All of the PDF writers in this review are programs that function by creating a pseudo printer on your system. When you want to create a PDF document from pretty much any application, you just choose to print it to the PDF printer and it creates a PDF document. The thing that distinguishes one product from another is the number of available options.

One problem with this approach is that you need to have a program that is able to open the file on your system. If someone sends you a file created with a program you do not have, then you won't be able to open that file; therefore, you will not be able to print it. Since you can't print, you can't convert it to a PDF using a pseudo printer technique either.

I've selected the best free products in this review by eliminating those PDF writers, suggested by readers, that were either not free or were limited time trials and basically adware (the product was free but forced the user to endure various ads as a punishment for using it).

Which one of these is the best? Well, that really depends on the options you need. Read More

When you're not using your PC, Windows is far from idle. Programs are running all the time, including dozens of so-called services which run continually in the background. Even if you're not logged into Windows, the operating system is still busy.

One way to find out what your PC is doing, is to monitor changes to files. Equally, by undertaking such monitoring, you can find out which particular program is responsible for changing the contents of a file. This can be a useful step in troubleshooting a problem.

One of my favourite tools for monitoring file changes is something called Folder Change View, or FCV. It's produced by Nirsoft and it's a tiny 0.1 MB download. The file is malware-free according to VirusTotal and Web of Trust, and is portable so there's nothing to install. Just download, unzip, and click to run.  Read More