Use time-saving applications

Computers were invented to get things done more quickly, but sometimes they just seem to slow you down. With the right applications at your fingertips, however, common tasks such as resizing large pictures, copying huge files and renaming badly tagged music files can become a doddle again. We’ve put together a list of our favourite time-saving applications that can help speed up not just these tasks, but with a whole load of other ones too.

Start you favourite applications faster
Launchy makes the process of launching your favourite applications much faster than normal. Instead of browsing through the Start Menu for commonly used programs, with Launchy you hit a predefined key, type the first few letters of the application name to view a list of matched programs and hit Enter to launch the one you want. Click here to download Launchy.

Quickly edit or resize pictures
Irfanview is the Swiss army knife of image-manipulation utilities. You can view, convert, scan and print photos and other image files. One of the big benefits of Irfanview is that it supports a large number of image formats, so no matter what type of image file you find on the web, Irfanview can usually view and edit it. Click here to download Irfanview.

Speed up large downloads
If you download large files using just your web browser, they trickle along at a slower speed than your broadband connection can really handle. A download manager like Free Download Manager (FDM) splits the requested file into several sections and downloads them all at the same time, allowing you to get the maximum performance from your broadband. Click here to download FDM.

Tidy up your messaging contacts
Instant messaging (IM) is a great way to keep in contact with friends and family, but different people use different services: some might be on AOL’s AIM, others may use Microsoft’s Live Messenger or IRC.
Instead of switching between several different IM programs, you can just use Pidgin instead. It’s a great application that gives access to all your IM accounts simultaneously from within the same program.
Click here to download Pidgin.

Find files and folders faster
Can’t remember where you put the file you were working on last week, or need to find an email that you received a couple of months ago? Google Desktop is the answer. It brings the power of Google’s search technology to your own files, folders, emails and applications so you can find things in seconds.
It’s particularly useful if you’re still using Windows XP, as XP’s own built-in search feature is not very accurate. Click here to use Google Desktop.

Fix badly labelled music files
When your MP3 files have missing or incomplete artist and album information it makes it harder for programs like Windows Media Player and iTunes to catalogue them properly. However, editing this information for lots of music tracks is usually a labour-intensive task as you have to type in all the information by hand. Picard bypasses this by using digital fingerprinting technology to compare your MP3s with the fingerprints stored in an online database. This means that it can automatically re-label your tracks even if they contain no tagging information. Click here to download Picard.