POP email servers are not as smart as IMAP, Exchange or online email services. They are unable to keep track of what mail you have already downloaded, when you are moving between computers or when you have just reinstalled Outlook (if you have imported a backup). This is not normally a problem in day to day use, but when you do make changes to your email account settings, you can end up with duplicate items, and a lot of them.

It is a real hassle to remove each of these duplicate items individually, and in the past I have manually removed them. Today after a fresh install of Outlook, I had around 150 duplicate items! I needed to find a better way to automate the removal of these. I came across a number of utilities that would do the job. Some of them are free and others are commercial or shareware releases. After a bit of testing Outlook Duplicate Items Remover (ODIR) came out on top.

ODIR scans your Outlook mail, contacts, tasks and calendar for duplicate items. If an item is found to be a duplicate it moves the item into a folder called ODIR Duplicate Items. You can then look through this folder and then delete it’s contents once you are comfortable that you don’t need any of them.

There are a number of reasons I preferred ODIR over the other utilities I tested out. First of all, it is free which is always a big selling point for me. ODIR had fewer options than many of the others, but in the end I felt most comfortable using it as it did not automatically delete duplicate items (as most of the others did). Instead, ODIR moved them into a separate directory which I could quickly sift through to confirm that no legitimate mail was removed.

If you find yourself in the same situation, do yourself a favour and download ODIR. It is so quick and easy to use, making this huge hassle a piece of cake.

ODIR is available for free from Vaita. Tested on Outlook 2007 in Vista.

When you start up a Windows computer, there are a number of processes, programs and drivers that load up automatically. The more things that load up, the slower your startup will be. If your machine takes 5 minutes to boot, there is something wrong and the boot up needs to be looked at. You should aim to be completely up and running within 2 minutes.

There are sometimes utilities that take an extremely long time to open up. This may be due to them being faulty or configured incorrectly. There is no way to tell what is holding up the startup process unless you can get your hands on some detailed data which will show you how long each component of your startup is taking. That is where BootVis comes in.

BootVis shows you a time line of your startup sequence, showing you when each process starts and finishes during boot up, all presented visually in easy to read graphs. This can be used to find out where your startup is being slowed down or pausing. This can help you identify the problem and then take steps to work out a solution.

BootVis was originally released by Microsoft so that driver programmers could test their software. It is no longer supported by Microsoft (hence no version for Vista), nor is it available through them. I have been unable to find any freeware programs that do this crucial fault finding job visually, though there are some programs that log some of this data to text files.

Some sites report that BootVis can be used to speed up your startup time. There are optimisation options in BootVis, but to get worthwhile results, you will need to manually tweak your system and use some wisdom to make the most out of it.

BootVis is a must for anyone suffering a slow startup. Get your copy for free from MajorGeeks.com.

It’s not very often I post about a single piece of software twice. In fact, this is the first time. A recent update now makes WindowsPager much more stable and functional than previous versions.

In Linux there is (and has been for as long as I can remember), a feature in which you can have multiple desktops/workspaces that you can switch between. This is ideal for organising your running programs. I like using workspaces so that I can have one workspace for work, and another few for play. It also makes for a great boss key.

WindowsPager is an evolving project hosted at SourceForge which has come a long way in a short time. It looks the same as the Linux switcher sitting snuggly in your taskbar, and it is just as easy to use. To switch workspaces, click on the workspace you want to go to. To move an application from one workspace to another, hold down ctrl and drag the icon of it to the desired workspace. A new additional feature in this version lets you click in the titlebar of any window and “move to” any other desktop.

WindowsPager has been working well for me since version 0.8. WindowsPager 0.21 has just been released and is a big improvement. We can look forward to added functionality and stability in future releases. I am finding that in its current state, WindowsPager looks and works much better than any other workspace switchers I could find for Windows.

There are a couple of limitations. You cannot drag a window from one workspace to another using the title bar. Saying that, I have not come across a Windows workspace switcher that can do this. There is also no dual screen support. It does work with dual screens, but only the preferred screen will be shown. All the releases are currently alpha releases, so bugs are to be expected though I have not come across any bugs in the current version after a week of use.

To have WindowsPager load at startup, create a shortcut to it in the startup folder of your start menu.

I am very excited about this project and I am going to continue tracking it as it is developed. Get your copy for free from SourceForge. 

In the early 1990’s, when ‘multimedia’ was the big buzzword among personal computers, Apple created QuickTime as a complement to its QuickDraw graphics rendering & manipulation system. Apple wanted to do for time-based media (ie. movies, sound) what it did for graphics – that is, make manipulating movies as easy as cut, copy & paste. And so, in early versions of QuickTime, you could do exactly that, without paying a penny; within the standard QuickTime MoviePlayer application, you could select start & end points, chop & change at will, and even copy & paste movies into other applications that supported QuickTime. You could paste a QuickTime movie into a word processor document just as easily as if you were pasting text!
Granted, a lot of movies were postage-stamp sized in those days, and there’s not really a lot of practical use for movies in word processor documents, but boy it was fun – just because you could do it.

Eventually QuickDraw fell by the wayside to make way for Quartz in Mac OS X, but QuickTime lived on – and it went from being an optional extension to becoming an integral part of the Mac system. Nowadays, if you want to do any cutting, copying, pasting or other basic editing of QuickTime movies, you have to cough up money to Apple to unlock these features.

But what’s not generally known to the average user is that these features are only locked within Apple’s standard QuickTime Player application. Enterprising third-party programmers can freely tap into QuickTime’s full feature set and offer them to their users in other applications. One such result is this week’s treat for Mac AND Windows: MPEG Streamclip. Read on…

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Shortcuts are a very important feature of any operating system. We use them to launch programs and our Internet Explorer favourites, or we can use them to make our computer perform set tasks.

In my job, I find myself regularly being asked how to make shortcuts. I would normally first advise users to get rid of the unnecessary links to readme files and uninstallers so that their utilities stand out more. 

Saying that, shortcuts are really easy to make and are sometimes necessary. As shortcuts are used in every operating system, I thought I would have a look into them a little further and try to get some creativity going so that we can get the most out of our shortcuts. 

Over the past week there have been a number of great posts around the blogosphere about how to make shortcuts to do certain tasks. These inspired me to write an article that would allow you to get your shortcuts to work for you more effectively.

In this article, we will create shortcuts to a handful of little utilities, existing Windows utilities and Windows features. The end result will be an easily accessible group of shortcuts that can be launched quickly and without hesitation.

By the time you have finished reading this article, you should have a workforce of shortcuts ready to be used with a single click. You have one location to access them all. It is sort of like having your own customised control panel on hand.

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