Anyone ever use XP tools?

[lordhutt]

I was thinking of getting this:

http://www.xptools.net/index.htm

any good?

[redwudz]

It looked OK till I saw the price. Probably some good programs, but for ~$100US I can replace most of them with freeware programs.

What you should do is sit down and decide what features you need for your computer. Then see what is out there in freeware and shareware. Some programs really are the best from commercial sites. I'm thinking of PhotoShop or MS Word for example. But many freeware programs can do almost as well and at a much lower price.

It's up to you how you spend your money. I like freeware whenever it will do the job for me. I also like to send a email to the freeware authors to encourage them. Think of DVD Shrink, DVD Decrypter, VirtualDub, VLC media player and a lot of others that we would be without if not for freeware authors. Send them a donation, if possible, also. Shareware is another alternative. For a very low price you can get very good software and help out the author to keep working.

Just my opinion.

[CrayonEater]

Be real careful with any "tweak" utility - it's easy to hose your system. Even worse, some of them are trialware, and, by the time you realize something on your system is broken, the trial's expired. I fix the results of these things quite often.

[MOVIEGEEK]

Crap Cleaner and PowerToys are free and can do almost the same thing as xptools.

[ROF]

Power Toys is a great companion for WinXP. I use ClearType on my laptop all the time when using it outdoors. Much easier on the eyes. The tweak power tool is very helpful too. I never really use the other stuff but it may come in handy sometime. The sync program didn't work with my old PDA. I haven't tried my newer HP pocket PC though. I use the program included with the handheld.

[b1tchm4gn3t]

I love the image resizer powertoy and use it almost daily.