Gregarius » BetaNews.Com » novembre 16, 2014

BetaNews.Com (4 non lus)

Files 2 Folder: a faster way to sort, organize and move your files

Publié: novembre 16, 2014, 10:27pm CET par Mike Williams

Organizing files in Windows can be a tedious experience. You'll view your source files, maybe create a few destination folders, select each group of files, move them to their new home… Then start all over again.

Sounds familiar? Then Files 2 Folder might appeal. It’s a free Explorer extension which can automatically move files into new folders based on your preferred rules.

The program is tiny (under 1MB), adware-free, and easy to set up. Just run Files2Folder as an administrator, and it adds itself to your right-click menu (run the "Unregister" shortcut as an administrator if you need to remove it).

Once installed, browse to a folder, select and right-click a few files, choose the new "Files 2 Folder" option, and a dialog appears with four options.

You can have your files moved to subfolders based on their names, (David.pdf > David\David.pdf), extensions (David.pdf > PDF\David.pdf) or current date (David.pdf > 2014-11-16\David.pdf). Just select the option you need, click OK, and Files 2 Folder handles everything else.

Alternatively, enter a custom folder name of your own, click OK, and Files 2 Folder will create that subfolder and move any selected files there.

There’s plenty of scope for improvement here. Perhaps there could be an option to copy files, rather than move them. And if your files all started with the same string (Christmas1.jpg, Christmas2.jpg), then it might be convenient to use that as the folder name (Christmas\Christmas1.jpg, Christmas\Christmas2.jpg).

Files 2 Folder’s simplicity does mean the program is very easy to use, though, and if you’re regularly moving and sorting files then it may save you some time.
WTF? You can preorder Black Friday gadget deals

Publié: novembre 16, 2014, 7:17pm CET par Joe Wilcox

Cough. Choke. Collapse. That's me nearly needing the Heimlich maneuver during breakfast while looking over Samsung Black Friday deals. You can preorder them. Seriously. What the frak is that?

The routine started all so innocently. Samsung sent a promo email, and I curiously clicked the picture of a Chromebook and "Reserve Computing Deals". The webpage screenshot says all you need to know. You can, today -- as in right this very minute -- preorder either Samsung Chromebook 2 for assured savings ($20 or $50) between November 27 and December 1 for one and until the 27th for the other. I understand that Black Friday is late-month this year, but, c`mon, beat me with a sack of cash, sales preorders?

I'm afraid to ask: Who else? Surely Samsung isn't alone promoting such consumer madness. Now you can avoid the Walmart stampede and the risk that normally sweet Aunt May, who weighs 270 pounds on non-pasta and potato chips days, clubs you senseless to get $1 Ginsu steak knives (her next weapon of choice) and $199 40-inch TV (steer clear of her cart). You can click now, lock in your discount, and sit back fat and sassy guzzling beer and pretzels Thursday evening, while the crazies storm store doors, which most major retailers, including Walmart, open at 6 p.m.

I thought the Thanksgiving openings were insane, and scary, enough. Now we've got Black Friday discount preorders. Oh my, Samsung, November 27 is Thursday, not even the Big Day. Please, someone shake me awake from this nightmare of consumer sales gluttony.

But wait! You can get that deal sooner. Samsung advertises big, big-screen TV sales starting November 23 that you can lock in now. The 55-inch 4K television will be discounted $1,300 to $1,299.99, which isn't as good a deal as appears. Amazon sells the same set for $1,497.99. The big savings, and even bigger spend, is the 65-inch model that Samsung will discount by $2,000 to $1,999.99 and Amazon sells $2,497.99. Lock it in now, bright boys, and avoid the mall crazies.

Or you can be sensible and do neither.

Gadget geeks, think! Take back your brains. I know that the we've all been conditioned for Pavlovian response by preorder parades. The likes of Apple and Google have us conditioned to salivate, hyperventilate, and obsessively flagellate the computer keyboard trying to get that gadget preorder before stock sells out. Should that really extend to Black Friday deals?
CCleaner 5.0 first beta gets a flat new(-ish) look

Publié: novembre 16, 2014, 12:52pm CET par Mike Williams

Piriform has released the first beta for CCleaner 5.0, its popular system cleanup tool.

The only change so far is the move to a flat interface, and even that is largely cosmetic. Functions and features are organized just as they were before, but the toolbar icons are replaced by plain stencils, and the title bar is now also a stark-looking white, whatever your Windows settings happen to be.

There is no new functionality at the moment, although that will apparently change very quickly. The official blog post announcing the release says new features are due to appear over the next week, while the final version is expected to arrive at the end of November.

We successfully installed CCleaner 5.0 over a previous edition, and it appeared to work just as well as before, successfully locating and cleaning up various leftover files and Registry keys.

Piriform recommends that you don’t install it on a production system, though, and that makes sense to us: it’s still a beta, and even if the changes are minimal, there’s a chance the build might cause problems.

But if you’re happy to take the risk -- or just want to see whether you can live with the flat new look -- then CCleaner 5.0 beta #1 is available now.
Linux Mint 17.1 'Rebecca' RC now available with either Cinnamon or Mate

Publié: novembre 16, 2014, 3:39am CET par Brian Fagioli
The Linux kernel is constantly evolving and adapting; there is a reason it has seen great success on servers and mobile devices. On the desktop, however, Linux-based operating systems hold a paltry amount of usage share; it is almost non-existent in the grand scheme of things. With that said, many modern Linux distributions are very usable, easy to install, and have great support communities.

While I am a Fedora user, there is only Linux distro that I suggest to people -- Linux Mint. Why? Well, it is a very easy-to-use operating system, and for people coming from Windows, it can look rather familiar. The people behind Mint are very accommodating too; they actually listen to users! Since it is based on Ubuntu, there are tons of packages available, for which you can use the popular APT package manager when needed. Today, a release candidate (RC) of Linux Mint 17.1 'Rebecca' becomes available -- download it now.

"Linux Mint 17.1 is a long term support release which will be supported until 2019. It comes with updated software and brings refinements and many new features to make your desktop even more comfortable to use", says Clement Lefebvre, Linux Mint.

A big part of 17.1 is the updated desktop environments -- Cinnamon and Mate. The former focuses on added eye candy, while the latter is more light-weight (it is a fork of Gnome 2.x). With that said, Mate can be made to look rather snazzy by using Compiz.

Most users with modern computers will want to target Cinnamon, which is updated to version 2.4. The Mint team explains, "a lot of care went into attention to details and Cinnamon 2.4 received many little improvements to make your experience smoother and more enjoyable than before".

The operating system will feature the 3.13 kernel and is built on the stable Ubuntu 14.04 base. Even though Linux Mint 17.1 RC is probably safe and stable, I still caution that you do not install a release candidate on a production machine. However, if you do decide to install, you can download the appropriate torrent below.
- Cinnamon 32-bit
- Cinnamon 64-bit
- Mate 32-bit
- Mate 64-bit
You can learn more about the new features by clicking here (Cinnamon) or here (Mate)

Photo Credit: benik.at / Shutterstock