{"id":827,"date":"2011-03-18T17:40:52","date_gmt":"2011-03-18T21:40:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/?p=827"},"modified":"2011-03-18T17:40:52","modified_gmt":"2011-03-18T21:40:52","slug":"freeware-pick-of-the-week-3182011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/freeware-pick-of-the-week-3182011\/","title":{"rendered":"Freeware pick of the week 3\/18\/2011"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I tell you what, when it comes to \t\t\t\tsmart close, you can’t beat EB. You should see her new spring \t\t\t\thouse dress! Now that looks smart; a snappy dresser is she. Oh, \t\t\t\tdid we misspell clothes? Sorry… <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

There are times when you need to \t\t\t\tinstall an important program – and you need to make sure that it \t\t\t\tinstalls correctly – that means taking no prisoners – er I meant \t\t\t\ttaking no chances. If you have an important program to install, \t\t\t\tlike say a new antivirus program, MS Office, or some bloated \t\t\t\tMicrosoft program, it’s best to close all running programs so \t\t\t\tthat you don’t get halfway through the installation only to get \t\t\t\ta message that such and such file is in use and the installation \t\t\t\tprogram will now close. This is bad. Real bad. Sometimes \t\t\t\tinstallers won’t rollback the stuff they’ve installed leaving \t\t\t\tdebris lying around inside your pristine computer. Not good at \t\t\t\tall.\u00a0 Plus, it wastes your time.\u00a0 In fact, most program \t\t\t\tinstallers recommend closing all running programs before running \t\t\t\tit. It’s wise advice to heed – but not for every program but \t\t\t\tfor those large, intensive programs which will be installing \t\t\t\tlots of dlls and other files and making changes to your system \t\t\t\tconfiguration – such as anti-virus software, anti-spyware \t\t\t\tprograms, office programs, security suites, and the like.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>Another reason you might want to run SmartClose – it will \t\t\t\tmake your system shutdown time faster. Windows has to close all \t\t\t\trunning programs, tasks, etc. before it can shut down. This is \t\t\t\tirritating when you just want to reboot – and you have to wait \t\t\t\tfor five minutes for Windows to shut down. What do you think \t\t\t\tWindows shows that “Windows is shutting down…” screen for? \t\t\t\tIt’s covering up its dastardly deeds – shutting down stuff that \t\t\t\tis still running. Using SmartClose to close down all running \t\t\t\tprograms give your shutdown a boost. Windows won’t have so much \t\t\t\tto worry about – you’ll be helping out!<\/p>\n

<\/span>Before we go \t\t\t\toff on yet another InfoAve tirade, we’re going to bring the \t\t\t\tdeveloper in to bring logic to this disorder and to explain his \t\t\t\tprogram concisely and clearly as only a developer can do. OK Mr. \t\t\t\tDeveloper, take it away, dude:<\/span><\/p>\n

“Many tasks \t\t\t\tthat can be performed on PC’s these days require you to close \t\t\t\tall running programs. For example, almost every \t\t\t\tinstaller asks you to close all other applications to minimize \t\t\t\tconflicts and to avoid replacing in-use files. Other high-end \t\t\t\ttasks, such as burning CD’s and defragmenting or scanning hard \t\t\t\tdrives can slow down or even fail when other processes ‘kick \t\t\t\tin’, like background programs, the screen saver or a scheduled \t\t\t\ttask. Of course, you can manually exit each program one by one, \t\t\t\tdisable the screen saver\u2026 That is when SmartClose comes in! \t\t\t\tSmart Close will automatically close all running programs, \t\t\t\tdisable the screen saver and halt all other processes that can \t\t\t\tinterrupt without asking. But what when you have finished the \t\t\t\ttask that required you to use SmartClose and you want to restore \t\t\t\tthe programs and such that were disabled by SmartClose? Restart \t\t\t\tthe computer? No, because before SmartClose closes or disables \t\t\t\tanything, it will first save the current state of the system \t\t\t\t(running programs, screen saver\u2026) to a ‘system snapshot’, that \t\t\t\tcan later be opened and restored again by SmartClose….”<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Cloudeight<\/span><\/p>\n

SmartClose \t\t\t\thas many other features too. If you’re interested in learning \t\t\t\tmore about all of the features of SmartClose or you would like \t\t\t\tto download SmartClose- \t\t\t\t visit the SmartClose Web site<\/a>. It’s a terrific little \t\t\t\tprogram – and a very useful one too. That’s why we’ve chosen \t\t\t\t SmartClose as our freeware pick of the week<\/a>. <\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>*Windows Vista and 64bit Windows \t\t\t\tusers please note:<\/p>\n

On x64 (64-bit) versions of Windows, \t\t\t\tSmartClose will not be able to retrieve the command-line \t\t\t\targuments or working directory of 64-bit processes, nor will it \t\t\t\tbe able to kill these processes. Lucky for you – you don’t have \t\t\t\tmany 64-bit programs because there aren’t that many available.<\/p>\n

Another limitation is that the current version of SmartClose \t\t\t\tdoesn’t properly recognize Internet Explorer 7 (or higher) \t\t\t\twindows containing multiple tabs. Such windows will be closed, \t\t\t\tbut only one of its tabs will be saved to the snapshot and \t\t\t\trestored. On Windows Vista, SmartClose will not be able to see \t\t\t\tInternet Explorer windows at all if User Account Control (UAC) \t\t\t\tis enabled.<\/p>\n

The scoop:<\/p>\n

SmartClose<\/a><\/strong>
\nWindows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7
\n32bit and 64 bit*
\nWhat is it? A program to kill all running programs
\nDownload size: 629 KB<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I tell you what, when it comes to smart close, you can’t beat EB. You should see her new spring house dress! Now that looks smart; a snappy dresser is she. Oh, did we misspell clothes? Sorry… There are times when you need to install an important program – and you need to make sure that it installs\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[611,82,613,612,610],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=827"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":829,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827\/revisions\/829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}