HDDlife.

Here is one of my rare utility promotions - it's the way my life goes but one thing is certain... if I blog about it then I like it. Anyway the heading says it all I guess. HDD, as in Hard Disk Drive and life as in, well life !!! The companies website front page tag line says it all - HDDlife is the protection of your personal information. In short, this little utility sits there using minimal resources and in it's most basic form will report on the life of your hard drve. It does this using S.M.A.R.T technology built into all modern drives be they SCSI, IDE or ATA.

What in a nutshell does it do then I hear you ask?
It advises on the 'health' of your hard drive. Using the above mentioned technology it determines the likeliness of your hard drive failing and advises you with clear simple graphs. It will also do simple benchmarking, advise on your drive filling up and so on.

What doesn't it do?
It doesn't fix your drives if they have a problem; it doesn't protect your data or back it up. All it purports to do, and so far do it well, is to give a clear graphical idea of if your hard drive is likely to fail.

So, for a simple - yes I keep saying that - utility that takes minimal resources that can give you a good indicator of your hard drives time on this earth then, for me at least, it is a no brainer to purchase. And at $29 for a single license it won't break the bank.

So give me the low down then .....
Fly over here to HDDLife and grab yourself a trial copy.

I guess, if I have to, there is one downside .... the trial version is for 14 days but it doesn't save any settings and after a reboot you will need to reset any choices and the popups can be very annoying. But then I guess something this simple and this good should be registered soonest to remove the annoyance. Go on, give them a try.

Learn details about HDDlife
Publish your opinion in your blog and get a license for free!

Mac AppZapper

I have a Mac - I am not a diehard PC fan ..... but them nice Mac folks forgot an App Uninstaller, so here's one that will be free if enough people link to it.

If not, it'll just be cheaper than usual .... anyway, here's my link http://maczot.com/

Oh and least I forget, don't bother after April 3rd .....

Stress Bunnies

My posting back on Nov 6th seems to have been quite accurate - I mentioned that I'd asked an innocent and genuine question and ever since it would seem that this person has been seething and probably stressing about it all. Whilst I don't agree with his work ethic I do like him as a person, so I've offered via my go-between, that if it helps him to get over my supposed insult then I'll buy him a pint - lets see if this calms him down as I know he likes his alcohol.

Digg It Man

As in Digg.com has been around since November of 2004 and is now regarded as one of the places to go for technology news. In their own words ...

Digg is a technology news website that combines social bookmarking, blogging, RSS, and non-hierarchical editorial control. With digg, users submit stories for review, but rather than allow an editor to decide which stories go on the homepage, the users do.

So what makes this so different to other technews sites such as /.? Good question and simply put it is user power that decides what stories float to the top or in print terms make it to the front page. If a story is irrelevant, not tech based or quite simply just plain sucks then it doesn't get Dugg by its members and will not appear on the front page. There is hotly debated comments system which allows for individuals to post their opinions on the story presented and once you become a member, any story you Digg can be cross-posted to your own blog. The stories are presented as headlines with a brief snippet of the opening lines and a click on the headline takes one off to the source of the entry - usually a blog or news site that was first 'spotted' as carrying the story.

If you haven't discovered Digg yet, then I heartily recommend you wander on over and start excavating.