These apps will help you work with files of all types -- as well as back them up and keep them secure.
For all the talk of cloud computing and tablets and smartphones, the majority of tech workers still use a PC desktop or laptop. On that front, here are 10 tried-and-tested desktop apps that soup up your Windows PC experience — whether you need help with audio, images, video, security, productivity or even backup.
Paul Mah is a freelance writer and blogger who lives in Singapore. He has worked in various capacities within the IT industry and enjoys tinkering with tech gadgets, smartphones and networking devices. You can reach Paul at paul@mah.sg and follow him on Twitter at @paulmah.
Acronis True Image
Cloud storage offerings abound, but they typically focus on protecting a single location on the storage drive, with no bare metal restore capability. For its part, Acronis True Image is full-featured data backup software that can make a full disk image of an entire system, including documents, configuration data and installed applications. It supports a variety of storage targets, including removable hard drive, optical media drive, USB storage, NAS appliances or even the company’s own cloud storage solution. To save time and storage space, the app supports both incremental and differential backups after the first full-system backup.
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Nitro Reader 3
Nitro Reader 3 is a PDF reader that offers functionality not found in most other PDF readers. The reader opens PDF files quickly and supports basic editing features such as leaving comments and typing directly into a PDF document. A QuickSign feature offers the capability to electronically sign PDF files, while the bundled Nitro PDF Creator virtual print driver lets you print PDF files from practically any Windows application. Various aspects of the resultant PDF files can be customized as well, including colors, font-embedding, page size, orientation and output quality.
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NotePad++
Tired of the built-in Notepad application that comes bundled with Windows? The free Notepad++ may be just what the doctor ordered. Originally envisioned as a powerful source code editor with features such as syntax highlighting, folding and auto-completion, the lightning speed of the lightweight text editor also lends itself as the perfect Notepad replacement. Notepad++ can detect modified files, supports line numbering and allows for zooming in and out on plain text files. Finally, the default tabbed multi-document interface makes managing multiple text files a trivial task.
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VLC Media Player
The VLC media player, often referred to simply as VLC, claimed its fame due to its capability to play video files with no codec packs needed. Fast forward a number of years, and this is still the case. The media player is lean, fast and capable of playing literally every input format that you might encounter today, including various versions of DIVX, MPEG, MP4, WMV and Real Video. All told, the free VLC download weighs in at just 22MB.
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