Swiss-army knife for Windows: Gizmo Central 2.7

http://arainia.com/software/gizmo/


You are an intermediate-to-advanced Windows user.  You have a tool for editing your text files, one that burns CDs/DVDs, one that mounts ISOs as disc images, and so on…

But, there is a tool that can do all of the above (well, maybe not so much the “and so on…” part) and make your life easier. 

Gizmo Central is a program that runs in your systray and allows you to quickly perform tasks that would normally be handled by a few other separate programs.  Now, it should be said that Gizmo Central isn’t a full-featured tool for all of these functions, but it serves the purpose for a good portion of what it does do.
Gizmo Central really is a set of modular components, so you can add or remove them as needed to save on memory/processor use.

Here’s a list of functions that GC can provide:

Mount disc image (replacing Alcohol 52%, Virtual CloneDrive, DeamonTools)

When I download an ISO file from a site, I would typically use Slysoft’s Virtual CloneDrive to mount and access the image as a disc.  But, now, I can simply mount it using Gizmo Central (let’s call it ‘GC’ for short, eh?), by right-clicking the ISO file > ‘Mount image’.  Easy!

The cool thing here is that you aren’t just limited to mounting ISO images.  You can also mount VHD, gdrive (Gizmo drive images), BIN, CUE, CCD, NRG, MDF/MDS and IMG files as well.

GC allows you to mount up to 10 virtual disks.  You can specify which drive letters to start with, and a nice feature I found was if you drag more than one ISO file into Gizmo, you can mount them one right after another.

Make disc image (ISO) (replacing Lucersoft, ISO Recorder, CDBurnerXP)

Making an image is just as easy. Find a folder, right-click it > ‘Create ISO from Folder.’

Burn files to disc (replacing CDBurnerXP, IMGBurn)

Same process as above – Find a folder, right-click it > ‘Burn Folder Contents…’

Color coded Text Editor (“replacing” PSPad, Notepad++)

This one is kind of nice if you want to quickly view or edit a text file and have some rudimentary highlighting going on to help you visually.  I have to say, being a scripting guy, this isn’t really enough for me, but for the casual user/viewer, it is definitely better than Notepad.  For this reason, I can’t say that it would truly replace PSPad or Notepad++, thus the quotes.  You do have the option of choosing a number of color-syntax settings, so all is not lost.

There are a number of options available once you are editing a text file, but they are all accessible via the right-click menu…instead of a handy toolbar at the top, like most editors – this causes a bit of frustration as you are constantly right-clicking to see if there is a function there that you can use instead of casually browsing the upper portion of the editor.

Database Query Analyzer

Again, another nice feature to have – it allows you to run a quick query or analyze a procedure against an ODBC/OLE compliant database connection.  I tried it out, and it is handy, but you really have to know your query language from the start.  There’s not really any syntax checking until the query is run.
I did not have the capability of running the procedure analyzer tool…

Hash checker (replacing MD5 Check)

This can quickly calculate an MD5 or SHA-1 (160) or a number of other algorithms against a specified file.  Simply right-click the file in question and you have your values!  Click on the ‘More Algorithms…’ button to retrieve additional info.

There is a nifty compare feature that will tell you if the hash values of two files match.

Dislikes

• Even though GC’s website touts the capability of running integrated scripts (gs files) on your system through its interface, I didn’t see a clear way of doing so
• Clicking on the ‘tutorial’ link from the Gizmo Central main page brought me to a 404 Central page – UPDATE: I did see a blurb on the site where they were improving the tutorials, but the actual tutorial page doesn’t say this
• Clicking the ‘Software Updates’ link gives me an error saying it could not establish a connection to the server
• Could use some more features in the text editor – TOOLBAR – but perhaps the modular nature of the software won’t allow this?

Likes

• Mounting a virtual disk file is dead easy
• The variety of disk images you can mount is decent
• Burning a disc from ISO is even easier
• Having a quick text editor built-in is handy
• Good execution of context-sensitive menus in the Windows shell

Since the program is already integrated into the shell and is advertised as a central location of useful tools, why not add ZIP capabilities ala 7-Zip or IZarc?

Overall, this isn’t a show stopper of an application, but there are some compelling reasons to have it installed.  For me, it eliminated the need to have CDBurnerXP and Virtual CloneDrive, as I do a lot of work with CD/DVD images and have the need to burn often.  Downloaders will love the hash value check tool, and DB savvy individuals will likely pass on the built-in analyzer tools as they probably have something more powerful that they would rather work with.

Download Gizmo Central here