It’s called WilliTech – and it’s the un-interesting name for a really cool series of posts from me (Walter), the official geek of The Willi.
I’ll probably start off by highlighting some of my favorite (free) programs that make life easier on the computer, and then might even branch off into tech tips or tutorials. These posts might be long – or they might be really short. They might come quickly, or be separated by weeks or even months. I’ll be sure to keep you guessing. 
So let’s get started!
WilliTech #1: View and edit images quickly with Irfanview
Irfanview is 2nd piece of software that I download on any new computer (right after getting a decent browser). It’s hard for me to imagine life on a Windows PC without it.
What is Irfanview? Here’s a quote from the program’s website:
“IrfanView is a very fast, small, compact and innovative FREEWARE (for non-commercial use) graphic viewer.”
Why I like Irfanview:
- It’s fast. Lightning fast. Think, “faster than notepad” fast. When I want to view an image, I don’t want to have to wait for “Vista picture viewer”, or Photoshop to load
- Keyboard shortcuts. View other images in the folder using the arrow keys. Go fullscreen instantly with “enter”. Rotate right or left with “r” and “l”. Ctr+r to resize. I could go on and on….
- Once you install the plugin pack, Irfanview will open anything you throw at it. Png, jpegs, photoshop files, and dozens of obscure image formats that you’ve never heard of. And then if you get bored, you can also use Irfanview to open WAV and MP3 music files, videos, and even PDFs.
- Batch processing. If there’s one thing that computers should be good at, it’s repetitive tasks. And yet we sit there doing the same thing over and over again “saving time” on the computer. Batch processing let’s the computer do all the work for you.
Say you have a bunch of pictures from your 7 megapixel camera that you want to upload to your flickr – but you want to resize them first to something more web-friendly, say 800×600. With irfanview, this is no problem. Use the “Batch conversion/rename” function to resize as many images as you want, all at once. Job done.
So do yourself a favor – get Irfanview. It’s not glitzy or snazzy by any means, but you won’t find anything faster or more effective for Windows [7, Vista, XP, 98, 95].
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