Many of my favorite freeware tools have more-than-adequate competitors out there, but you can never have too much of a good thing. Here are four utilities that you may not have heard of to help you back up your files, take screen captures, uninstall programs, and test your download speeds.
MyUninstaller replaces the default Windows Add/Remove Programs utility, and is a strong alternative to Revo Uninstaller. They both uninstall programs, and that's just about where their similarities end.
MyUninstaller
(Credit: NirSoft)MyUninstaller feels extremely lightweight compared to Revo and contains none of the system tools extras like Autorun Manager that Revo brings to its game. It's far less customizable than Revo, and with the fewer options comes faster uninstall times. Revo took about 2 minutes to get rid of Adobe Reader at the Moderate setting, while MyUninstaller had the task done in less than 20 seconds.
It's not without its little strengths, of course. You can keep files, copy, change installation, and search your list of installed programs. Change installation lets you alter a program by rerunning the installer. MyUninstaller's interface looks like it hasn't changed since Windows 2000, so those looking for a slicker and more robust program will probably gravitate toward Revo. If you're looking for blazingly fast, you might want to make MyUninstaller yours.
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AutoVer)
AutoVer backs up your files, and does it from another simple interface. This simplicity, though, belies what the program actually can do.
Commands for adding and deleting files you want to watch and backup are straightforward. Adding new files was as easy as creating and naming a new file, adding the folder you want to backup, and then choosing the backup location. Folder creation happens immediately, and backups can be initiated as soon as you save the record. More advanced settings let you include or exclude specific files from the backup process, time stamping, pausing and resuming specific folder backups, and a search feature that lets you explore your backups.
Big, primary-colored icons give the program a WinZipesque feel, but that's just about the biggest drawback.
DownTester is a portable app that tests download speeds from multiple HTTP and FTP URLs simultaneously. It's unobtrusive and gets the job done, but it also comes with some useful features that make it worth downloading.
DownTester
(Credit: NirSoft)The Advanced Options menu is well-rounded. You can configure the tests to conclude and move on based on time or bytes downloaded. You can also set the program to retry upon failure and configure the number of times that repetition should occur before moving on, with Passive or Active mode available for FTP. Users have the option to export their test list or import a new one.
Users can't paste directly from the clipboard to the test list. DownTester forces you to open the Add URLs List window first, but that seemed to be just about the only drawback to this utility that anyone diagnosing connection speed problems should check out.
You may not have thought that the world needed another screenshooting program, but GreenShot works pretty well after a half-day of testing.
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GreenShot)
Like many of its competitors, it lets you take screenshots from your monitor using a user-defined rectangle. It displays coordinates as you draw your capture rectangle, and then opens the captured area immediately in a quick-and-dirty image editor with limited but focused features. You can draw boxes, ellipses, lines, or arrows, or add text. You can save the image as a PNG, JPG, BMP, or GIF. You can change the color of any shape or text you add to your screenshot, and change the line thickness.
There's also a good variety of other options, including toggling the save-to location, naming convention and folder, file format, and hot key hooks. Light on resources, it's surprisingly effective for a beta. The arrowhead implementation could use some work when you choose double-arrowheads, but overall it's a freeware worth keeping an eye on.
If you're using a freeware program that you think deserves more attention, mention it in the comments below.
Updated section on Jing on 3/6/09 at 8:30 a.m. PT.
Even if you don't use a screen capture application regularly, there are good reasons to have one on standby. Instead of copying the ID number of an error message into a customer service e-mail by hand, you can quickly take and send a screen shot. Screen shots also make excellent archivers. In a click you can save an image of a flight itinerary or other receipt that you don't want to hang around in paper form. Gamers have another use case--documenting killer performance to prove their bragging rights.
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Gadwin)
Out of the expansive screenshot category, Gadwin PrintScreen is a freeware standout. It's not the newest or flashiest app, and configuring your preferences is a pain. Once you've set your preferences, however, the impressively feature-rich and completely unobtrusive app gives you a seamless experience from start to finish. While PrintScreen doesn't have its own image editor, setting up the app to automatically open the captured image in your favorite editor is a smart, painless move.
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TechSmith)
Jing is our first freeware runner-up. Its excellent pedigree shows (its publishers also make SnagIt, described below) in an inventive app that combines basic screen grabbing with the ability to record your movements on the screen. The real draw is being able to quickly and easily upload these images and screencasts to the Web, though you can e-mail images or save them locally as well. Jing's lack of an image editor is one drawback, but its annotation tools are a plus. Those who may see Jing's persistent yellow orb at the top of the screen as a distraction can also hide it and launch Jing directly from the system tray.
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TechSmith)
To go pro, the top-notch SnagIt comes with a steep price tag that's worth the clams for frequent capturers or those looking for a well-rounded app with advanced features. SnagIt's bag of tricks includes capturing multiple areas of the screen at once, taking timed snapshots, and customizing profiles. The revamped editor very usefully stores every capture you take regardless of whether you save it to disk, and lets you search captures by name or even by Website. Text capture is still ineffective (HyperSnap fared better in our tests), but the image and video tools deliver with force.
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Fraps)
Gamers have some specialized screen capture apps at their fingertips, like the free-to-try Fraps for DirectX and OpenGL games. In addition to taking stills and video of your game in the throng of the action, Fraps will also perform some benchmarking stats, including how many frames per second flash by while you work your magic.
Two other apps worth mentioning are the solid ScreenHunter Free and CaptureWizPro. You'll find them and a glut of others here.
One of the most effective computer crime-fighting tools in Power Downloader's arsenal is the screen capture. When Power D grabs a cap and uploads it to the Web for the world to see, he knows he's presenting advice to computer users in a very unimpeachable way. Effective screen-capping used to be a tedious multistep process, but the Jing Project streamlines it all for both Windows and Mac users.
Jing streamlines screen capture creation and uploading.
(Credit: Jing Project)From the team behind the screen-recording utility Camtasia, Jing is able to capture still images as well as videos. Once you've downloaded and installed the program, click the Capture button to begin recording. The program asks you to choose whether you want to capture a video or an image, and then after you're done it lets you preview recording. If you need to edit it, this would be the time.
The coolest part of this experiment--in theory--is Jing's integration with Screencast.com, a hosting service for videos recorded off your computer. The Share button lets you upload the video directly, and offers an embed code, too, but the Web site is jittery and poorly laid out. The site charges $6.95 after the free 60-day trial, but you can still use Jing to record screencaps.
Power Downloader thinks it's more than a bit inelegant to not be able to use its video-hosting upload button, but even that doesn't stop the Jing Project from being a flexible and fun utility worth considering.
Whatever you might envision of Tuesday's release of the redesigned SnagIt 9, it probably wouldn't be as a Microsoft Office clone.
Before you Microsoft naysayers begin your shuddering and muttering (you know who you are), have a little faith in TechSmith, the publisher that also brought to market the top-rated Camtasia Studio. Thanks to the new features and look, SnagIt 9 is a familiar, intuitive, and much more varnished capture utility whose image editor has finally come of age. Here are five ways SnagIt 9 has caught our attention. Check out the video below for a snapshot, or skip it to go straight into the count.
1: Tinted good looks
Dark skins and themes are all the rage, so why not a darker SnagIt? The new program interface and editor is organized much like version 8's, but swaps out blue for blackened gray. The image editor has been painted with the same brush, but underneath is a dramatically different layout from version 8 that elevates visual selection over text menus.
2: Microsoft-like menus
As part of the new visual design, SnagIt 9 borrows heavily from Microsoft Office 2007 to arrange tools and effects in a horizontal ribbon. This layout makes use of large images and icon-driven drop-down menus and goes easy on the text, under which useful tools were previously buried and ignored. According to SnagIt's product manager, Tony Dunckel, the average user accessed only two percent of the product.
SnagIt 9's Start button and menu structure is modeled on Microsoft Office 2007.
(Credit: CNET Networks)The decision to follow Microsoft's lead is twofold, Dunckel said. First, replicating the menu brings SnagIt closer to earning Microsoft certification. Second, piggybacking on Microsoft's design makes use of the software giant's extensive consumer testing. If users responded best to the ribbon workflow in Office 2007, why not apply it to SnagIt?
Looking at the spacious version 9 and cramped version 8 side-by-side, it's hard to argue that version 9 isn't substantially improved by the menus, which rescues those editing effects from obscurity and migrates them to eye-catching menu blocks a user can explore.
SnagIt9's Editor is larger, darker, and easier to use.
(Credit: CNET Networks)3: A well-stocked catalog
No longer must you recapture images you didn't perfectly edit the first time around. With the new Open Captures tray, a ribbon along the screen bottom, SnagIt matures from a screen grabber that callously dumps any capture you didn't save into a helpful tool keeping track of all your images, including those unsaved files. You'll be able to jump from one open image to another, an illegal action with previous SnagIt versions, to interact with images at any time for editing, saving in a new file-type, and exporting.
Annotation and drawing tools are easy to access with the horizontal, icon-driven menu system.
(Credit: CNET Networks)4: Tagging
Like e-mails, images contain information, relevance, and nuance. SnagIt 9 introduces tagging in the library pane and the menu navigation that uses a combination of flagging, autotagging, and keyword entry to assign searchable tags to an image. Flag categories include important, follow-up, personal, finance, and funny. Captures are also tagged by URL if they're taken from a Web site, by the name of the application you may have grabbed it from, and by a manually entered keyword.
5: Search
SnagIt's user scenario is to store every capture you've taken in the application's lifespan. After a couple hundred captures, browsing through tags gets old and inefficient. A search engine integrated into the library pane pulls up relevant tags and dates. Clicking the folder icon at the bottom right of the screen helps organize the findings with more granularity--you'll be able to sort by name, size, dimension, flags, and keyword and display image clips instead of the usual text-chunky file names.
The search field pulls up captures by tag, flag, keyword, and source.
(Credit: CNET Networks)There are still more features to love in future versions that aren't so lovable now, like the functionality of the text capture profile to name one. Still, the application has come so far in usability that it remains the most sophisticated capture technology around, and a must-have tool for screen-grabbers interested in more advanced editing.
SnagIt 9 is available with no restrictions for a 30-day trial period and costs $49.95 to purchase in full. Current customers can upgrade for $19.95 in the next 60 days.
Excellent screen capture apps aren't hard to come by, but excellent free ones are. With sophisticated features at no cost, it's hard to reach higher than Gadwin's PrintScreen. An attractive, easily navigated interface opens up a customization wonderland for users to decide default settings for shortcut key associations, capture preferences, and output.
For our purposes, the clicking and dragging regions is the clear choice. Misjudge your region's dimensions and Gadwin PrintScreen lets you readjust them without having to start over, something many commercial competitors don't do. Setting the app to automatically open each screen capture in your favorite viewer or editor makes up for the program's lack of built-in image editor, still achieving a seamless screen capture experience from start to finish that grabs and delivers shots just where you want them. A daily-use favorite among Download.com editors, these robust features come attached to a small footprint.
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CNET Networks)
Every computer user needs a good screen capture utility at one time or another. Whether doing a Web research project, getting a slick new desktop background, or just adding to an image collection, the flexibility of these utilities make them much more useful than the full-screen capture in Windows. As a reviewer of software, I often need to take screenshots of programs I'm reviewing. A screen capture utility lets me capture the whole program, or just a section of the screen depending on what I want to call out.
Windows comes with the Print Screen function which saves a full screen shot of the desktop to the clipboard. However, to crop or edit the image in any way, an image editing program is needed. Even worse, with Print Screen, once another screenshot is taken the previous capture is lost forever.
For more flexibility with screen captures, check out one of these programs. They each have their advantages and disadvantages.
Users can set all preferences before hand, so they can capture images one after the other
(Credit: CNET Networks)ScreenHunter Free is the simplest of this group. It is perfect for users who need to capture several images and save them to the same folder. The ScreenHunter interface lets users set up a hot key for captures, choose a destination folder, designate a file-naming convention, and choose between full screen captures, a rectangular area, or whatever is in the active window. Once done with the set up, users can choose a hot key to capture screens quickly.
Choose a screen capture type from the left sidebar
(Credit: CNET Networks)MWSnap lets users capture all, or part of a screen using hot keys just like ScreenHunter. However, it adds a few other useful features. Users can designate a fixed capture size for all their shots, add stylized frames or make buttons from images, they can also save all images to a specified folder. MWSnap also offers an on screen ruler for precise captures, a simple color picker tool, and rotate and flip image features.
Use the change destination button to set which image editor to use
(Credit: CNET Networks)Gadwin PrintScreen is my favorite of the group, and is best used in tandem with a free image editor, such as FastStone Image Viewer. First, set the type of screenshots that are to be taken, file format, and folder to save the images to. Just like the others, users will be able to set hot keys, and designate naming conventions. What makes Gadwin Printscreen useful is the capability to automatically open the image in an editor. That lets users immediately crop or make changes to the screenshot.
Using the Print Screen key is limiting. Rarely do users need a full-screen shot of their desktops, and saving to the clipboard requires too many steps to save and name the files. One of these screen capture applications may make taking screenshots more convenient and useful. As always, let us know in the comments if there is a better application for taking screenshots.
Screencap of Neil Peart YYZ animation.
(Credit: Bobby's Brane Dot Com/CNET Networks)The response to my post last week about how to convert digital photo collections to DVD slide shows was a resounding, "Whatever. How can I grab a screenshot from a video or DVD?"
Who knew that the number of would-be "screencappers" was so legion? Regardless, I'm your humble servant, and your wish is generally my command.
First off, for image screen captures of digital video files, I highly recommend VLC Media Player. I know I mention the free media player quite a bit, but it's still the cream of the freeware video crop for me due to its light footprint and flexibility. ... Read more
As a faithful corporate blogger, I take a lot of screenshots. I've mentioned that in previous roundups of screen capture apps. When I found myself at the Under the Radar conference yesterday (see all posts) without a handy screen capture installed, I quickly downloaded Jing Project, for Windows and Mac.
Jing Project, thoroughly reviewed on Webware.com, floats a sun-yellow ball to the top of the screen. Hovering over this orb produces three rays, one of which launches cross-hairs that, when dragged around content, captures the image. I love this method for high-pressure blogging, even though for everyday use I prefer a more precise, full featured capture program like Snagit, which, like Jing, is made by TechSmith, or the free Gadwin PrintScreen.
The cross-hairs capture method tends to obscure edges, making it hard to see if you've grabbed too little, too much, or just the right amount, but Jing Project gives at least the impression, if not the reality, of saving microseconds when grabbing images from the screen. One note to Windows users: If you don't have the .NET Framework 3.0 already installed, Jing Project will auto-download it, though it will take a few minutes longer before the app installs.
If programs were people, the sleeker, trimmer-looking Camtasia Studio 5 would be the guy or gal who, after emerging from a months-long stint with a personal trainer, has now stretched out on the sand to enjoy the response.
Behind the scenes, TechSmith's Camtasia team has been pumping serious iron into a handful of new features for each of Camtasia's major recording, editing, producing, and playback functionalities. The final result is a more robust screen recording and producing app that's gained significant muscle without added fat. While there are still some flaws to work out, Camtasia Studio 5 offers streamlined performance for the same price as its predecessor--$299 new; $149 to upgrade.
Here's a look at the new and enhanced features in order of appearance.... Read more
I use TechSmith's Snagit screen-capturing tool (review) on a daily basis to gather all sorts of shots for posts and archival purposes. It works great at getting those pixel-precise sizes you might be going for, along with taking a step or two out Windows' less-than-stellar built-in print screen function. Today I've been playing with a small download called Clip2Net. It's a free and simple screenshot program with built-in Web uploading for screenshots AND image files. It's not at all as advanced as Snagit, but if you're in the market for a relatively easy way to take and host screenshots, or share a roll of pictures with friends, Clip2Net is a promising hybrid solution.
Setup is simple: Just download and install the less-than-1MB file and you're good to go. You can start capturing right away, either in regions or the entire screen at a time. Registering and plugging in your login credentials lets you upload your shots to a Web folder that saves all your shots. Likewise, if you'd like to stay anonymous, Clip2Net will provide you with a URL where your shot is being hosted--although keep in mind that if you lose that URL, you won't be able to track it down again.
... Read more
