GADGETS
Great gadgets for your PC
The PC has revolutionised both the home and office since it came to power in the 1980’ s, but for the less technically literate they can be at best challenging and at worst frustrating to a tear-inducing level. But fear not, as Martin Bailey shares some great gadgets for your PC from his new book, The Useful Book of Gadgets, Gizmos and Apps, that’ ll keep it safe, secure and running in tip top condition.
boost once done. Piriform’ s third product, Recuva, is great for those times when you’ ve deleted a file and emptied the recycling bin, only to find that you actually needed it.
It’ ll scan your entire drive and find files that you thought were long since gone. It’ s sometimes even possible to retrieve files after a drive has been formatted and Windows reinstalled.
If you do have to go through the painful process of reinstalling Windows you’ ll know how laborious it is to download and install all those free apps – iTunes, Skype, Chrome or Firefox, DropBox etc.., let alone the rubbish that often gets installed alongside them.
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et’ s start by getting your house, or to be more specific your hard drive in order with three free tools from the same developer. Windows and your applications create thousands of temporary files over time that clutter your hard drive and simply slow it down.
Piriform
Piriform’ s( www. piriform. com) CCleaner will sift through your drive and only delete temporary files such as browser cache, log files etc. It’ ll also remove older‘ system restore points’, often freeing up several gigabytes of space in the process.
A duplicate file finder and Windows Registry cleaner are amongst some of the other utilities built in.
Once you’ re done cleaning you can boost the performance of the drive by defragmenting it. This is only suitable for older mechanical drives, not the newer SSDs which won’ t benefit from it.
Defragmenting works by moving all the files to one end of the drive and also piecing them back together, as over time Windows can break(‘ fragment’) files as it saves them in smaller free spaces on the drive. Defraggler, also by Piriform does a better job than the standard Windows Defrag tool, and if you’ ve never run it before expect it to take several hours.
You may, however, see a doubledigit speed
Ninite. com
Ninite. com is a great website that hosts dozens of free applications, providing a oneclick installation process. Just visit their website, check all of the boxes of the software you want to install and click the Download icon. You’ ll download a very small( sub 1MB) file which, when run, will silently and safely install all of your selected programs.
No adverts, no malware or browser plugins – just the software you selected. This can make a big difference in the time it takes to get you back up and running after problems, and you might even find some software here that you never knew about.
Net Spot
Next we tackle the problem of patchy WiFi. If you want to accurately create a heat map of your WiFi so that you can work out where best to place a booster then take a look at Net Spot( www. netspotapp. com).
This free app for Windows and Mac lets you walk around with a laptop while it tests and plots your signal strength in each area. You can even overlay a floorplan to get the clearest idea of the biggest problem areas.
Security is an increasing concern, yet many still use the same passwords across multiple sites. If one site gets hacked the first thing that hackers will do is try the same username and password combination on all other major online store, leaving you much more exposed.
LastPass. com A good password manager such as
LastPass. com( from free) will not only store all of your passwords but it’ ll also automatically create random long passwords as you register on new sites and( for the premium account – a worthwhile $ 12 per year) even allow you to use fingerprint recognition to log you into sites on your mobile.
Crashplan. com. Finally, if the worst happens and either your hard drive dies altogether or you get hit by the mother of all ransomware, make sure that you’ ve already subscribed to Crashplan. com.
From around £ 3 per month it’ ll silently and securely back up your files to the cloud, also keeping incremental backups. The family plan is the best value, at around £ 10 per month, as you can back up unlimited data from up to ten PCs.
Tech solutions don’ t have to cost the earth, and if you utilise one or all of these great apps your PC should give you years of worryfree service.
Martin Bailey’ s new book: The Useful Book of Gadgets, Gizmos & Apps is available from Amazon now for £ 9.99.
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