Filed under: Windows x64

Let's start with a disclaimer: I'm strictly a Windows guy. Have never used a Mac. But I do know what Time Machine is supposed to do, and I was quite envious of my fellow Macheads when it was released. I have a serious backup fetish, and my combined backup strategy (remote + complete local mirroring) was lacking in just that one area -- intuitive versioning which stays out of your way but is there when you need it.

Thinking that there must be something similar for Windows, couple of months ago I set out in search for it. Surprisingly enough, I did not find many such solutions, and found no free ones. Nothing intuitive, anyway. But I did stumble upon Altaro's Oops!Backup. They were still beta-testing it at the time, and I thought I'd drop them a line and offer to help out. They're a very small company, and the reply I got came directly from the head honcho, David Vella. He was kind enough to let me beta-test the software, and was very responsive to my feedback.

I haven't had to rely on Oops!Backup many times, but when I did, it did not fail me. The intuitive interface shows your folder structure along with a bar along the right side of the windows which allow you to go back in time. Restores are snappy and take mere seconds even for large folders.

Oops!Backup auto-detects when you plug out the removable drive it's using, and does not make a fuss about it. When you plug the drive back in, you get a balloon popup telling you that backups are now enabled again.

Oops!Backup is normally $37.00, but we've managed to score 25 copies to hand out to Download Squad readers.



Simply leave a comment and we'll enter you into the prize draw. You have until 11:59PM EST Sunday 17th January. Full terms and conditions after the break.

Some sites are referring to Iomega's v.Clone as a backup utility, but that's not a very accurate description of what it does. Sure, it could come in handy if your system fails, but traditional methods are probably more useful to the average PC user.

What makes v.Clone interesting is the fact that it creates a VMware virtual machine from your system and then wraps it in a portable version of the Player. Take your drive anywhere and boot your v.Clone up, and you've got access to your complete desktop - apps, data, and all!

You will, of course, you'll need to have an IOmega branded drive to make the magic happen.

If your external is made by another company, you can always pull off the same thing (nearly, anyway) by using disk2vhd. VHDs can be opened by Microsoft Virtual PC and VirtualBox, so you just need one or the other installed on a PC to be able to boot your system image.

Windows 7's built-in libraries are a great way to organize information on your system. Windows 7's libraries provide a powerful addition to Explorer. They simplify file sharing, speed browsing and searching, and improve organization. Libraries are also a fantastic way to group related content regardless of where it's stored - especially if you suck at maintaining a logical folder setup like me.

They could, however, be a little easier to manage. As is so often the case, when something can be done more easily on Windows a developer steps in to make it so.

Enter Win7 Library Tool, a handy, free application which acts as a central management console for your libraries. Just about anything you need to adjust can be done with the Tool - adding additional folders to existing libraries, changing the default save location, changing icons, creating new libraries and deleting unneeded ones, and more.

The Tool also allows you to save entire configuration sets to a file - useful if you're pondering a reformat and want to make sure your library setup survives the procedure. Just save your current set and re-load using the tool and you're good to go!

[via Addictive Tips]

I'm not sure when the last time was that I needed to dig through my start menu. Between the Windows 7 Super Bar and the search box Vista added, there are just easier ways for me to find and launch programs.

Still, for some of my customers, friends, and family, the newer menus are just a distraction. They were fine with Windows XP's interface, and they might not want to be bothered learning something different -- no matter how many times I try to convince them it's an improvement.

If you're like me and will be getting phone calls and IMs from people asking you how to get their old menu back, do yourself a favor: download Classic Shell.

It's compatible with both 32 and 64-bit Windows 7, and it's just the thing to turn back the clock on the Windows menu. Apart from that, it also includes an optional classic Explorer toolbar which can put back the missing cut/copy/paste buttons and the file/edit/view/tools menu bar.

While it's still tagged as a beta release, Classic Shell worked nicely on both my 64-bit Windows 7 laptops and my son's 32-bit version.

[via How-To Geek]

Task Manager is an extremely handy tool, but it does lack a few features that would make it even more useful. Say, for example, the ability to control + click or shift + click to quickly select multiple processes you want to terminate.

Like so many tiny omissions in Windows, there's a free utility which steps in nicely to add that missing functionality.

Spacetornado Killer is a tiny (44KB) portable application with a single purpose - to kill a group of processes in as few clicks as possible. Say I wanted to make all those Chrome.exe's over there. Click the top one, hold shift, click the bottom one, and then press F4. Nice! No confirmations to get in the way, just processes-whacking goodness.

To do the same thing in Task Manager would have taken more than two dozen clicks.

This is a great app for lazy efficiency-minded technicians to keep handy on a USB flash drive.

Opera have released version 10 of their browser, now with Opera Unite and Opera Turbo included.

Opera Unite gives your web browser the ability to deliver content as well as consume it. The standard download includes a number of Unite applications, with more available for download from the application directory. The bundled applications include a file sharing server that allows you to make files available to the world (as well as allowing the world to upload content to your machine), a virtual fridge door for you to share notes with friends and family (pictured), a media player that allows you to play content from your Unite equipped machine remotely, an instant messaging server, a photo sharing application and a web server for serving your own web content.

The inclusion of Opera Turbo in the new browser marks the migration to the desktop of a technology that has long been a key feature of Opera's Mini product. Opera Turbo speeds up your browsing session by compressing content at Opera proxy servers before delivering it to your machine - particularly useful for those on low bandwidth connections.

Opera 10.10 is available free from www.opera.com for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

We're intrigued to hear what you, our lovely readers, think about Opera's advancements. They have an excellent, solid browser base and some truly unique additional features... are you tempted to make the switch?

It doesn't happen often, but every now and then I receive a customer's laptop which just doesn't want to believe it's no longer attached to an external monitor. And it never fails - some important app is going to appear in the display Twilight Zone.

If only there was some kind of digital shepherd to corral those errant windows. Hey, if not a shepherd, why not SheepDog?

It's a tiny, portable application whose sole purpose is to bring apps that have wandered back to the primary display. Fire it up, and the tray icon listens for a hotket combination to be pressed. In the options screen you can customize your key combo and also change the system tray icon.

Hit the hotkey (or right click the system tray icon and select reposition) and any offending application windows are instantly moved.

At only 20Kb, this baby is going straight on my USB flash drive with all the other handy utilities I need once in a blue moon.

Panda Cloud Antivirus is one of the more talked about releases of 2009. Its new spin on the traditional antivirus model -- like many new programs which embrace cloud computing -- has been met with both praise and criticism. Panda themselves are bullish on Cloud AV, and I was fortunate enough to speak about it with CEO Juan Santana and Senior Research Advisor Pedro Bustamante.

To Santana and Bustamante, Panda's beta testing period was huge success. One way they measured is by taking a look at what Collective Intelligence -- the remote muscle powering Cloud AV -- has processed so far. "Right now, there is about 25 terabytes of data in the Collective Intelligence database," said Santana.

"About 60% of that," he continued, "is malware. We're receiving about 120,000 new files a day, of which 60-70,000 are malicious." In total, Collective Intelligence has processed more than 80 million files so far and generates about 150 gigabytes of log files per day.

On top of that, Cloud AV scored an impressive 99.4% detection rate in a recent round of testing. That figure put it ahead of free favorites like Avira, Avast, AVG, and even Microsoft's new Security Essentials.