaks and when it breaks all sorts of thing break too.