1.1.0

Sniff out wasted space

SpaceSniffer is a useful program that provides users with a graphical representation of the contents of their hard drives. Although the results can be a bit overwhelming at times, we found it to be an effective way to view exactly what is taking up space on our computer.

The program's interface is simple and intuitive. Users simply select the drive they want to scan, and SpaceSniffer sets to work analyzing its contents. The result is a mess of rectangles of different sizes that represent files and folders. A medium-size rectangle represented our application data, for example, and a smaller … Read more

Attachment tool

YouSendit Microsoft Office add-on claims to help speed the process of e-mailing documents. Though the program is incredibly easy to use, its trial limits kept us from really putting it to the test.

The program's interface reminded us of e-mail setups found with Gmail, Hotmail, and others. Help file instructions were unnecessary since its mimicry of e-mail made its layout very intuitive. However, we were never convinced that it offered a better way to send attachments than through your regular e-mail account. It's easy to use: inserting delivery e-mail addresses, creating subjects, adding messages, and including attachments are … Read more

Boxing clever game

Sliding Block Puzzle does exactly what its name implies by mimicking a favorite childhood handheld game. Its simple graphics and relatively challenging gameplay make it a perfect choice for those looking for a brief brain-teaser or a bigger challenge.

In Sliding Block Puzzle, you click and drag tiles around to move a red square from a frame. We enjoyed the design of the program's interface, which is simple but with a clean, professional look. While the commonsense directions are straightforward enough that we didn't need any additional instructions, we were nevertheless disappointed to discover that the Help file … Read more

Drivers, use caution

Driver Robot is a free utility that offers to scan your PC for incorrect and out-of-date drivers. It's also a marketing ploy designed to upsell a $30 software package and subscription to a driver database. Whether it's a scam or a lifesaver might depend on your skill level, how you use your PC, and how old your system is.

Driver Robot is one of many such utilities out there, and they have similar looks, functions, and even marketing techniques, which typically involve securing a high ranking on Google and other search sites so that you'll hit on … Read more

Mediocre crossword

Crossword Puzzle is a basic word puzzle that purports to be a twist on the classic crossword. Unfortunately, the program's weird clues and lack of options make it somewhat disappointing.

The program's interface is pleasant enough, although we immediately noticed that the program contains no options, settings, or Help file. The program displays a crossword-style puzzle, but with a twist: users can only view clues by mousing over the word in question, and doing so blacks out the rest of the puzzle. We suppose that this could add an extra challenge to the game, but we didn't … Read more

Web OS 1.1 released - ho hum

Palm pushed it's Web OS 1.1 update to me today, I had hoped for some decent improvements, but they were negligible - nice improvements, but negligible. Palm's release notes can be found on their support site ( webOS 1.1.0). CNET also gave a good overview on their news site: Palm releases WebOS 1.1 for Pre; brings back iTunes syncing. A highlight of this update and of the article is the battle that Palm is raising with iTunes regarding it's ability to sync with that application. I suspect this will be the first of many … Read more

Basic PDF conversion

This free program offers a no-nonsense approach to converting PDFs to text. While some users may want more options, Simpo PDF to Text's simple user interface will appeal to novices, and it provided a clean output.

Simpo PDF to Text's user interface is as simple as it gets. Though it does offer an online User Guide, even the most novice user will be able to jump right in without hesitation. The program doesn't offer drag-and-drop functionality, but using the basic commands in the small window, we were able to quickly add the PDFs we wanted to convert … Read more

Failed to report

This free program claims to monitor a selected folder and report any changes to that folder. Unfortunately, it offered nothing but an extremely utilitarian user interface, and an overall disappointing performance.

BeeWatcher's user interface is as plain as plain can be. The gray window houses options to browse for the folder you want to monitor, and to create a Save As file to send the monitor report. From there, check boxes let us select the events we wanted to report, such as folder changes, creations, deletions, and renaming. Below that are more specific options to select the changes we … Read more

Confusing user interface

The publisher of this utility claims that you can save any flash file with one click of the mouse. After testing it for ourselves, we had to make sure they were referring to the same program we tested, because we couldn't get it work at all.

Flashgrabber had an extremely confusing user interface that was half in German and half in English. It contained a blank, white window at the top, and a window at the bottom for displaying flash files in the browser cache. Not knowing where to go next, we clicked on the Help file, only to … Read more