Automate the Shutdown of the PC or an application

Configuring the automatic shutdown of a PC can be quite useful at times, for instance to shut down the PC after a download, backup or conversion completes. We have reviewed quite a few applications in the past that provide you with the functionality, among them DShutdown,Automatic Shutdown or Auto Shutdown for Firefox.

Shutdown Scheduler’s advantage over many comparable applications is that it offers a basic mode that can be configured quickly, and an advanced configuration menu where details can be configured to customize the process further.

As you can see on the screenshot above, the basic interface mode gives you a handful of configuration options. Here you can configure when you’d like your PC to shutdown automatically.

• After a specific period if time
• When the computer has been idle for a specified period
• At a specific time
• When a selected application terminates
• When applications stop playing sounds (useful if you like to listen to music or watch a movie in bed)

A click on the star icon in the upper left corner and the selection of advanced from the context menu, or pressing F12, will open the advanced options.

The top left options let you switch from shutting down the PC to hibernating, closing a selected application, or running another task like disconnecting the modem connection, restarting the PC or locking the workstation.

The remaining options let you configure whether the program window should be displayed when a shutdown is initiated, whether the program should wait for open documents to be saved before running the task, and whether warnings or other types of information should be displayed during the process.

Closing Words

Shutdown Scheduler’s main strength is its simplicity. It takes a few clicks to configure the shutdown of the PC or an application. Its greatest strength is on the other hand a weakness, as it is for instance not possible to select to close multiple applications with the help of the program. You may run multiple programs of the software at the same time though.

The software itself uses a small amount of system resources which makes it ideal for lower-end systems were that is important. It is interesting to note that the developer has made available a version for all recent 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows, and a classic version for pre-XP versions of Windows.

Update: The SDS Shutdown Scheduler website is no longer available. We have uploaded the latest version of the application to our own servers from where it can be downloaded: Shutdown Scheduler (19)

Manage USB access rights with USB Disk Manager

When you connect a removable USB drive to a Windows PC, you will notice that it works in many regards like any other hard drive or storage device on the PC from that moment on. You can copy files on the device or execute programs on it that you want to run on the system. The behavior makes sense in many environments, especially for home users.

Sometimes though you may want to change the access rights in regards to USB devices that are connected to the PC. Maybe because you do not want other users to transfer data from the PC to an USB device, or prevent the execution of programs stored on USB disks on the PC.

While you can do that in the Group Policy or Registry, you may prefer a graphical user interface that is letting you make those changes with a few clicks of the mouse button.

USB Disk Manager is a portable program for the Windows operating system that you can use to make the following changes to the system:

• Turn Write Protection on or off – This blocks any write attempts on removable USB drives on the system. Useful to block other users from copying data from the PC to the USB device, and to avoid the spreading of viruses via USB
• Allow or deny the execution of software – Here you can block programs stored on the USB device from being run from the device. It is still possible to run the applications if they are first copied to the PC. The basic idea here is to block USB viruses from spreading to systems this way, but it can also block users from running their own applications, which may be useful for public Internet terminals.
• Enable or disable removable USB disks -  This blocks write and read attempts when disabled, so that files can’t be accessed or written anymore.

Keep in mind that plugged-in USB devices need to be reconnected before the settings take effect for them.

The application minimizes to the system tray, from where you can also switch between settings easily with a right-click on the icon.

Create desktop shortcuts for Windows Metro apps

One of the things that you can’t do in the Windows 8 Release Preview is create desktop shortcuts for Metro apps. Say you have a favorite Metro app that you want to access regularly from your desktop.  In Windows 8, you would have to press the Windows key first, and then either use the search to find it or locate it in the Metro interface and click on it to start it up.

If you have installed a program like Start8, you may get direct access to the app via the start menu that those applications add to the Windows 8 operating system, but if you do not use those programs, you are pretty much without options to create shortcuts for Metro apps.

The free program Metro App Link provides you with the option to create shortcuts for all default Metro apps that ship with Windows 8. While it is not a universal solution because of that, as it does not support third party apps that you install using the Windows Store, it at least gives you the option to create shortcuts to several popular apps on your desktop.

You can start the program right after you have downloaded and unpacked it on your system. Note that the Smartscreen Filter may kick in to prevent that you run the program on the system. This is a protection filter that is blocking new and malicious programs  from being launched or installed. You can bypass the Smartscreen Filter easily with a click on more info though.

The program displays only the app icons and no titles but since the apps use fairly general icons it should not be too hard to identify the proper apps that you want to create shortcuts for. Simply click on create shortcut and a new desktop shortcut is placed on your Windows desktop.

You receive a security warning when you click on the shortcut for the first time. You can uncheck the always ask before opening this file box to prevent this from happening in the future. The program then loads the app right in the Metro interface as if it was started there.

If you want to create shortcuts to the default Metro apps, then this program can help you do so. It is likely that someone will eventually come up with a solution to create shortcuts for third party Metro apps as well. For now, that is all we have got. (via Beatmaster)

Shortcuts for Gmail: Learn Gmail hotkeys on the fly in Chrome

Remember KeyRocket? A free for personal use application for Windows that is helping you learn keyboard shortcuts while you use supported programs such as Microsoft Office or Windows Explorer. The developer team behind the program has released an extension for the Chrome web browser that does the same for Gmail.

If you ever wanted to be more productive in Gmail but never bothered to learn the keyboard shortcuts to be so, you may like the on the fly learning approach of the Chrome extension.

When you first load Gmail after installing the extension you are reminded that you need to activate shortcuts first in Chrome’s settings and change the interface language to English. Especially the latter may be reason enough for some users not to give this a try. To configure both options click on the options button on the top right of the interface and select settings from the context menu. you find the language and keyboard shortcut preferences right under the general tab which is opened by default.

The extension displays shortcut hints based on your actions on Gmail.  When you select a message it lets you know that you can uncheck that message again with a tap on the x key on the keyboard, that you can open the compose message window with a tap on the c key instead of clicking on the Compose button in the Gmail interface, or use the g and i key combination to open the inbox view.

Shortcuts for Gmail sometimes may not display keyboard shortcut tips even if they are available. While it will tell you that you can press # to move messages to the trash when you select the trash button at the top of the interface, it won’t make that suggestion to you if you use the option in the mail preview pane.