Round 1983, I began utilizing a program known as Sidekick, which was a bundle of helpful utilities that popped up as a “TSR” (terminate and keep resident) program inside MS-DOS. What was cool about it's that it labored on the identical time and alongside no matter different software program you had been working again within the day when working techniques might run just one program at a time.
The times of TSRs are lengthy gone, however a helpful utility known as Parallels Toolbox, jogs my memory of them in the best way it gives helpful performance that you need to use alongside no matter different packages you utilize.
The product, which works on each Macs and Home windows machines, prices $20 per 12 months after a 7-day free trial. I’m testing the Home windows model, however I’ve additionally used the Mac model, which could be very related.
The precise options range barely relying on whether or not you have got a Mac or Home windows machine, however, in each circumstances, embrace the flexibility to generate and skim barcodes, archive recordsdata into zip recordsdata, be reminded when it’s time for a break, seize all or a part of your display right into a graphic file, clear pointless recordsdata out of your exhausting drive, convert video into totally different codecs, don't disturb, stop your machine from sleeping, cover your desktop, launch a number of apps with one click on, lock your display, mute microphone, report audio from PC or Mac system or microphone and resize pictures. A sleep timer places your machine to sleep after a specified variety of minutes or hours. Mac particular instruments embrace airplane mode, an alarm, clipboard historical past, liberating up reminiscence and making gifs. Home windows-only features are shut apps and measure shade of something on the display.
I've to confess that I hardly ever, if ever, use most of Toolbox’s features, however there are some I exploit almost on daily basis together with recording audio, once I need to seize audio popping out of my machine’s speaker as a top quality MP3 or Wav file. I additionally use the display seize characteristic fairly typically, although I generally use the built-in Home windows or Mac app for that operate. I additionally generally use the obtain video device to seize a YouTube or different video to my PC’s drive.
You have already got some equal instruments
A number of the features in Toolbox can be found by built-in Home windows or Mac apps or third celebration apps you could obtain, but it surely’s helpful having them multi function place and among the Toolbox apps are simpler to make use of than most options.
For instance, there are different methods to report system audio once you need to seize sound from a podcast or different audio program or the sound observe from a video, however a few of these options are cumbersome. With Toolbox it’s so simple as clicking on an icon.
Each Home windows PCs and Macs include software program to seize screenshots, and admittedly, each are about as straightforward to make use of because the options in Toolbox. However Toolbox does have the benefit of concurrently saving the screenshot as a file and placing it within the clipboard so you'll be able to paste it into one other program. In case you’re utilizing Home windows and do a number of screenshots, I like to recommend that you simply re-assign the Print Display screen button to invoke the free snipping device that comes with Home windows 10 and 11. This makes it loads simpler to invoke. You reassign it by clicking the Begin menu, typing “accessibility keyboard settings” and deciding on “use the Print display button to open display snipping.”
Macs have keyboard instructions for taking screenshots you could find out about by Googling “take a screenshot on Mac.”
There are additionally built-in instruments for among the different Toolbox utilities. For voice recording, Macs include QuickTime and Voice Memos, which might each be used for that objective. Home windows comes with Voice Recorder. In case you’re in search of a classy recorder and audio editor, I like to recommend the free open-source Audacity app, although it does include a small studying curve.
Having your machine routinely fall asleep after a specified time is an effective way to save lots of vitality, and I extremely advocate you utilize Mac or Home windows built-in instruments to configure it. However generally you need to flip that characteristic off briefly. You don’t want Toolbox to try this so long as you bear in mind to reconfigure it later, however Toolbox’s non permanent Do Not Sleep device is a safer solution to do it since you don’t have to recollect to so long as you configure the device to show off in, say, one hour or nevertheless lengthy you need to hold your machine awake. The sleep timer does the other, by letting you specify a time to have the machine routinely go into sleep mode.
Toolbox’s disk cleansing device is redundant with instruments constructed into Home windows and Macs. On Home windows, you click on on Begin and sort Disk Cleanup for a device that may delete pointless recordsdata equivalent to program obtain recordsdata and non permanent web recordsdata. On the Mac, you begin from the Apple menu, click on on About This Mac after which Storage to see how a lot area you have got and choice to unencumber area.
However among the instruments in Toolbox should not obtainable totally free, and when you use them typically, are definitely worth the $20-a-year price ticket.
Larry Magid is a tech journalist and web security activist.