A couple of years ago I published a review of the home edition of EaseUS Partion Master. At the time I rated it as an excellent alternative to the more well-known brands.Now at version 9, I thought it was time to re-visit the software.

First of all, I should state that my original negative points have now been resolved. The GUI is a lot more slick (no more dodgy fonts) and the help is comprehensive.

As before, it is a simple way to modify and create partitions on your PC. The professional edition – required if you are a business – also comes with a few extra features such as the ability to resize dynamic partitions as well as an option to create a Linux boot disk of the software. In case you don’t have an OS installed or you’ve simply managed to mangle it, this is a great recovery aid.

As I’m sure you can imagine, it doesn’t just offer creation and moving of partitions – you can wipe them, convert them, merge them and, well, pretty much anything else you can think of.

It supports 64-bit versions of Windows and hard drives of over 2TB.

Any new gripes? Well, just one tiny one. There are buttons in the software for a Backup Tool and create a WinPE boot disk – both of these launch a browser page asking you to pay more for the features. I can understand this in the free version, but after paying out for the Professional edition I don’t think this is appropriate – I’d much rather have these options hidden.

There are other versions of Partition Master available too – each at a different price and with different options.

The Professional Edition currently costs just $19.99 (a little over £12).

Screenshots

Summary of EaseUS Partition Master 9.0 Professional Edition

An incredibly well designed and powerful piece of partitioning software at a bargain price. If you’re a home user and don’t need the Linusx boot option then it’s free. But at $19.99 for the Professional Edition, it’s a bargain.

Reviewed by David Artiss on 9th September 2011.

My mum already has one and I know my wife won’t mind one either. The Amazon Kindle is a rather remarkable device – it’s superb for reading books at a really good price.

I love the idea of eInk and I think those people who think iPads are just as good have obviously not used one for any measure of time. When it comes to reading an eBook nothing beats eInk, and the Kindle is the best eInk reader.

Anyway, enough of the sell. Downloading commercial books is the easy bit.

What if you have want to do something different – say, put your own document onto it? How about getting free books onto it? Well, here’s my collection of the best free software around…

briss

An open source project, to create some cross-platform software that will quickly and easily crop PDFs. Why would you want to do that? Say, it’s a Word document converted to PDF – chances are it’s surrounded by a thick white border. Use briss to remove this before putting on the Kindle and it’s 100% easier to read!

K2pdfopt

If all that seems far too manual, there’s K2pdfopt which converts a PDF to images, optimises it for the Kindle and then puts it back to a PDF again.

PDF Split and Merge

This is one of those pieces of software that does exactly what it says it does – use it to modify PDFs by editing out sections or merging some together. Again it’s open source.

kindlebility

Not software this time but a “bookmarklet” – add their provided link to your favourites and the next time you’re reading an article and wish to read it on your Kindle, click the bookmark and it will send it to your Kindle via your Kindle email.

Hamster eBook Converter

A piece of software that will converts any eBook format to work on your Kindle.

calibr

After all that, how about something which does everything? Manage, organise and convert eBooks? calibre does just that.

eLibrary

An open source project still in its early stages, eLibrary will catalogue and organise your eBooks. It may be early days but the software looks very promising!

Duokan

Duokan is something different – a replacement OS for your Kindle. But it sits aside the existing Kindle OS rather than replacing it. It has a number of features that makes PDF viewing better and is particularly recommended for comic reading.

The original is in Chinese but an English language version has been released. You can read more about it here including further links.

Mobipocket eBook Creator

And when you get bored of what’s available, why not create your own eBook? Mobipocket produce free home and publisher eBook creator.

PrimoPDF

If you create your eBook in PDF format then you’ll have maximum exposure as it can be just as easily read on PCs and Macs. PrimoPDF is one of the leading free PDF creators.

Clippings Converter

Kindle users will know that there’s a way to clip portions of the book they are reading for future reference. These clippings get saved in “myclippings.txt” in the documents folder of the Kindle. Clippings Converter is a simple tool that converts these chunks of saved text into Word, Excel or PDF files for better organisation and other use.

Kindle Reader

A standalone piece of PC software, provided by Amazon, Kindle Reader allows you to read your eBooks away from Kindle device. Unlike the Cloud Reader, you can use this to read books offline.

Wordcycler

If you use Instapaper to save web pages for reading later then you may find Wordcycler of use. Sitting in your system tray it will automatically send Instapaper items to your Kindle when it’s connected via USB.

Auto Kindle eBook Converter

A simple piece of software, Auto Kindle eBook Converter converts PDF, Lit, and HTML files to a Kindle-friendly .MOBI format.

SENDtoREADER

Another useful JavaScript bookmarklet SENDtoREADER will send any web page that you’re viewing to your Kindle via WIFI.

Kindle It

In a similar vein to SENDtoREADER, Kindle It will also send web pages to your Kindle but this time it’s a Firefox and Chrome browser extension.

Greader2Kindle

Greader2Mindle converts your unread Google Reader items to .MOBI and then emails them to your Kindle via WIFI.

PDFMasher

PDFMasher assists in converting a multi-page PDF into a single flow document.

PaperCrop

PaperCrop converts PDF documents, such as articles and academic papers, into a PDF (or image sequence) so that it can be read on a small screen.

KDK Emulator

Still in progress, KDK Emulator is a Kindle emulator for the PC.

Alissa’s MobiHandler

A small program, MobiHandler adds the ability for Windows Explorer to handle .azw/.mobi/.prc files better; cover images are shown as thumbnails, and you can see the book titles and authors on the list of files. You can also see the Properties of the books.

And finally…

When you buy PDF eBooks from certain online retailers (for example, WH Smith) they are advertised as “PDF” – but they aren’t really. You get a download of an ACSM file, which you have to open through Adobe Digital Editions to download your eBook. Once it’s downloaded, it’s locked into Digital Editions, and there is no compatibility with the Kindle.

John O’Nolan has had exactly this problem and has worked out how to resolve it using a piece of software known as ePUBee.

I’ve reviewed the Pogoplug hardware in the past, but now it’s time to review the actual desktop software. Why? Because with the recent version 3 release it can be used independently, offering a number of new features.

The new Pogoplug software then allows you to share files across your computers – not just those attached to a physical Pogoplug device. So, for instance, install Pogoplug on a desktop PC and a laptop and you can access files from each device from the other. It does this by creating virtual copies of the folders (with an extension of the computer name) within a mapped drive letter (you can also ask the software to create separate drive letters for each shared computer).

The software is not uploaded to “the cloud” but, instead, the device which the software resides on must be switched on. Clicking on a file will then cause it to be download from the other device. You can also access the files via their web interface.

You can also map printers to the software, allowing you to remotely access a printer connected to another computer.

Lastly, it offers a features named Active Copy. This lets you create pairs of folders where files will be automatically backed up from one to another. Originally designed to allow you to automatically backup to your Pogoplug device, this will now also allow backing up between PCs.

A premium version of the software is also available and retails at $29 – this allows you to stream media to mobile phones, consoles and internet TVs.

Issues? I cannot get it to work on my work PC. It’s either the proxy or the firewall software, but it doesn’t give much hint as to what the problem is – simply to contact Pogoplug about it.

When the software is updating its file information the icon in the system tray animates. Installing it on my main PC, with a lot of music and photo files, meant that it was going all night, hammering the hard drive but no indication of how far through it was. Do I leave it running indefinitely? Does it have a problem? I’m not sure.

Summary of Pogoplug Software

An excellent way of connecting between devices – obviously it does requires them all to be switched on. However, to get around this you’d need to uploaded all your files to a cloud service – and that wouldn’t be free. It also has a number of really useful options (printer, automatic backups, etc).

My main criticism – a lack of information about what’s happening. Whether it’s doing something or not because there’s a problem, it could do with more feedback to the user. But let’s not forget that the basic version is free. I don’t know if I’d purchase the premium version, but that’s down to whether you’d require the streaming features it offers.

Reviewed by David Artiss on 14th June 2011.