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Windows 7 introduced many changes to Windows Media Foundation.

One of those changes is that now Windows Media Player uses it exclusively for playing back video. If you want to use a DirectShow codec instead of one of the component of the Windows Media Foundation, you need to make changes to some system files and that is not recommended for inexperienced users.

Preferred Filter Tweaker allows you to change which codec to use without manually changing system files yourself. You can now choose to use ffdshow or Xvid in Windows Media Player or Windows Media Center, for example.

DirectShow-based players, like Media Player Classic, are not affected by Windows Media Foundation, as they don’t support it.

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BurnAware is a great burning application that supports almost all the features of major paid-for burning programs.

It is the best free burning application out there.

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Alcohol 52% Free Edition is a great program for making virtual drives and mounting disc images.

It supports all mejor disc image formats such as ISO, CUE-BIN, NRG, IMG, DMG, IMA and many more. In addition to this, you can make disk images from your CD’s or DVD’s to have them at hand when needed.

You can associate it with this file types so that you can mount them by just right-clicking on them and selecting Mount Image.

This Free Edition comes with a toolbar, but you can choose not to install it by unchecking that option in the installer.

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Backing up you USB memory sticks can be very important to preserve your data in case something goes wrong.

While all the backup programs out there can save data from USB drives, USB image tool unique feature is to make disk images out of them so you can store all the drive’s data in one file.

This can be useful for all audio players like iPods or Zunes, because you can store disk images for different occasions. When you want a particular images on the drive, just select restore and select the file.

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It took me more than a day to get things going with the server because I had problems uploading the files. As the saying goes: Better late than never.

Remember that you still need to install the latest QuickTime Alternative. Also needed is Mobile Device Support for iPhone, iPod Touch and Nano 5G (I wasn’t aware that the latter needed it).

Anyway, enjoy the new installers and regards.

Partition Master is an application that allows you to create, resize, copy and delete partitions without having to format your hard drives.

The Home Edition version is free and it is an excellent replacement for those paid apps that have more features, but cost money. Its only downside is that this edition doesn’t support 64-bit Windows.

Most, if not all the common needs can be satisfied with it.

Totally recommended.

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VLC is a free multiplatform video and audio player with plenty of features and a great interface. It doesn’t need any external codecs and can stream multimedia over a network.

The quality of its video engine is not that good, but you can tweak it a little to improve it.

For a player with internal codecs, I recommend Media Player Classic Home Cinema instead. Its video quality is superior and has plenty of features too.

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WebShot is a simple utility that gives you the ability to take screenshots and thumbnails of web pages or websites.

You can take screenshots of a single webpage or screenshots of multiple web pages in batch mode.

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