Here’s a tip on how PDFCreator can be used to help with filing expense reports. When you’re making hotel reservations or airline bookings while working remotely and without access to a local printer, you can print your reservation confirmations to PDFCreator and save them as PDFs on your computer. Now you can email the PDF version of the confirmation to someone who can print it for you and you have easy access to your invoices when it’s time to file your expense report.

In addition, Revo Uninstaller also comes bundled with other useful utilities like the Autorun Manager which let’s you enable or disable programs that autostart at Windows startup and the Junk Files Cleaner which scans and deletes temporary files that should have been deleted.

Revo Uninstaller is portable, free and with no spyware or tricks – a great productivity tool just the way we like it.

Revo Uninstaller (Look for the Portable version download link)

Why use portable apps?

Light weight. Portable applications do not require installation and therefore (normally) do not fill your registry with unnecessary junk. So one does not experience performance degradation when you add apps. Besides, portable apps are normally created to fit on USB drives so they are small and efficient.
Portable. Portability doesn’t only apply to USB drives, it also allows you to copy your apps between computers. So for instance, I keep all my portable apps in my d:\Portable folder and can easily copy that folder to other computers without needing to install the applications on the other computer. That way I can have my favorite apps on my home and work computer. By synching (see below) them up I am also able to keep all data related to the portable apps on both computers. Another nice thing about portable apps is that when you reinstall Windows or have a re-image as we often do at work, you do not need to download, install and configure your apps because they’re all self contained in your portable folder.

PStart application launcher

PStart is a simple tray tool to start user defined applications. PStart is itself a portable application and can be used to launch your portable apps similar to the Windows Start button. The nice thing about PStart is that if you copy it along with your portable apps to a USB key or other computer all the settings get copied as well. So it provides an easy way to launch your portable apps the same way on any computer.

Synchronizing portable applications between computers

I use SyncBack (look for the freeware download) for regular backups, but I also use it to synchronize my portable apps folders between computers. By scheduling a daily sync I have access to the same apps and data on my home and my work computer.

A nice side-effect of applications that are built to be portable is that they are normally not copy protected. Copy protection would defeat portability and as a result they are normally free.

You may use the program free of charge indefinitely only if
* You take at most 4 flights (2 return flights) in any 12 month period
* AND you do not own or regularly drive an SUV (sports utility vehicle).

I also like that it can be installed as a portable USB application (under Advanced Options during install).

Via Lifehacker

1) Most commercial DVDs are encrypted for copy protection;
2) There are many encoding variables (bitrates, aspect ratios etc.).

It isn’t publicized, but commercial DVDs are normally copy protected with encryption technology (including region codes) and most commercial DVD copy software does not allow users to copy protected DVDs. Without going into the legalities suggested in #1 above or the complexities suggested in #2 above, here is a free solution to copy DVD to iPod. It’s really very easy, but the first time will take a few minutes longer.

Step 1: Decrypt DVD using DVD43

1) Download and install DVD43. AnyDVD (http://www.slysoft.com/en/anydvd.html) is another option, but it’s not free.

Step 2: Rip DVD to iPod mp4 format using Handbrake

1) Download and install Handbrake (Windows GUI version)

2) In the Source section:

3) In the Destination section:

• For 1.33:1: 320 x 240
• For 1.78:1: 368 x 208
• For 2.35:1: 384 x 160

4) In the bottom section:

Step 3: Copy your mp4(s) to your iPod

Use iTunes to copy your mp4(s) to your iPod in the usual way.

Additional information

Handbrake is really a CLI (command line) tool and the GUI that is used in this post, really just builds and executes the command line instruction. In the GUI you can see the resulting command line instruction by selecting the “Query Editor” tab and hitting Generate Query Now. Now, you can go further and use this “query” to script batch copying by copying it into a .bat file (note that you will need to replace hbtest.exe in the query with hbcli.exe for it to work).

There are other free solutions like the ones below, but they seem to me to be more cumbersome. For example DVD Decryptor is a powerful DVD decryption program, but DVD43 does it on the fly. Anyway, here are other solutions you could try:
* Lifehacker.com – Alpha Geek: Copy DVDs to your iPod [using DVD Decryptor and Videora iPod Converter]
* All Things Marked – HOWTO: Convert movies to iPod format [for free] [using 3GP Converter]

If you are used to using command line tools for Copy & Paste, i.e. CTRL+C to copy and CTRL+V to paste then this little tool is a gem: You simply copy as usual using CTRL+C, but instead of using the CTRL+V hot-key to paste, you use the WINDOWS+V hot-key. (The WINDOWS key is the key with the Windows logo to the left of the [most-left] ALT key). PureText can be configured to use another hot-key combination, but the default makes sense and works for me.

PureText – plain text copy and paste app.

DiskAnalyzer Professional is a disk space analysis and cleaning software. It helps you search, monitor and clean oldest files, big size files, duplicate files, zero size files, graphics files, video files, compressed files, temporary and junk files from PC.

Besides the typical productivity type software that they give away daily, they also have a game giveaway of the day and they recently released a freeware library. I find it best to subscribe to their RSS feeds to not miss that free app opportunity.

As a side note, their site is WordPress driven and a good example of how traditional sites can be more effective when published in blog style.

There are a few Web sites that offer tools for download to remove popcorn.net, but how can you trust them? The best advice I found (and trusted) was here.

However, you can create your own VMware Windows virtual appliance or live CD if you had a windows installation CD. You really need a fresh Windows installation CD (with an unused license) to create a legal Windows VMware virtual appliance. However, you can legally create a Windows live CD from your original Windows installation CD using BartPE. But wait, you can run a live CD virtual appliance so then you do have a way to get a free WinXP virtual appliance!

Bart’s Preinstalled Environment (BartPE) is a hack of the Microsoft Windows Preinstallation Environment (Windows PE). Windows PE is only available to OEM users and BartPE’s creator was kind enough to make a (legal and more flexible) version that we all can use. Bart’s PE Builder helps you build a “BartPE” bootable Windows CD-Rom or DVD from the original Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 installation/setup CD, with a complete Win32 environment with network support.

Sudoku Portable is a an addictive puzzle game originally created in France over 100 years ago. It features a 9×9 grid containing 9 3×3 grids. Within this you arrange the numbers 1 through 9. But, each number can only appear once in each of the 9 3×3 grids. And it can only appear once in each row and on each column. It’s a simple concept, but it can get addictive quickly.

Sudoku Portable – portableapps.com