Cool Tools I Use: Computer Utilities

I truly believe that every one of us (yes, that includes YOU!) has cool tools that we use on an everyday basis and stories about how we use these tools and how we came to find and use them.  I'd like to hear about yours.  Meanwhile, here's are two simple, but ever so handy, computer utilities that I use regularly and wanted to pass on to you.

FinePrint

FinePrint is a fabulous printing utility that lets you:

• Preview the pages prior to printing.
• Create multi-page mini booklets.
• Save print jobs for reuse or modifications in the future.

A side (but significant) benefit is that it helps to reduce the amount of paper I use.

Previewing

I have FinePrint set as my default printer so I always get to see a preview of just how the page is going to look BEFORE it comes out of the printer.  Maybe you are different, but I frequently find something amiss with the layout—something I’ve left out, or how an image will be displayed—when I’m quickly previewing the image before I hit the print button. With this FinePrint preview feature, I’m able to go back in and make my adjustments and I now almost always get it right with the first printout... and I have a LOT less paper in the waste basket.

Creating handy booklets

But of all its many features, the one I use the most is its “booklet'” function.  This too helps me save a lot of paper and is especially easy to use if you have duplex printing available, but it works without as well. Using this feature, I can print out multi-page documents as very handy little booklets that are a set of sheets of regular-sized paper folded in half for reading as a small book.  FinePrint does all the slicing and dicing of the text and images of my original content. It figures out what to print on each side of each page so that when you take the stack out of the printer, all you do is fold it in half and start reading. Each page is in the proper order on both sides of the paper.

They make incredibly handy reading of longer documents, manuals, or guide books, and this format is great for reading in flight or in transit—no batteries required!  Whenever I print these up and give them to others, they are amazed and delighted, and I’ve received a lot of great comments and thanks afterwards from the recipients.

Other features

FinePrint optionally puts in a header or footer that is oriented correctly, and I find that having it automatically insert things like date, page number, file name, and full path, which I find particularly useful when I’m looking at a printout months later. FinePrint also offers the ability to do watermarks on the documents.

FinePrint also makes a companion utility that I use almost as frequently called PDF Factory, which is extremely handy for PDF file creation without requiring a full Adobe Acrobat installation.  It's very flexible and does the job at least 90% of the time...at least for me.

My description doesn't really do this utility justice, and I'll try to write up more about it soon. It is one of those "little tools" that I use almost every day, and I miss it when it is not installed on a computer that I'm using.

KeyText

KeyText is an old utility (like me perhaps) that creates simple macros. I’m sure that many of you will send in some much better and more modern utilities that let you create simple macros, but this is one of the tools I use the most and have had the longest. 

At its heart, it is a simple macro creation tool, but what I use it for the most is the creation of a whole set of keyboard shortcuts for my most common text entries—everything from phone numbers, credit card numbers, common messages, and literally any other text I regularly need to type out or enter into forms.

To use it, you simply create the text you want to have inserted, assign a shortcut key combination, such as Ctl + Alt + S (for signature for example), and now you can insert this text anytime, anywhere with one keystroke. 

KeyText does so much more, so please take a few minutes to read over its description on the Keytext website. Although I use only a small subset of its features, I just know that every time I work on any other computer, I feel lost and am reminded how much I use this tool every day. 

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Have  "Cool Tools" you use and want to share?  Send me your favorites with the following information:

• Name of the tool and source for getting one. 
• What does it do? 
• How did you come to discover this? 
• How do you use it? 
• Why is it on your top ten "Cool Tools I Use" list?

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