Winoptimizer 11 Review: Everything you need to tune up your PC under one roof

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Winoptimizer 11 $40.00 Though you can do much of what it does with free utilities and Windows apps, Winoptimizer is far more efficient and better at most of it.

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I’m always suspect of programs that claim to make Windows run faster. Windows 7 and 8 don’t need a lot of help in that regard, and in the past some optimizers have messed up my system. But darn if Ashampoo’s Winoptimizer 11 doesn’t provide some facilities that made my system run faster, albeit by a small margin. But even a small margin is welcome, and the program gathers a ton of useful features under one roof, facilitating an easy tweaking and optimizing experience—something you might not get around to if you stuck with the myriad freebies.

At the heart of most optimization programs like Winoptimzier 11 is a garbage collector that removes the drek (unused files and registry entries) left over from old software installs, temporary files forgotten by Windows or applications, and software caches. I use Piriform’s CCleaner regularly to remove the aforementioned drek left over from software testing. Windows 7 and 8 are far more stable after software removal than XP was, but I still clean stuff out because it will start bogging down a system after a while. Winoptimizer 11 did as good a job as CCleaner and is far more educational about what it’s actually removing. Put bluntly, Winoptimizer 11 is the better of the two, but it’s $40 and CCleaner is available for free. (Current Winoptimizer users can upgrade for $19.99.)

Winoptimizer11's modules are myriad and all available separately, as well as being employed in combination by the program's various wizards.

No Windows optimizer would be complete without a disk defragger and Winoptimizer 11’s DeFrag 3 is top-notch. As of the introduction of NTFS, defragging isn’t as beneficial as it once was, but a defrag of your hard drives once every year or so can make a slight difference. (Note: Do not defrag SSDs. It offers no benefit and reduces lifespan.)

Winoptimizer 11 has a host of other tools. Some such as file wiping, splitting, joining, encryption and decryption; duplicate file finding; and registry defragging are very handy and not available within Windows. Some duplicate Windows functionality, like the font manager, program uninstaller, and process and service managers. However, having them all in one place can be a real time saver. Most are also just a touch easier and more capable than their Windows counterparts. Also, unlike the built-in Windows utilities, there’s an undo for most actions found under the heading of backups. And it’s not just for the last action, there’s a list of changes you’ve made over time.

Winoptimizer 11 also provides a nice tweaking utility so you can customize many aspects of Windows, including Aero behavior, as well as the behavior of common applications such as Outlook, Mail, etc. There is a real-time gaming booster that shuts down unnecessary processes while a game is running and restarts them when you’re finished, as well as a live tuner that optimizes memory and application priorities. The first I can see as being possibly handy, the latter is one of those tasks I’d rather leave to Windows. To be honest, I didn’t notice a real difference with either running.

One speedup that did have a noticeable effect was the number of simultaneous HTML connections in browsers. Increasing these, as Winoptimizer 11 decided to do with its main optimize wizard (you can access modules separately), had a definite positive effect on the speed with which Web pages loaded. Especially those with lots of embedded content (ads, pictures, video, etc.) relayed from other sites.

Winoptimizer 11 is a very comprehensive set of Windows utilities that works very, very well. The $40 price tag might seem a tad steep when its functionality can be largely duplicated manually (with a large set of the proper knowledge), and with freebies such as CCleaner and the Windows defragger. However, the convenience of everything under one roof, and the ability to tweak Windows without being tech-savvy, will be well worth it for many users. There’s a trial. Kick the tires.

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Ventrilo review: The essential comms tool for the PC gamer

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Ventrilo This robust VoIP program keeps you connected to your gaming buddies in multiplayer games.

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In the heat of battle, there's one tool that trumps all. No, it's not your customizable mouse or the fancy keyboard with 100 different macro keys. It's communication.

Ventrilo takes the guesswork out of what your friends are doing in-game by providing a lightweight voice over IP program to stay in constant contact.

Ventrilo comes with a robust amount of options, but you may have to dig to find them.

Despite being completely free to download and use, Ventrilo come with a barrier to entry: You, or someone you know, must rent a server to use. Luckily, renting a 10-20 user server will generally cost less than $50 per year. If you're tight on cash, you'll be pleased to know that Ventrilo does allow you to set up your own server for up to eight people at no charge. Without an active server, though, Ventrilo becomes pretty useless.

When you open Ventrilo for the first time, it offers an online tutorial to run you through the basics of connecting to a new server. This includes creating a new profile, complete with teaching the program to say your username phonetically. In order to add a server, you'll need some very specific information from it, such as the hostname or IP address, port number, and password (if one exists).

Ventrilo separates channels into games and sub-sections. Useful, but not pretty.

Once in the server, hosts and admins can create or organize rooms,  which are great for separating players in specific games and keeping each stream of chatter where it belongs. Ventrilo supports a great deal of custom configuration for the player as well, such as letting players choose when to play notification alerts, letting them set up custom key bindings, and allowing them to select user-specific volume levels.

Communication can also be done via an integrated chat interface. No matter what channel you're in, you can join the chat and communicate via text, complete with text-to-speech as a checkable option. You also have the option to leave comments on your username to display your status (away from the keyboard, waiting to play, etc) and include a URL.

Despite being so robust and useful, especially for games that don't include integrated VoIP, Ventrilo is dull and lacks a user-friendly interface. A plain white window with endless branching menus and buttons can overwhelm the less tech-savvy, who will undoubtedly miss out on the many features Ventrilo hides away in embedded menus. Fortunately, you don't need all those options to use Ventrilo effectively.

The program is light on system resources, but it can be a connection hog at times. Latency can spike causing delayed voices or missed transmissions all together. It is recommended you use a stable, strong connection before investing your multiplayer communications into Ventrilo.

Ventrilo's integrated chat window will even talk to you via text-to-speech.

Ventrilo may not be the prettiest communication tool of all time, but it is one of the most robust and stable. I've been using Ventrilo for years and have yet to explore the deepest trenches of the options. Luckily, you don't have to dive deep to get the most out of it. It's just nice those endless options are included. For those who don't want the hassle, it's simple to use and effective for the gamers who want to get the job done.

Note: The Download button takes you to the vendor's site, where you can download the latest version of the software appropriate to your system.

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Review: f.lux makes your computer usable at night

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If you're reading this late in the day, pause to consider your eyes. Can you feel that familiar sting that comes from looking at a glaring LCD for too many hours? That's only the most noticeable symptom of what happens to our bodies when we spend hours staring into what's essentially a big, bright, lamp. F.lux is a simple and free app that helps fix this.

f.lux knows what time the sun sets wherever you are.

Turning down your monitor's brightness may help, but brightness isn't really the main issue: Color temperature is, and that can be trickier to adjust. Most computer screens emit bluish light that looks good in daytime, but becomes uncomfortable to look at in a dark room. It can also affect your sleep: Research suggests that reading on a tablet for two hours before bedtime can delay your sleep by about an hour.

F.lux helps by asking you where you're located in the world, then figuring out the approximate sunset time for your location. Come sunset, your screen will mimic nature, gradually warming up the colors and blending in much better with the surrounding light. You basically get your own private mini-sunset, ending up with a screen that's nice to look at.

f.lux now lets you adjust your monitor's brightness with keyboard shortcuts.

This basic functionality—tuning your screen's color temperature according to time of day—has been part of f.lux for years now. A recent version adds some new bells and whistles: You can now change your screen's brightness using Alt+PgUp and Alt+PgDn. This isn't exciting if you use a laptop, but for a desktop user like me, it's a great feature.

Another new feature is the so-called Darkroom Mode. Whereas the normal f.lux effect just warms up your colors, Darkroom Mode completely takes over your display, shading everything in dark, reddish hues. This makes videos unwatchable, but also means you can probably use your computer at 3am without losing your night vision.

You can dial in your own nighttime color temperature to suit your environment.

Since we don't all work with the same ambient lighting, f.lux lets you dial in a color temperature for nighttime. It uses Kelvin notations (commonly used for color temperatures), but also offers human-readable explanations ranging from "Ember" (1200k) to "Sunlight" (5000k).

All of these color changes are great, unless you happen to be trying to watch a movie. That's where Movie Mode comes in: This mode tones down the color effects for 2.5 hours, to let you watch a movie without having everything tinged red. You can also completely disable f.lux for one hour (for doing color-sensitive work such as photo editing), or until the next morning.

F.lux was a very good app to begin with, and this release only makes it better. If you're not using it yet, but do use your computer at night, you really should try it out today.

Note: The Download button takes you to the vendor's site, where you can download the latest version of the software.

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Review: WinZip 18 stays light on its feet with new Express add-ons

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Software grows. That's almost an axiom: As time goes by, more and more features appear... a little bell here, an extra whistle there, and you end up with a behemoth weighed down by its own bloat. WinZip is no stranger to this phenomenon, but its new version 18 fights the trend with new optional add-ons that let you get stuff done without even opening the main WinZip window.

The new WinZip Express add-on isn't flashy, but is clear and useful.

The most useful add-on is one you can get for free: WinZip Express for Explorer. Once installed, it shows up in Explorer's right-click menu. Select a bunch of files, and click Zip and Share (WinZip Express). A simple dialog instantly appears. Its plain looks modestly conceal its power: This one dialog effectively replaces the big WinZip window for most users.

The WinZip Express dialog lets you zip your files in one of two formats, and optionally encrypt either; convert them to PDF; resize and watermark images; and share the resulting archive over email, social media, a cloud storage service, or just put it somewhere on your local machine.

Other Express add-ons include Express for Photos, Express for Outlook, and Express for Sharepoint. Each of them requires the full version of WinZip 18 (either $30 Standard or $50 Pro) to be installed, and of course, you're going to need Microsoft Outlook installed if you want to use Express for Outlook. Unfortunately, the only add-on that comes free with WinZip (Standard or Pro) is the aforementioned WinZip Express, and that too is free for a limited time only. All other add-ons cost $10 and are available from WinZip.com as individual downloads.

The Ribbon is still here, and the main interface is as beefy as ever.

Looking past the add-ons, WinZip 18 can talk to Box, CloudMe, Dropbox, Google Drive, SkyDrive, and a host of other services. It presents one interface for them all. The main WinZip window retains in Ribbon interface and its large array of features, with a few minor changes to the way items are ordered in the Ribbon. WinZip Pro also adds a cloud-backup option, but it still isn't as full-featured as a dedicated service such as CrashPlan.

All in all, WinZip 18 is not a revolutionary release, but the Express add-ons take it in an interesting direction: Suddenly, newer doesn't necessarily mean larger. Now if only they were included in the main product's price.

Endlessly tweaking his workflow for comfort and efficiency, Erez is a freelance writer on a mission to discover the simplest, coolest, and most effective software and websites to make tomorrow happen today.
More by Erez Zukerman

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ConnectedText 6 review: Personal wiki adds long-requested features

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ConnectedText 6 $40.00 If you've used and liked older versions of ConnectedText, this upgrade is well worth it. If you think you might need a personal wiki, check out the trial.

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Offline personal wiki tool ConnectedText is ideal for college students, researchers, writers, and anyone else who needs the ability to mix freeform text with keywords and structure, or to perform queries and aggregations based on arbitrary criteria. The new version 6 adds long-needed enhancements to content aggregation, display, and searching.

At long last, you can open multiple views of the same project in ConnectedText.

With ConnectedText ($40. 30-day free trial), you create projects composed of topics. Editing a topic requires toggling into edit mode and using a simple markup language that rapidly becomes second nature. Flipping out of edit mode renders the topic according to a style sheet. Those who know CSS can edit the style sheet or enhance it in many ways, but I've found the default to be perfectly fine.

Enclosing any word or phrase in brackets marks a link. Click the link to create a topic (if it exists already, you just jump to it). This makes content creation highly dynamic, for people who tend to think while they write. At the same time, those with more organized minds can create a topic fully, then go back and mark up keywords that deserve topics of their own.

The built-in browser lets you drag URLs into your topic.

Flexibility is a watchword in ConnectedText. You can use attributes, categories, and properties to organize or find topics, or rely on full text queries. You can create very long topics, or split information into dozens of small topics, which can then be displayed as a single large topic by using queries or by explicitly including a set of topics, or both.

ConnectedText 6 adds a new feature named "blocks." You can surround a block of text with tags to give it a name, then include this block, by name, in another topic—or all blocks with the same name. For example, you might have many topics which all contain some text relevant to "London". You can enclose those blocks in the "London" tag, then create another topic which shows all the blocks with that name (or only the blocks with that name, which also appear in a topic in the category "England", or a wide range of other options.)

ConnectedText allows you to view your project as a web of connections.

For any given project, you can only have one editing window, but you can now open multiple views into a single project in floating windows. This much-needed enhancement makes working with large projects much easier. Anyone who has used ConnectedText extensively would probably find this feature alone worth the upgrade.

There are many other enhancements as well, such as a "trash can" to allow recovery of deleted topics, and the usual round of bug fixes and small upgrades.

ConnectedText is not intended for group or online use. Its primary audience is individual users who manage a lot of non-tabular information (though clever use of properties, attributes, and queries can produce an approximation of a structured database, doing so is like using a screwdriver as a hammer). As a consequence, it really shows its strength in how many ways it offers to present, organize, and collate disparate bits of information, and the features in ConnectedText 6 play to those strengths.

If you prefer, you can view your project as an ordered tree.

A 30-day trial with no feature limitations (just a watermark and a startup reminder) should provide anyone curious about the potential of ConnectedText to test it thoroughly.

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Soundodger+ Review: A much different—much better—way to play your music

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I’ve never understood dance. I don’t just mean I’m bad at dancing—though that is also true. I mean I don’t get it. Where other people see expression, grace, artistry, I see arms, legs, people jumping into the air and kicking. I see the various parts that make up “dance,” I just fail to grasp the larger intent.

Occasionally I can snag some small piece of understanding. I have been known, in the wee hours of the night when Bob Seger's Night Moves comes on the bar jukebox, to sway back and forth in some ritualized, primitive motion. I’m also no stranger to mosh pits, having grown up in New Jersey during its fertile pop-punk and hardcore years.

But on the whole, dance is lost on me. Or was. Until I played Soundodger+.

Soundodger+ is built on a simple premise: you play as a circle, trapped inside an arena. Other objects shoot from the arena’s walls—triangles, cubes, larger circles. Colliding with these objects is bad.

See that white dot in the center? That's you. Don't touch anything.

This is essentially an easier version of what Atari gave us 35 years ago in Asteroids. You don’t even have to shoot anything—just survive. Comparing Asteroids to Soundodger+, however, is like comparing Jesus burned into a piece of toast to The Last Supper.

Also, just like Asteroids, that Jesus toaster seems totally rad.

Soundodger+ is less a game and more an entirely different way to experience music. Each level in the game is a different musical track, spanning artists like Disasterpeace (the composer for Fez, among other things) and Austin Wintory (composer for Journey [the game, not the '80s band]).

Every “enemy” in Soundodger+ is tied to the music. The plink of a synthesizer might spawn a single triangle for you to dodge. A quick smattering of notes sends triangles flying at you from all sides. A violin’s glissando (a smooth glide between two pitches) results in a long, arcing series of triangles.

To an extent, I feel like playing Soundodger+ must be somewhat comparable to listening to music with synesthesia. It’s all about patterns. Precision. Color.

You've never seen music quite like what Soundodger+ can show you.

The result forces you to listen to music on a much deeper level than you might be accustomed to. For a minute or three minutes or five minutes you feel the music. You anticipate where the melody is going, when the drop is coming, when the music will reel in and give you a quick rest.

If one of Soundodger’s tracks came on under normal circumstances you might allow that sweet drum fill or synth pad to get swallowed into the background noise. Here, every instrument matters. You hear everything. Your life depends on it.

It’s a weird feeling. Soundodger+ isn’t very relaxing, especially once you’ve gotten through the first few levels. Instead, you reach a Zen-like state of sustained focus. You’re hardwired right into the game, electrified, focused on each moment. It’s addictive.

You’ll be playing through a track, desperately flitting back and forth through dozens of random bullets until for one single moment it all resolves into something beautiful.

Your favorite beats can form a thing of beauty...

Then it’s gone. All the pieces move away again, crashing into the walls and disappearing. You’re left with a brief afterimage—one that fades quickly, with the music sending ever more obstacles at you.

The patterns, though—the way it all comes together in an instant—I understand now what people see in dance.

...that evaporates in a heartbeat.

“Playing” Soundodger+ is great. It’s a solid, though relatively simple, game. But it’s the music that elevates Soundodger+. The game reveals the grace of each track.

Soundodger was originally a free web game (you can still play it here).  The paid version, which costs $8 on Steam, comes with eleven new levels/tracks and some handy custom-level features.

Due to popular request, the developer included an auto-gen feature: plug in any of your own music and the game will calculate out a level to go with it. Unfortunately, this feature removes much of the magic of Soundodger+. The levels it creates are often artless, failing to spawn enemies on the most obvious beats and instead vomiting them out almost at random.

The Soundodger+ level editor is remarkably robust.

However, there is an incredibly extensive editor where you can build new levels from scratch. You can define enemy colors, placements, patterns—basically any behavior the game is capable of.

As you might expect, this whole process is rather time-consuming; I spent about half an hour trying to build a level for First Breath After Coma by Explosions in the Sky. After those thirty minutes I’d managed to finish the first twenty seconds…of a nine minute song. And hey, those first twenty seconds were gorgeous! I just don’t know how likely I am to finish the job.

Trust me, the first twenty seconds of this level are amazing.

Right now there's no way to easily share the levels you've made with others; hopefully people will figure out a way to share custom levels and tracks down the line. Unfortunately, the legality of that process is questionable because the game needs both the audio file and the level data (an XML file). You’d need to make sure your copy of the song was exactly the same as someone else’s, down to the second, or else the level wouldn’t line up.

Regardless, I can’t wait to see what people build. If anyone is willing to tackle Explosions in the Sky, you know where to find me.

I can’t stop playing Soundodger+; I’m playing it in my sleep at this point. Every time I think I’m done, I end up coming back a few hours later and playing it again.

I’ve run through every track, many of them multiple times, and I’m still enthralled. The opening Disasterpeace track feels like it's burned into my brain. Right now I’m sitting in this office, writing this review, and all I really want to do is load up Soundodger+ .

What I’m saying is, this game is pretty good.

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Prezi Desktop review: Animate your presentations, even when you're away from the cloud

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Once you notice your colleagues are catching up on their sleep during your PowerPoint presentations, you know you need Prezi Desktop. Using this software, you can wake up your presentations using animation that doesn't suck. Forget transitions and effects like dissolve and fly-in, Prezi Desktop focuses in on your important points within your slides, like actually visually focuses in.

Many of Prezi Desktop's 50+ templates include 3D animation. In this one, you start out in a forest and then move through the trees.

Prezi Desktop is similar to the online Prezi, but as you might guess from the name, it doesn't require an Internet connection after the initial registraion. This means that any storage limits are on your end, not on Prezi's cloud. It's also awfully handy to work offline when you're incorporating last-minute changes on a flight or at the slightly-too-rustic site for the company retreat.

The program opens with over 50 slide templates to choose from, all of which include animation built right in, and many of which include photo-realistic graphics or 3D aspects. You add text, images, and YouTube movies to areas of the slide and create a path for the animation to follow. Prezi flows seamlessly between these areas.

Filling in Prezi Desktop slides in a simple click-and-type affair.

Some of Prezi's 3D effects are better than others, with a few giving the impression of rotating the base image rather than actually occurring in three dimensions. You can add shapes and drawings from Prezi's library but they are not editable, so if you want to create a very unique Prezi you'll also need software to create PDF, PPT, or image files to import. And you may want to stick to a very basic Prezi if you're presenting to the National Association of Motion Sickness Sufferers, because the flow of the presentation can be disconcerting.

With credit card information in hand, Prezi Desktop offers a 30-day free trial of the Enjoy ($59 annually) or Pro ($159 annually) subscription, as well as the completely free (no credit card needed) Public version. Once the 30 days are up, only the Pro version supports Prezi Desktop. Your presentations are all public with the Public version of Prezi, and you get only 100MB of storage per user. With Prezi Desktop Enjoy and Pro subscriptions, you can keep your presentations private, eliminate the Prezi branding, and receive 500MB (Enjoy) or 2GB (Pro) of storage space.

You can tweak the text formatting in your Prezi Desktop slides.

Prezi Desktop can get pricey, and it won't fix a really bad presentation, but it will certainly help keep your visuals—and your audience—focused. Plus you'll never be bothered by snoring during a presentation again.

Note: The Download button takes you to the vendor's site, where you can download the latest version of the software.

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BootRacer review: Utility will time your PC boot, but won't speed it up

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BootRacer BootRacer is a great tool for monitoring your PC's health over a long period of time, but don't expect it to improve performance.

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There's nothing more frustrating than turning on your computer and watching programs slowly load up. You sit there, not sure exactly how long you're going to have to wait, as all those resource-hogging startup programs take their own sweet time. Well, wonder no more: BootRacer can take the mystery out of your PC start-ups.

BootRacer main menu gives some detailed information about the startup time.

After a free download and install, the program will be ready to time your next PC restart. (BootRacer remains free for personal use, but business users must pony up after trying the program.) Though you can't see it, it starts timing the moment the PC starts the boot-up process. Those who aren't quick at entering your password or logging in don't need to worry. BootRacer subtracts the time it takes for user input to make an accurate assessment at how quick your PC performs.

Once the desktop is up, a small dual timer appears in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen. The timer on the top ticks down the seconds until your PC is done booting up the necessary files to be responsive while the timer on the bottom counts up the total time it takes to boot.

Rank your boot time against those of other PCs running BootRacer.

A summary screen appears when the PC is completely done booting to review your time and score. Digging deeper, you will see a breakdown of what section of the boot-up took the most time and a star rating compared to other PCs that upload their results. You can choose to submit your own results to both claim your global rank as well as help improve future versions of BootRacer.

Options are scarce. You can choose whether you want BootRacer to run every time you boot-up or only single tests, if you want the timer to show, and what statistics to record. A history page will give you every previous boot results and the change in time from the previous boot. You can add notes to each result or upload them to the global rankings.

A detailed history of your startups can show computer degradation over time.

BootRacer is great for testing just how the decisions you make with your PC affect your start-up time in the long run. PCs tend to slow down as registries and programs begin to muck up the works, and now you can track it. However, that's where BootRacer's usefulness ends. There is an option to "Speed up!" but it just links you to SpeedUp 2013, another program that claims to fix everything slowing down the start-up process. (PCWorld hasn't reviewed SpeedUp 2013, but 2012 received a middling review, partly because the $30 program performed tasks that free programs handle just as well.) BootRacer doesn't do anything to fix an issue itself.

You get the green light once your PC is all ready to go,

For the PC enthusiast who loves to monitor every aspect of their computer's health and performance, BootRacer is a must-have. For those simply trying to speed up their boot times, installing this will probably be more depressing than anything. It won't do much to help, but it will confirm you do indeed have glacial boot-up times.

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The Stanley Parable Review: The end is never the end

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The Stanley Parable $15.00 The Stanley Parable, once a small mod for Half-Life 2, is now a standalone game—and it’s way bigger, better and crazier than before.

This is a review by a man named Hayden. Hayden worked for a company in a big building where he was employee number…he didn’t know. The company had lost count. Hayden’s job was simple. He sat at his desk and pushed buttons on a keyboard. These buttons made articles. Sometimes, these articles were about video games.

Hayden played many video games. Some he liked. Most he felt ambivalent about. Companies kept releasing games though, so Hayden kept playing them. This is what Hayden did every day of every month of every year, and though others might have considered it a gigantic waste of time, Hayden sometimes enjoyed it.

He pressed the buttons. He moved the mouse. The game, actually thousands of lines of code, reacted to what Hayden did. Sometimes Hayden won the game. Other times the computer outsmarted his weak brain and he lost.

And then one day something very peculiar happened. Something that would forever change Hayden. Something he would never forget. He had been playing a game called the Stanley Parable for nearly half an hour when he realized he could neither win nor lose this game. Hayden had never played a game like this before, and at first it scared him. Some people claimed it was “not a game,” but Hayden found that claim slightly archaic. He relished games with obscure goals, with no guns, with something to say. Not that guns and story are necessarily mutually exclusive but…

Hayden thought about this more. No, not mutually exclusive, but there are only so many messages you can send with a straight face and a gun in your hand.

“That’s neither here nor there,” thought Hayden. What was here and/or there was that The Stanley Parable is quite unique.

Or so Hayden believed. He was, of course, unaware of the quite similar game released by a man actually named Stanley in the Eltox dimension. Unfortunately, Hayden was woefully unable to see outside his own dimension—a condition, dear reader, I’m sure you can agree is a damn shame.

So Hayden played The Stanley Parable, delighted at just how unique the game was—though, as mentioned, unaware of the game it resembled in a parallel universe. “This game is positively inspired,” Hayden thought.

And so as Hayden began writing the eighth paragraph—or was it the ninth?—of this review he thought about…

Nothing. Writer’s block.

But as he began the tenth—or was it the eleventh?—paragraph, he realized he should probably explain what The Stanley Parable is. Its essence. That’s presumably why people read these reviews, though Hayden secretly hoped they read it just to see if he ever mentioned the fantastic song “Left of the Dial” by The Replacements. This hope was slightly absurd, since Hayden had never mentioned this song in any of his articles.

Except this one. Damn. Congratulations, readers. You win a prize. Your prize is waiting on the doorstep now.

Did you find it? Ah, too bad. Your nosy neighbor must have stolen it. I never did trust her. Neither would Hayden, for that matter, had he ever met her.

Hayden stopped writing as sirens went by outside. Despite his clean legal record, he still feared there’d been some huge misunderstanding—that the cops were on their way to him.

The sirens left.

Where was he? “Where Hayden was” was in the middle of his cramped apartment, thinking about The Stanley Parable.

He was procrastinating. He didn’t know quite how to explain The Stanley Parable without ruining the whole premise. He wished readers would just stop reading, click this link and download The Stanley Parable demo.

“It doesn’t even spoil the game,” Hayden thought. “It’s like a miniature version of The Stanley Parable, with brand new content, and it’s free!”

To Hayden’s dismay, the readers were still here. They actually expected him to do his job and write about video games. Quelle surprise—that’s French for “what a surprise,” a phrase typically used sarcastically in English but here used with all the seriousness Hayden could muster. He was genuinely surprised readers didn’t skip out and go play the demo.

In a panic, he quoted Proust.

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”

“That quote wasn’t even thematically related,” Hayden thought. He was wrong, of course. Hayden was always wrong when it came to Proust.

Oh don’t feel bad, Hayden. So are 98 percent of the people on this planet.

Hayden summoned his courage and continued typing. “The Stanley Parable is a game about choices. You play as a hapless office worker named Stanley, slave to a menial job. One day everyone in the office disappears. You have to figure out what happened.”

Oh that’s good, Hayden. Well done. A bit of intrigue to whet their appetites.

“There’s a narrator who comments on your actions. The writing for the narrator is probably some of the best humorous writing that’s ever been in a video game. Whenever you think you’ve outsmarted the narrator, well, you probably didn’t. He’s omniscient, and especially astute at commenting on video game tropes. Are video game tropes low-hanging fruit? Perhaps, but The Stanley Parable is probably the smartest indictment I’ve ever seen, only occasionally indulgent or pretentious—unlike this review.”

Hayden wanted to refer to GladOS—it would be an apt comparison, after all—but chickened out and moved on.

“This game is better than any write-up could ever convey, if only because the game itself is so spoilable. It's all about making choices: if you have a red and blue door and a disembodied voice tells you you’re supposed to go through the red door, what do you do? And what if when the game ended, you went right back to the beginning and choose the other door? Or turned around and go through neither door? Or just stood in a broom closet?”

“The Stanley Parable is a commentary on video games, to be sure, but also has much to say on human nature, free will—or the illusion thereof—office jobs, impatience, boredom, bureaucracy, and even how to use slideshows to assure employees that everything is okay.”

Hayden pauses. Sips water. Speaking for a few paragraphs of text has got him exhausted.

He thinks about how Roger Ebert said games couldn’t be art because of the way choice alters authorial intent. He wishes Ebert had the chance to play The Stanley Parable—not because he thinks the medium needs legitimizing by another industry’s critic, but just because he’s curious what Ebert would’ve thought.

To Hayden, The Stanley Parable is one of the foremost examples of the power of nonlinear stories, of the potential for this weird new art form he’s spent his whole life messing around with. He also hopes that calling out some of these tropes will finally put them to rest (even though a deeper part of his brain knows that will never happen).

“Please, go play The Stanley Parable or at least the demo. I can’t guarantee you’ll get anything out of it, but I hope you will.”

Not the best review I’ve read, Hayden, but it’ll do. I think it’ll do just fine.

THE END IS NEVER THE END IS NEVER THE END IS NEVER THE END IS NEVER THE END IS NEVER THE END IS NEVER THE END IS NEVER THE END IS NEVER

This is a review by a man named Hayden. Hayden worked for a company in a big building where he was employee number…he didn’t know. The company had lost count. Hayden’s job was simple. He sat at his desk and pushed buttons on a keyboard. These buttons made articles. Sometimes these articles were about video games.

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gDoc Creator Review: Word to PDF conversions made easy and inexpensive

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AppId is over the quota
gDoc Creator $10.00 GDoc Creator is an inexpensive and capable PDF conversion utility for people who need to produce PDFs from a wide variety of document sources.

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PDF creation from existing document and image files doesn’t get much easier than the two ways you can do it with Global Graphics’ GDoc Creator. You can drag-and-drop the file (or files) you wish to convert onto the tiny orange application window, or right-click the file, choose Print, and then select the GDoc Creator PDF printer driver that appears during installation. Either way, you’ll have a PDF in a matter of moments.

GDoc Creator can also generate Word documents from PDFs. But it’s important to understand what this $10 application doesn’t do. In fact, the name GDoc Creator is a bit of a misnomer, since you can neither create PDFs from scratch nor edit them. It’s a conversion utility, pure and simple.

Installation of the app was initially problematic on my Windows 7 notebook: It turns out my Trend Micro antivirus software shut it down when it attempted to contact GDoc Creator’s online activation site (a problem related to third-party certificates). I briefly disabled Trend Micro, quickly completed the installation, and then reactivated the antivirus software. Judging from how quickly Global Graphics came back with this solution, I suspect the problem may not be uncommon, so you might want to disable any AV software during installation.

GDoc Creator’s desktop app at actual size.

The GDoc Creator application window is so small that I initially thought it wasn’t running: It’s an orange rectangle measuring a bit less than two by two-and-a-half inches, taken up largely with an image of blank pages followed by an arrow pointing to a page labeled PDF. The small conversion progress bar is barely visible until you actually use the app.

Hovering the cursor over the app summons a tiny grey toolbar that flies out on the top half of the right edge. It has only four icons: An X to shut down the app, a wrench to bring up the settings window, a question mark to get the help file, and a small grid of dots as a handle to move the app window.

The settings window lets you specify which flavor of PDF you want (more about that below); where to save the new document (either the source file location or a location that you type in), whether to open the new document when the conversion is done, and whether to alert you with a sound when a conversion is done (which might be a few minutes if you’re performing a batch conversion).

Of course, current Microsoft Office apps already allow you to save their documents in PDF format. But the desktop version of GDoc Creator can create PDFs from all the Microsoft document formats (whether or not you have Office installed) as well as formats Office doesn’t support. These include popular image formats (.bmp, .gif, .jpeg, .jpg, .png, .tiff., .tif), diagramming files, and even e-mail message formats. And the GDoc Creator printer driver can generate a PDF from any document that Windows can print.

GDoc Creator’s options include PDF variants optimized for different uses.

Output options are more plentiful as well. With Word, for example, Microsoft’s save as PDF options let you specify ISO 19005-1 compliance (PDF/A, the version best suited for electronic consumption), or password protection—but not both. GDoc Creator’s output options include half a dozen PDF variants, including ones optimized for commercial printing, archiving, and the web—not to mention password protection support.

If you use GDoc Creator to convert PDF to Word files—again by drag-and-drop onto the application window—what you actually wind up with is a PDF file that Word can open, not a .doc or .docs file. For these conversions, the options menu include optimizing for preserving layout, for the ability to edit text, or for text flow. I was not, however, very impressed with the results of my PDF to Word conversions. Layout was completely destroyed and fonts looked odd.

However, the PDF conversions looked fine. For $10, GDoc Creator might be a useful utility for people who need to generate PDFs from a wide variety of documents.

Note: The Download button takes you to the vendor's site, where you can download the latest version of the software.

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Pixsta review: This is the Instagram desktop client you've been waiting for

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AppId is over the quota
Pixsta Pixsta (formerly Instagrille) is an excellent way to enjoy Instagram on your desktop.

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Instagram is so inherently a mobile-first experience, I didn't think it would be made any better by a desktop client. And yet Pixsta, a PC desktop Instagram client for the Pokki platform, feels like a Daft Punk song: Better, faster, stronger.

It's Instagram, for Windows.

Formerly known as Instagrille, the newly-christened Pixsta cheerfully eschews traditional Windows chrome, opting for a gray look with drop-shadows that would look right at home on a Mac. Despite not feeling like a native Windows app at all, it works: The lack of window borders puts the images front and center. You can resize the window to fit more images in, and toggle between a linear and a tile-based layout.

With a wider window, Pixsta fits more information on the screen.

Resizing the window changes the layout responsively. With a narrow window, the list view shows an image followed by its comments; make the window wider, and the comment thread pops up to the side of the photo. Make it wider still, and you can fit multiple images and comment threads side by side.

Once you log in with your Instagram account, you can Like photos and participate in discussion threads (being able to type on a full-sized keyboard makes commenting better, too). The only feature missing is a way to quickly flick through photos, one at a time: You can quickly scroll, but it's difficult to scroll exactly one photo up or down in the stream.

Instagram videos work well in Pixsta. You can play them just like on your phone, but you can also download them for safe keeping. By default, the video I downloaded was saved with no filename extension, but manually tacking on ".mp4" at the end worked. VLC played the video without a hitch, sound included.

When it comes to speed and responsiveness, Pixsta just flies. Photos load instantly, and the interface is quick and responsive. I tested the app on a powerful desktop machine, and the fast processor and 21-inch monitor made everything that's good about Instagram, better. Of course, your connection must be fast enough, too: On mine, videos did occasionally stutter.

Cat videos have never looked better.

Pixsta is free to download and use. Even if you only follow a handful of friends of Instagram, it's a dramatically better way to experience the service. Get it now, and your friends' cat videos will never look the same again.

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Classic Shell 4.0 review: Free utility restores the full Start menu that Windows 8.1 didn't

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AppId is over the quota
Classic Shell 4.0 This powerful free/donationware utility adds the features back to Windows 8 and 8.1 that Microsoft should never have taken out.

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Classic Shell isn't a me-too Windows 8 fixer. This free utility's first beta came out in November 2009, close on the heels of Windows 7. It's been helping frustrated Windows users regain lost features and add new ones ever since. New stable version 4.0 powers up Windows 7, 8, and 8.1.

With Classic Shell, I customized the Start menu to put some of my frequently used commands into the top right.

A slew of programs grew up out of Microsoft’s decision to remove the Start menu from Windows 8. Classic 8 restored the Start menu, but it alsoprovided more features, including tweaks to the Windows Explorer that put a number of common features closer to hand. Now, version 4.0 brings a wider range of features, including multiple styles of start menu and a fully customizable look and feel, plus the ability to replace the Start button with one of your own design.

Windows 8.1 brought the return of the Start button, but this didn’t go the whole way: Instead of bringing back the Start menu that allowed you to access programs easily, the Windows 8.1 Start button takes you to the Windows 8 Start page. This uses Microsoft’s Modern design approach, filled with tiles that you may find confusing (or just plain dislike).

Classic Shell brings back the proper Start menu, with three styles that straight out of Windows XP or Windows 7. This goes a long way to making those who were comfortable with earlier OSs feel more at home when upgrading to Windows 8. On Windows 8.1, it replaces the new Start button completely with the new Start menu.

Classic Shell provides three styles for the Start menu, based on different versions of Windows.

In many ways, the Start menu that Classic Shell adds is superior to the Windows 7 one, as you can more easily move programs around within the menu or add them by simply dragging and dropping the program icon into the menu. If you want to pin a frequently used program to the top of the Start menu, you can easily do so by right-clicking the program icon in the all programs menu.

You can also customize the Start menu, even replacing the Start button with a button of your own design. You can also remove the items that appear on the menu. Never use the Start menu's included link to the Music library? Classic Shell allows you to delete it to save space, or replace it with other items that you may have a use for. You can also add links to other programs, batch files and specify command line options.

In short, Classic Shell is the Start menu that Microsoft should have put into Windows 8 in the first place. It provides flexibility, customizability, and a lot of power to dig deep and make using your computer easier.

Classic Shell adds handy icons for cut, copy, paste, delete, properties and email to the Windows Explorer. You can also pin any program to the Start menu with a right click on its icon.

The additions to Windows Explorer are also useful, putting buttons for a number of commonly used features in a menu bar above the file listing. Classic Shell adds icons for cut, copy, paste, delete, properties, and email. These don’t do anything you can't do quickly with a key combination, but an easily recognizable icon may be preferable for those who are less familiar with Windows. Again, this list of icons can be customized to add more, with options such as refresh file list, create new folder and various views available to add easily.

One interesting change is that the program is no longer open source. Before version 3.9.0, the author Ivo Beltchev regarded the program as mainly a teaching exercise in how to write programs that interface with the Windows API properly. Now, he says, the program exists more as a stand-alone application, so he has stopped releasing the source code. Beltchev also accepts donations.

Whatever its source code model, Classic Shell is an excellent program that goes a long way towards making Windows 8 and 8.1 easier for us. Microsoft, are you paying attention?

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Review: Nudge and tweak fate to pull off the perfect dinner in Save the Date

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AppId is over the quota
Save the Date Attempt to take a friend out for the perfect dinner in Save the Date. The unexpected and unusual crop up in every play-through.

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Let's go grab some burgers. Or maybe Thai food sounds good? If everything else is closed I'm sure we can go for some tacos. It's just important that we get some dinner and have a really good time—and you can certainly try in Save the Date.

Choose between burgers, tacos and Thai food. Burgers felt like a safe bet.

What starts as a silly dating simulator—the kind where you play as a school kid trying to score a date with the hottie in homeroom through different dialogue trees—quickly turns into a surprising, absurd, deep-thinking experience that I guarantee you weren't expecting.

The premise seems simple enough: Take your friend Felicia on a dinner date and have a good time. At first, the corny dialogue will make your head will hurt from eye-rolling. The deliberate corniness grows more comical after playing through a few times, and it actually drives home the point of the game. And the deeper you get into the game, the deeper the dialogue gets.

Expect to see this screen a lot. Seriously.

As you get more involved in the story, the dialogue evolves, too: It gains substance and real meaning. You ponder Felicia's words and wait for the next tidbit of information she has to share. It feels like your responses really will make an impact. The key is to just get through that first play-through.

Save the Date isn't a one-trick pony. There are multiple outcomes that vary greatly. Taking someone out for a simple dinner becomes a laborious task of quick thinking and making logical decisions. Fate also plays a starring role. I won't say too much more on the subject, because it would venture far into spoiler territory.

Your first game will be quick, most likely under three minutes. However, it'll leave you playing for hours as you restart again and again. As early as your second play-through you'll begin to notice subtle changes that morph the game in different directions, and it quickly becomes obvious that each play-through is not an isolated occurrence.

Be an official l33t h4x0r in four easy steps. Courtesy of the devs.

If you made a decision that ended the game prematurely, it will make a nice cameo with a new option that uses this knowledge to your advantage. Are you psychic? Some sort of meta user? Or maybe you're just thinking clearly this time.

Don't be afraid to poke around. The best strategy is to get your nose in Felicia's business, her personal life, and her history. On the next play-through you can use this to your advantage to both surprise her and change the game to go on just a little longer each time. Even the game files have some fun Easter Eggs, such as one that lets you hack the game by changing one value. If you know where to look, you'll find some pretty simple hacking instructions.

Skip the parts you've played through a million times by quicksaving right before making a decision.

Save the Date is free, bite-sized, packed with content, and manages to surprise you time and time again. It could have been a lame, run-of-the-mill dating sim but instead experiments with multiple story lines, combining the past and present, and blurs the lines between playing a character and being the character. If you're looking for a good laugh with some interesting surprises, Save the Date is worth the time it takes to install and play through a couple of times. Just don't be surprised if you find yourself still playing in a few hours.

Note: The Download button takes you to the vendor's site, where you can download the latest version of the software appropriate to your system.

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