Review: Instagram Explorer puts Instagram on display in Windows 8

You may think an Instagram app that doesn't allow you to take pictures would be kind of pointless...but Instagram Explorer, a Windows 8 app for the Modern user interface, has plenty of potential. Using it is not unlike browsing through the Instagram.com site, but Instagram Explorer brings that experience to Windows 8's alternative view.

Pretty pictures look even prettier on a big screen.

Instagram Explorer's default view is to display your live feed, much like when you visit Instagram.com. It's a nice change to view some of the gorgeous photos you can find on Instagram on a bigger screen. It's also easier to comment on photos when you're using the spacious real estate of a Windows 8 desktop or laptop, and the comment field is more prominently displayed here than it is on Instagram.com.

Instagram Explorer for Windows 8 displays your friend's profiles almost exactly how you'd see them on Instagram.com.

Instagram Explorer's profile view is superior to the square tiles displaying identically-sized recent photos on your smartphone. Instead, Instagram Explorer—like Instagram.com—displays photos in a variety of sizes and changes some as you're looking. Overall, the effect is far more visually appealing than the mobile view.

The free, ad-supported app suggests celebs to follow.

Instagram Explorer does suggest "famous" users that you might want to make your favorites, but I found this feature unnecessary. It suggested a few folks I'd knew of (Katie Couric), some I'd never heard of (Cody Simpson?) and several I'd like to forget (Kim Kardashian). Clicking any of the suggested names lets you visit that person's profile to check it out, though the app was a bit slow to make the transition at times.

If you're constantly snapping photos and sharing them with your Instagram followers, Instagram Explorer may be a bit limited for you. And if you're not relying on Windows 8's Modern UI, you have no need for this app: Instagram.com offers an almost identical feature set. But if you're looking for an easy way to sit back and browse photos on Instagram while using Windows 8, this free app is for you.

Note: The Download button takes you to the Windows Store, where you can download this Windows 8 app.

Liane Cassavoy is a veteran technology and business journalist. She contributes regularly to PCWorld and has written about business issues and products for Entrepreneur Magazine and other publications. She is the author of two business start-up guides published by Entrepreneur Press.
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Review: 64-bit Adobe Preview Handler shows PDF thumbnails in Windows/File Explorer

When I upgraded to Windows 8 64-bit a few months back, a strange thing happened. The thumbnails for all of my PDF files disappeared. Normally, when I view an Explorer folder, I have the PDF files on "view large icons" (as it then gives me a preview of what the first page of the file looks like).  But Windows 8 wiped all of that. I couldn't even get the standard Adobe PDF logo. So I did my usual and went Googling for answers and ended up with a free program called 64-bit Adobe Preview Handler.

The app itself is just a simple box which can be closed, once you click the "apply fix" button.

This small app (which weighs in at a measly 1MB) makes a small Windows registry fix that brings your PDF thumbnails back. The issue of disappearing thumbnails doesn't seem to be confined to just Windows 8 though. Anyone with either Vista or Windows 7 64-bit may also experience this problem, and 64-bit Adobe Preview Handler is here to save the day.

Simply do the usual download and install and when you start it up, you will see a small window. There is pretty much nothing to configure–no options or anything. Click "apply fix" and then restart Windows Explorer.  If it still doesn't work, you may also have to clear your thumbnail cache, but don't worry, this is very easy to do. Simply run Disk Cleanup, select the C drive, put a tick in the Thumbnails checkbox, and then click OK. The system will do the rest.

Check back again on Windows Explorer, and you should see your PDF thumbnails appear again.

You have to bear in mind that this is not an official fix by Adobe, and according to the developer of this fix, Adobe doesn't seem to be in much of a rush to make an official fix.  So until they can be bothered (which might well be never), this unofficial fix by Leo Davidson is more than sufficient.  And if you like the fix, then support the developer by sending him a PayPal donation.  This will encourage him to continue the unofficial work that he is doing on Adobe's behalf.

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

Expatriate Scotsman now living in Wurzburg, Germany, freelance writer, frustrated future bestselling author, obsessed bibliophile. Other interests include trying to understand The Architect in the Matrix movies, decrypting codes and ciphers, and trying to persuade my landlord and my wife to let me have a Highland Cow for a pet.
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Free Process Explorer: A Better Task Manager

Windows isn't just for hard-core geeks or just for novices. Being the most popular operating system on the planet, Microsoft must design it to fit the widest possible range of users. Even its "techy" parts, like the Task Manager, sometimes need to be toned down for general consumption. But what if Windows were aimed only at the most technical of users? Process Explorer is the Task Manager that could have been.

Process Explorer offers a wealth of information about every process running on your computer.Process Explorer can do all kinds of tricks that Task Manager just can't do. Case in point: Fire up Task Manager right now (hit Ctrl-Shift-Esc), and click "Show processes from all users." You will doubtlessly see a bunch of processes called "svchost.exe," all helpfully labelled "Host Process for Windows Services." Great, but what are those services? With Process Explorer, you can find out just by mousing over the process name.

This may sound like an obscure technical detail (and it is, a little bit), but it can also be very useful. For example, on my system there's a single svchost.exe process taking up over 250MB of RAM--a sizable chunk by any measure. Thanks to Process Explorer, I no longer have to wonder what all that memory is used for: I know exactly what services hide under that process, and can disable them if I want to.

Another very neat Process Explorer capability: graphing GPU usage. Task Manager's Performance tab lets you see CPU and RAM usage only, but if you have a discrete graphics card, you have at least one more powerful (if dedicated) processor. Monitoring the GPU is useful not only for benchmarking games, but also for keeping an eye on applications such as Bitcoin or BOINC that use the GPU for general-purpose calculations. You can also see how much of the GPU's dedicated memory is used.

When going over the list of currently running processes, unfamiliar names will doubtlessly pop up. For example, do you know what csrss.exe is? I can guarantee this process is running on your system right now, under the nebulous description "Client Server Runtime Process." With Process Explorer, you just need to click the process and press Ctrl-M, and Process Explorer will instantly search Google for that process name. It's a very handy way to find out what's what in that long list.

Here's another classic Windows annoyance: You're trying to delete or overwrite a file, but Windows insists the file is in use. Process Explorer lets you see exactly what files are used by every process in your system, and also search for a file or DLL. In other words, you can track down the process that is using that file and kill it if you want to.

Process Explorer looks a bit intimidating at first, and it's an acquired taste. You can start off by using it just like Task Manager and gradually grow into its unique capabilities. It even has an option called "Replace Task Manager." Once you use Process Explorer regularly, you may well use that option. Highly recommended.

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

--Erez Zukerman

Ever wondered which program has a particular file or directory open? Now you can find out. Process Explorer shows you information about which handles and DLLs processes have opened or loaded.

The Process Explorer display consists of two sub-windows. The top window always shows a list of the currently active processes, including the names of their owning accounts, whereas the information displayed in the bottom window depends on the mode that Process Explorer is in: if it is in handle mode you'll see the handles that the process selected in the top window has opened; if Process Explorer is in DLL mode you'll see the DLLs and memory-mapped files that the process has loaded. Process Explorer also has a powerful search capability that will quickly show you which processes have particular handles opened or DLLs loaded.

The unique capabilities of Process Explorer make it useful for tracking down DLL-version problems or handle leaks, and provide insight into the way Windows and applications work.

Note: This link takes you to the vendor's site, where you can download the latest version of the software.

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Visual Explorer Ultimate

One of the things you learn as a reviewer is just how long the long tail really is. There are more "alternative" browsers out there than most people could guess, and it's hard for most of them to offer any reason to switch from the top tier. Visual Explorer Ultimate offers one major piece of functionality that's tempting, but narrowly focused.

Video Explorer Ultimate may be my choice for archiving videos from the Web, but not too much else.So let's go for the good stuff first. Streaming video is wonderful but transient; sites vanish, videos are pulled for legitimate and illegitimate reasons, and the time you most want to watch a particular video is always when you can't get an Internet connection for some reason. There are many plug-ins for downloading streaming video for different browsers, but my experience with them has been uneven and, being plug-ins, they often break when the browser is upgraded, which now happens approximately once a week with Firefox. Visual Explorer Ultimate builds video downloading--and, even better, conversion--right in.

If you're on YouTube, or any of the dozens of other supported sites, you merely click the disk icon (if you're under 20, you'll recognize this as the abstract image every program uses to mean 'save,'), and it will save the active video. One of the more useful functions is stripping out the video and just saving the audio as an MP3, which is a surprisingly annoying process otherwise. Visual Explorer Ultimate is almost worth keeping around just for that; I've got standalone programs that do the same thing, except less easily and reliably. You can also save in iPad format, MPG, and others, avoiding conversion hassles.

While Visual Explorer Ultimate supports many streaming sites, there are some it does not, mostly in the, ahem, skeevier side of the net. In the interests of fully testing the program, I will note it does support some sites dedicated to what the song famously notes the Internet is for, but you will need to research this on your own.

There are some features that Visual Explorer Ultimate provides which are uncommon and deserve mention, though I don't personally find them compelling. One is the "cloaking device" which makes the window partially transparent, allegedly to foil people glancing sidelong at your screen... but if it's transparent enough to hide what you're doing from them, it's too transparent to use, or at least that was my experience. There's a "video browser" mode that changes the normal URL bar into a customized video search engine, and allows you to create custom sets of video sites to search from, which is nice, but useful only if most of your time is spent searching for videos (which it might well be).

Other than that, Visual Explorer Ultimate is... a browser. It has tabs, it has sidebar bookmarks (something Chrome still doesn't have, I must note), it renders pages adequately most of the time, and so on. It is also somewhat quirky; I found a few bugs in rendering and general functionality when I reviewed 3.0; these are very quickly fixed for 3.1, which is the final version being reviewed, but there were still oddities and one crash to desktop during general browsing. While every browser is occasionally unstable, Visual Explorer Ultimate seems to have more minor glitches than average, many of which do go away if you hide and then show the window.

Being free, Visual Explorer Ultimate is worth considering if you do any kind of regular video downloading or converting. The development team is active and responsive, always a positive sign. If you've been unsatisfied with plug-in solutions or third party programs when it comes to getting streaming video off the screen and onto your hard disk, Visual Explorer Ultimate is definitely worth downloading.

--Ian Harac

Visual Explorer is the ultimate, fully featured web browser that comes with advanced privacy and security features, one-click Google searches, support for Internet Explorer favorites, add-ons and much more. Your privacy protected - easily remove private data such as web site addresses you have typed into the address bar or content from web pages you have visited. Use the Cloaking Device feature to make the browser semi-transparent so casual observers cannot snoop on your browsing activities. Security when surfing - the integrated safety filter protects you against phishing websites. It performs checks before loading each web page and, unlike other browsers, also uniquely checks the final destination page (to protect you against the original website re-directing you to a phishing website). Instantly find text on the current web page - with options to highlight all instances, using the Advanced Find toolbar. Perform Google searches with a single click - right-click any word or phrase on the current web page to search for it using Google or your favorite search engine. Additional pre-installed search sites include Yahoo, YouTube, Amazon, eBay and Facebook. Print web pages how they appear on screen - Visual Explorer is the only known browser that respects the WYSIWYG philosophy when it comes to printing pages. While other browsers reformat printed pages, Visual Explorer faithfully sends to the printer the exact page layout and format as seen on screen. Block unwanted ads and other media - with a range of content filters, Visual Explorer gives you control over what you see. Easily block unwanted websites or website content from appearing (Flash adverts, pop-ups, harmful scripts and more). Customize to suit your needs - Visual Explorer is fully customizable from themes and skins to mouse gestures, keyboard shortcuts, toolbars and menus. Visual Explorer supports Windows 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP, Vista and Windows 7.

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Tested: Firefox 10 Can’t Catch Up to Internet Explorer, Chrome

 

Today marks the official release of Firefox 10, which adds new developer tools and changes the design of the navigation bar to show the forward button only in instances where it can be used. Mozilla’s update gives us a perfect opportunity to reassess the browser playing field, and that’s exactly what we did, pitting Firefox 10 against Chrome 16 and Internet Explorer 9 in a series of tests. The results show that the Mozilla project still has a lot of work to do if it wants to take back the number two browser position from Google or the number spot from Microsoft.

Using a Dell Inspiron 14z with a Core i3 CPU and 4G of RAM, we ran two web-based browser benchmarks: SunSpider and Peacekeeper on Firefox 10, Chrome 16, and Internet Explorer 9. We ran each test three times and then took the average. After that, we measured browser open times and available screen real estate on an ASUS ZenBook UX31 notebook with a Core i5 CPU and a SATA 6Gb/s SSD.

The SunSpider test measures a browser’s ability to execute a series of complex JavaScript functions. Because most web pages contain a lot of JavaScript, this test effectively shows how quickly the browser can render pages or perform dynamic actions. A shorter time result is better.

Firefox 10 completed the test in 276.3 milliseconds, putting it in between the 312.4 notched by Chrome and the 247.5 we got on IE 9. It’s still not the fastest. 

Peacekeeper is a synthetic benchmark where higher scores are better. On that test, Firefox 10 turned in a score of 1536, which  trailed IE 9's mark of 1483 and Chrome 16's 2918.

One of the least talked about performance features of any browser is its ability to open quickly (or not). Every millisecond you spend waiting for a program to launch is a millisecond you’ll never have again. We tested all three browsers’ open times on the powerful ASUS ZenBook UX31, because it has a blazing fast Sata 6Gb/s SSD that allowed each program to open at its fastest possible time.The results confirmed that Firefox is still a slowpoke. Chrome 16 opened in an average of 1.8 seconds and IE 9 in just 1.1 seconds while Firefox 10 turned in a relatively sluggish 2.4-second average, an eternity in particle physics. 

The more space its toolbars take up, the less space each browser has left for viewing web pages. So our final test entailed capturing a screen on each of the browsers and determining how many pixels of screen real estate each navigation bar takes up. Firefox has the largest navigation bar, with a height of 62 pixels, while Chrome’s and Internet Explorer 9's measure 48 and 53 pixels, respectively. 

Firefox 10 by no means bombed on our tests, but it didn’t give anyone a valid performance reason to switch to it or stay with it. The Firefox 10 results are in line with our previous browser showdowns, which similarly showed IE pulling ahead of Chrome and Firefox in terms of SunSpider rendering, application open times, and screen real estate. Chrome is the leader in Peacekeeper, but Firefox only appears to be a follower in all of our tests.

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