Adobe Reader alternative: NitroPDF Reader 2.0

http://www.nitroreader.com

I don’t have time for a full-fledged review, but this program is pretty good.  Being a 25Mb download, the program is definitely lighter weight than the Adobe offering, well, during install, anyway!

NitroPDF Reader has gone through a UI revamp when they released 2.0 in June, and have now included a few highly-requested features such as browser integration for IE, Firefox and Chrome and an enhanced thumbnail handler to preview your PDFs.

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.

Article: Why you might need to root your Android phone

What with the success of Android in the last year, I have definitely jumped ship and am a proud flag waver for the Droid Army.  But, there’s a whole other subculture of the Android fanbase that I haven’t really been a part of…and that is of the modder community.

This is a group of Android enthusiasts that like to alter the behavior of their Android devices well beyond what the general or cellular providers ever intended.  If done by the right person, this can be implemented with great results.  Conversely, if done by someone not paying attention or who is in over their head, the device could end up being bricked.

I’ve always been a little skeptical of rooting my phone, and to be terribly honest, I didn’t even really understand the delineation between “rooting” and installing custom ROMS on the device.

Monitor your disk health: Acronis Drive Monitor

http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/drive-monitor/

Does your PC respond slowly for no apparent reason?  Are you diligent about keeping your computer clean, free of malware, etc. and yet your PC takes forever to boot up? 

There might be another reason that your computer is deathly slow: a failing hard disk.