Shaved 1:07 off of my boot. Crazy. Useful little bugger.

Funny how a much ~160 MHz can affect my system.

These files were told to me by my Computer Networking teacher at school. They are all free and highly rated.
Not sure if any have been listed on here yet, but oh well... enjoy

Advanced System Care 4: http://www.iobit.com/advancedsystemcareper.html
Hirens: Whats On It: http://www.hiren.info/pages/bootcd Download: http://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/
Panda Cloud: http://www.cloudantivirus.com/en/ (Stick with free version don't get the paid for version... not worth it)
ThreatFire: http://www.threatfire.com/ (click free download and get the free version... paid version not worth it)
CCleaner: http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner/download

Soluto is a liar. It reported that I'd save 4 seconds but the time didn't change.






Also it is not catching application crashes.

How is your boot so fast? I have 50 applications and it takes over 2 minutes for me.

Just get a SSD, and you'll wonder how you lived without it.

Yeah, I don't think this also includes the initial boot sequence (from power on), but mine is ridiculous. I think it takes under a minute for a full restart (including shutdown/startup sequences).
Also hard drive speeds are even faster when you disable any encryption/compression/indexing on it, so that extra layer no longer exists. You also never need to defragment a Solid State, because doing so will just make it worse.

As for useful programs and features, Windows has a built-in function to alter the keyboard mapping, unfortunately it does not have any interface for it. There's a program for changing key mappings called KeyTweak, and all it does is change the Windows registry for key mappings (so no extra overhead at all). I've used it to swap my Home/End with PageUp/PageDwn since they are in weird positions on this laptop.

I have a regular 7200 RPM drive and my boot takes under 30 seconds... I wonder what it'd be like with a SSD?

Quote from Heinermann

Soluto is a liar. It reported that I'd save 4 seconds but the time didn't change.

Also it is not catching application crashes.

Your boot time isn't always 23 seconds. Even with no changes to your system, boot time can still vary by a good 20-50% or so at times.

It seems to only catch "soft" crashes like "__________ has stopped working...".

Quote from CecilSunkure

I have a regular 7200 RPM drive and my boot takes under 30 seconds... I wonder what it'd be like with a SSD?

I have a 750GB 5400RPM notebook drive and my boot is 57 seconds. With SSD it'll probably be 10 seconds or less.

How would yours be faster than mine? "10 seconds or less", I'd like to hear it.

Quote from Heinermann

How would yours be faster than mine? "10 seconds or less", I'd like to hear it.

It's an estimate based on the ratio of data throughput granted by this shitty notebook drive vs. a fast SSD like the Crucial M4.

Ok so that just means my SSD isn't very good.
BTW I was referring to Starcraft crashes when I mentioned it wasn't being caught. It worked correctly when I wrote a test application.

It won't boot in 10 seconds unless you have some odd proprietary modification or a top-secret Intel processor to go with that SSD.

And I'll vouch for Keyteak. My laptop had no media keys, so I replaced the Alt/Context/Ctrl between the space bar and the arrow keys into last song/playpause/next song.

http://forums.scatteredhorizon.com/technology/useful-programs-thread/

New iteration of this thread which I am upkeeping, because the SEN one is apparently not being updated. I changed it to contain paid programs, however, because some of the free alternatives are just unacceptably inferior.

http://puush.me/
stick that on there. I'm not going to sign up for a new forum .
The only thing dropbox has over puush is file management and storage amount.

Puush runs in the system tray. Customizable settings let you: screenshot entire screen, sceenshot active window, screenshot selected area, upload selected file. ctrl+shift 2-5 and ctrl+shift+u are the default hotkeys, though most of the time you'll be using ctrl shift 2, 4, or u.

The filenames are always incredibly tiny: something like http://puu.sh/aABc so that you can easily send a file, and once your upload is completed, the link is copied to your clipboard for instant sharing.

So it's like https://www.dropbox.com but with less space, better links, probably more bandwidth for sharing, and also that screenshot thing.
However, I believe CTRL+SHIFT+# is used in Starcraft and Starcraft II to merge your currently selected units with an existing group, is there a way to change the hotkeys?

This site looks interesting: http://camelegg.com/

They track prices of components on new egg. I believe if you sign up, you can select to watch certain products and it'll email you when the price changes.

It can also track amazon and best buy products and a few other American stores I haven't heard of.

http://www.daz3d.com/i/0/0?

Came across it while browsing HoN forums. 3D programs by a company, being released free. I'm not sure if it's for a limited time or not.

Quote from Heinermann

So it's like https://www.dropbox.com but with less space, better links, probably more bandwidth for sharing, and also that screenshot thing.
However, I believe CTRL+SHIFT+# is used in Starcraft and Starcraft II to merge your currently selected units with an existing group, is there a way to change the hotkeys?

of course.

Prezi

I'm not sure how many people will think this is cool, but I think it works great for making presentations. Mainly for school projects or something though.