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Monday, September 20, 2010

Basic MP3 Cutter

The next in our list is MP3 EasySplitter.

Setup is quick, but the program doesn’t offer us much choice. It installs start menu entries and a desktop icon automatically. Upon completion it also shows a small text file that mostly brags about advantages of the program. A little bit annoying.

The setup doesn’t offer to launch the program, so we start MP3 EasySplitter by double clicking its desktop icon.

No registration reminders are shown, it goes directly to the main window.

The blue arrow shows where to start. OK, we click the button to get an "Open" dialog. Browse and select our album.

Oops!

The error message says that our file is corrupt, but we know for sure that it isn’t. It has been successfully split by quite a number of other MP3 splitters. So, what’s wrong? Variable bitrate?

We try opening another (much smaller) file, and it is opened OK. But when we try to set start/end points, MP3 EasySplitter throws the following message:

So, files bigger than 5 MB are not supported by the trial version. Very unfortunate. Why would we need to cut a file smaller than 5 MB? Well, only for testing…

Trying to get help by pressing F1 – failed. We click the Help button, but get a short FAQ instead.

Summary:

  • Interface: very simple, but a bit ugly. 7
  • Features: only MP3, built-in player, no re-encoding. No waveform, no silence detection, no splitting by file size/duration, no CUE sheets etc. Error. 2
  • Documentation: small FAQ. 2
  • Compatibility: ran on Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista 32 bit, Windows Vista 64 bit. 10

Hotbar Adware

What is HotBar?
According to the HotBar website, Hotbar is an add-on that instantaneously converts your email and browser applications into powerfully personalized instruments of enhanced functionality and visual appeal. The Hotbar Browser Toolbar presents buttons on your Internet Explorer browser that change while you surf to relate to the website you visit. These buttons also provide you instant access to Search, Yellow Pages and more! The Browser toolbar also spices up your Internet Explorer with your chosen image (skin) picked from a huge variety of skins numbering into the thousands found in hundreds of galleries at www.hotbar.com.

The Hotbar Email Toolbar is added to your mail (Outlook , Outlook Express, Hotmail and Yahoo mail) . This bar offers a wide assortment of options for customizing the design of your emails with Backgrounds, eCards, Animation and even a Business Card of your own design.

However, HotBar does track web site visits and also has an autoupdate feature that updates automatically.

You can remove HotBar through Add/Remove Programs in the Control Panel, however it leaves behind some tracks that will have to be removed manually. After removing the program through the Add/Remove section, you'll want to run Regedit and remove the following keys in the registry.

HKey_Current_User\Software\Hotbar
HKey_Local_Machine\Software\Hotbar
HKey_Local_Machine\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Toolbar\B195B3B3-8A05-11D3-97A4-0004ACA6948E
HKey_Local_Machine\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\User Agent\Post Platform\Hotbar 3.0

You can also delete the 'HotBar 3.0' string from

HKey_Current_User\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\User Agent

Automatic Removal

For Automatic Removal of Hotbar, Click on the following link to download and run the HotBar uninstaller program from their site.