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Windows has hundreds of thousands of programs. Because of this great volume and lack of a central store, software discovery (aka finding new and useful programs) is extremely difficult. With our Windows Software of the Day initiative, dotTech aims to change that. Everyday we post three programs, allowing our readers to discover new software, daily. Enjoy! [Subscribe to our Windows section to never miss an article: RSS Feed | E-mail]
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Software for April 3, 2012
Open Hardware Monitor
Often computers, especially laptops, love to overheat. In fact, my previous laptop died probably due to overheating so often. That’s why it’s often critical to keep an eye out for what temperatures your computer is running at.
Open Hardware Monitor scans your system for its hardware and, when possible, displays voltage and temperature information. If it doesn’t work with all of your hardware, don’t worry! The developer is always working to include more hardware in it and releases updates every few months.
Open Hardware Monitor is a great little program for keeping track of your hardware and making sure it doesn’t overheat.
Price: Free!
Version discovered: v0.4.0 beta
Supported OS: Windows XP/VIsta/7, Linux (any)
Download size: 254KB
Malware scan: VirusTotal scan results 0/43
Open Hardware Monitor homepage
Ext2Fsd
Many people do not know the pain of accessing files from one operating system on another. While the pain has gradually gone down in recent years starting with the backward engineering of NTFS so it could be supported on Linux, reading your Linux partitions (like ext2, ext3, and ext4) hasn’t ever really worked well.
Ext2Fsd is another open source tool with the goal of allowing you to mount your ext* partitions in Windows. As you can see to the left, I’ve mounted my Ubuntu partition as Y: and can use it like any other partition. The only missing features are one-off things like the ability to defragment.
Price: Free!
Version discovered: v0.51
Supported OS: Windows XP/Vista/7
Download size: 1.0MB
Malware scan: VirusTotal scan results 1/43
MD5sums
Today I tried to download a file on six different devices ten different times. Each time, it wouldn’t work. Each time, I thought I’d done something wrong. If I had ever bothered to stop and take an md5 sum, I’d have instantly noticed that the file was hosted wrong and wrongly downloaded each time across each device.
To use MD5sums, just drag a file onto md5sums.exe. A console window will pop up that shows the MD5 sum as soon as it’s calculated. It’s really that simple!
Price: Free!
Version discovered: v1.2
Supported OS: Windows (all)
Download size: 28.1KB
Malware scan: VirusTotal scan results 0/43
dotTechies: We have tested all the software listed above. However, Windows Software of the Day articles are not intended as “reviews” but rather as “heads-up” to help you discover new programs. Always use your best judgement when downloading programs, such as trying trial/free versions before purchasing shareware programs, if applicable.
About the author: Locutus View all posts by Locutus
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15 Comments »
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I keep a cake rack under my laptop. It lets the air circulate so my pc doesn’t overheat. Cheap, low-tech solution for the heat problem and so far [two years doing so], works for me and keeps the electric bill down, too. Hope this tip helps somebody.
Open Hardware Monitor
Does not require Installation (love that)
Open Hardware Monitor required the .NET Framework…
The link for MD5SUMS isn’t working for me. Surely it can’t be just me? Even tried copy/paste into address bar, no luck. Dang! I really wanted that too, & now I’ll probably forget tomorrow. ( Hi, Ashraf! Thanks for all you do! And the team, too. ) :)
MD5sums is so over my head, it is making my head hurt. I see I still have a lot more learning to do. What is the laymen terms for what it does?
What does “hosted wrong” mean?
@Ildar:
I used to be a fan of MS, because in the early days they were introducing order amongst the chaos of other Computer types and OS’s.
I have been using VB6 (actually VB4, VB5 and then VB6) for over 15 years.
I was still a fan of MS during half of those years.
Then they abandoned VB6 (with malice), and introduced VB.NET (a few versions)
I am no longer a fan of MS, and I will never use VB.NET for programming.
Now after reading all that, you would think I agree with you.
But I have no problems using programs that require the NET framework on my PC.
@ebony:
It’s ok, Ebony, few others really do either. What it does is check a download to make sure it has all the download there. So it catchs a partial download or a corrupt download & lets you know. It doesn’t do it automatically, you have to run it & indicate what download to check. Don’t try to understand how it does what it does. :) As long as it does it’s job, that’s all that matters. :) Even programmers & techs don’t know everything. They have specialties just like doctors. :)
@ebony: See below, please. I put my reply in the wrong place. “hosted wrong” I don’t understand either. :)
@Skye-hook: IT WORKS now! Yay! If you fixed it, many thanks! :) OR maybe their site was down for a few. Locutus, thanks so much for these softwares! I LOVE this new project!
@Skye-hook: Thank you for responding and making me ROFL. I will take your word for what you say it does. I will stand clear of this one. hehehe
Please update the RSS feed for this to include the actual software names on offer, not the canned blurb on ‘Windows software of the day ‘. That is the purpose of RSS feeds to remove the need to visit a page in the first place.
–Andrew
@The Borg: Tell me about it! I follow tons of websites using RSS and dotTech is one of the few that still does that. I’ll talk to Ashraf to see what I can do, perhaps we can use the MORE tag.
Thanks for the feedback!
Locutus
@ebony: There’s a really good description of it on it’s webpage, you might want to check on. I myself have never needed to use it much, maybe twice in 20 years. But if you ever need it, it’s around. :)
@Locutus: That would be great, Locutus! The daily email page needs it also. It would help so much to know if it’s worth the effort of clicking that day. So, thanks! :)
@The Borg: Interesting. I’d like to keep the blurb at the top but I can see your point of wanting to see name of software in RSS and not the same blurb each time. I believe there is a plugin for that. I’ll talk to Locutus about it. Hey wait a second… xD