temporary

Nowadays, cookies, temporary files, and various other means of tracking your Web footprint are par for the course. Some of these trackers are useful, while others can be potentially intrusive. Thankfully, there are myriad freeware cleaners out there that help keep your system in check. CCleaner is one of the better ones for its ease of use and powerful cleaning capabilities.

CCleaner's simple and intuitive layout will appeal to users of all skill levels. Its four features -- Cleaner, Registry, Tools, and Options -- are prominently displayed on the left side of the window. We started with the Cleaner … Read more

ARO 2012 is the latest version of a longstanding Registry cleaner and optimizer. The look is familiar, but ARO 2012 offers several upgrades over previous versions, such as improved browser cleaning and user-friendlier settings as well as new tweaks that can yield better NTFS performance, faster startups, and improved CPU utilization. ARO 2012 also backs up and optimizes the Registry. You can schedule automatic cleanings, too.

ARO 2012's installer informed us that it would scan our PC as soon as it closed. The first scan is always important with software like ARO since it establishes a baseline, and ours … Read more

The dangers of drowsy or distracted drivers may be a thing of the past. Volkswagen engineers say they have developed an autopilot for your car.

Dr. Jurgen Leohold, Executive Director Volkswagen Group Research on Friday introduced the "Temporary Auto Pilot" (TAP) by Volkswagen at the EU research project HAVEit (Highly Automated Vehicles for Intelligent Transport).

With TAP, the car can drive semiautomatically up to a speed of 80 miles per hour, under the driver's supervision.

"[TAP is] An important milestone on the path towards fully automatic and accident-free driving," Leohold said.

TAP relies on cameras … Read more

How many times have you broken down and passed out your primary e-mail account to Web sites and other online entities because you didn't have the time to mess with an extra account? Does it bother you that some sites ask for your e-mail address when clearly they don't need it? Do you get spammed after using your e-mail address to sign up for something? For these and other times when you don't care to share, there's My-spambox, a free Firefox add-on. My-spambox uses a JavaScript application to generate a temporary e-mail address that will function … Read more

The freeware CCleaner hasn't seen many major revisions since Piriform launched it in 2004, so when you do see a major update, you can be assured that it's going to come with impressive new tools. CCleaner 3 doesn't disappoint on that front, introducing two major new features that make it worth the upgrade.

One is a drive wiping tool that can wipe all the data from your hard drive, but can also scrub only the available free space. As with many of the tools in CCleaner, it's fairly nuanced and allows for a simple one-pass overwrite, … Read more

We all have different ways of keeping track of our schedules; some of us favor Web-based calendars, whereas others prefer to keep paper planners. Although many people like software-based schedulers, these calendars have a major drawback in that they're not easily accessible if you're away from your computer. Exstora is a basic scheduler that's small enough to be carried on a thumbdrive. Although its features aren't particularly impressive, it's not bad choice for people who like to keep track of their schedules on multiple machines, whether they have Internet access or not.

The program's … Read more

QuickWiper provides users with a simple program to cleanse your computer of unwanted files and folders. In addition, it provides several key features that help clean the hard drive even more, making it a great all-around product.

Most users will not have any trouble jumping right into QuickWiper. The screen consists of only a few command icons, and whenever the mouse is held over them, a brief description is provided. While there is a Help file, most users can skip it and start immediately cleaning their computer. Wiping a file or folder is an easy task. Users simply click on … Read more

Hard Drive Washer offers users a chance to detect and delete some of the peskiest files on a computer: temporary files. With a program that quickly and efficiently deletes these hard-drive-slowing files, this program aims to speed up your system.

Hard Drive Washer jumps directly into cleaning your hard drive with a simple start menu that gives you the choice to begin right away or to select options. The options menu allows users to focus their attention to specific drives or file types they wish to have removed from the computer. In addition, there is a scheduling option available, which … Read more

There's a catch to this program that promises to "recover" temporary Internet files from Internet Explorer's cache. It only works if the files haven't been erased using Disk Cleanup, Internet Explorer's built-in cleanup tool, or another temporary file remover.

IE Cache Files FlashGet 2007 won't help you recover deleted files, but it can help you sort through cache contents to find a missing file. The program's interface is simple in design and holds only a few command buttons, a file tree, and a pane to view a list of recovered files. The … Read more