Essential Netbook Utilities for Mini-Notebooks
Since we haven’t yet received a Cease & Desist for using the netbook term, I’m celebrating with another post on the devices. Have to get them while I still can, I guess. ;) For your pre-holiday pleasure, Mobile Computer offers up their list of eight essential netbook utilities. We’ve already put together one of these lists but there’s only a little overlap on the best software for netbooks… er, mini-notebooks… or whatever you want to call ‘em.
I wouldn’t call Firefox a “utility”, but it’s number three on the list and Mobile Computer does offer a step-by-step optimization guide that’s worth a look. If you can do without extensions, I recommend Google’s Chrome browser due to simplicity and speed. FoxIt Reader is one we’ve covered before and I still stand by it as a replacement to Adobe’s offering. Launchy is nice utility as is VirtualWin which adds virtual desktops much like Spaces in OS X or Microsoft’s Virtual Desktop PowerToy. Got any must-haves for your [insert netbook synonym here]?
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On my laptop and on my netbook, I also use NovaPDF. (www.novapdf.com); not free but it is an excellent print engine. Every time I order online, i print a PDF of the final screen as a receipt and save it to a folder on my desktop. Then if opens with Foxit Reader.
It is my default printer.
It is a good addition to the list.
Wiley
NW Harris County, TX
“Utilities” I frequently use include:
Autoruns and Process Explorer from Sysinternals
Ccleaner
Recuva
Revo Uninstaller
SIW
PDF Xchange Viewer
Glary Utilities
CPU-Z
HWMonitor
JKDefrag GUI
System Explorer
All free and portable.
wileyj — I do the same, but I use the free/open source tool PDFCreator (from sourceforge)
Freeware Note Book Hardware Control adds detailed battery status, CPU % in Taskbar along with CPU temps, all with low resources pull.
I’ll just risk sounding like a broken record and mention Opera as the browser of choice. The version 10 alpha release is even faster, it does the Acid browsing test right and nobody does small-screen rendering better than Opera.
Launchy and Cooliris!
I’m not a netbook owner yet, but I have a better alternative to Adobe Reader. I used Foxit Reader for years, but I got tired of the cheesy look and feel. Plus it would never hold my place in an ebook. Now I use PDF-XChange Viewer, free tool from Tracker Software. It can be converted into an editor with their add-on. Check it out!
I have a lot of PDF music scores and play-along files. I wonder how well netbooks work with music players and slowdown software e.g. Transcribe! Protools? Anybody know?
I’ve heard good things about “Enso” for all the quicksilver fans. But I haven’t tried it.
“Mojopac” was interesting but I stopped using it in favor of some of a sync system using the apps you guys mention regularly like google docs and “glide os”.
I just found one of the most useful tools for a netbook. All of those windows and dialogue boxes that are just too big to fit the screen? Can’t see the bottom of your browser options?
http://code.google.com/p/altdrag/
AltDrag is a program that lets you move any window simply by holding ‘Alt’ and dragging anywhere inside the window. This means that you can move the window up, access the parts of that window that were hidden below the screen before, and then move it back down again. Extremely useful!