Run modern applications on not-so-modern computers

If your once zippy computer now likes to run slower than the proverbial molasses in January, it may not be your system's fault. As software is updated, there is generally an increase in its bells and whistles. This doesn't come without a cost: among other things, this often means that the amount of RAM required to run increases. Unless you're in a position to keep adding memory to your machine, you may have to just live with its new-found sluggishness. Unless you can figure out a way to convince your new version to curb its appetite, you might as well just go get another cup of coffee. Or you can try Minimem on for size.
This tool tries to help you run your apps with the smallest amount of memory possible. It does this by regularly checking which processes are actually doing something, and removing the other ones from RAM. When you need those formerly idling process back, they're just loaded again, and you're on your way. In the meantime, you've got your memory back to use for things that are really happening right now. This can help you with big apps, as well as smaller applications that may have some nasty memory leaks (it's not a bug, it's a feature). Along with helping you with not-so-optimized applications, it can also help breathe new life into your older hardware.
Minimem is free for personal use. It's a Windows application and should run under just about any flavor of Windows, although it's been tested mostly under XP.
Download Minimem

Reduce the size of attached pictures without losing too much quality using Shrink Pic

Overview:

Today's high resolution digital cameras produce multi Megabyte photos. These are great for printing but cause a heavy burden when sending over the Internet.

Shrink Pic allows you to send dozens of photos as email attachments - quickly and with no effort at all!

All you need to do is install Shrink Pic. It automatically detects when you're sending large photo files and compresses them in the background.

There's no setup, no operating instructions, nothing, nada. Just send your photos normally and Shrink Pic takes care of shrinking them.


Review:

If you have a slow internet connection sending large pictures to someone can be a pain in the ass since uploading big pictures can take awhile. But thanks to Shrink Pic this problem can be solved very easily. This program will automatically compress the size of a picture when you try to attach it to an email, blog post or when sending it trough MSN messenger. The original picture remains untouched of course since Shrink Pic makes a temporary copy of the original pic. You can select from various compression levels but the one that worked for me the most was the "medium" setting that while it reduced the size and quality of the picture a little it still managed to keep the look of the picture while reducing the size aggressively as you can see in the screenshot above. Shrink Pic only uses between 5 to 6Mb in my system which is great considering that you will probably want to keep on the system tray at all times, also you can make a portable installation from the settings menu that you will allow you to launch Shrink Pic directly from the pendrive making this a very handy tool to carry around. Shrink Pic is just great for those of you that constantly send large pictures to other people and want to keep the attachments light. Available for Windows 2000/XP/Vista.


Get it at http://www.onthegosoft.com/shrink_pic.htm