Undelete Plus

A friend went through a situation some months ago where his My Documents got deleted by a LAN administrator. He searched for something to "undelete" these files. I don't remember what he found but his experience set me off on a quest for something "just in case."

I found Restoration from Brian Kato. This is available here. It seems like there are newer versions available but none of the crumbs lead back to the author.

Anyway, Restoration works pretty good. Here's a screen shot:

Then today, I ran across Undelete Plus while reading lifehacker.

It works well also but has an easier UI. Here's a screen shot:

The big difference from Restoration is that panel on the left side. With a single click, you can subset by the file type, the folder where the file is located, or the drive. In this example, I had deleted an Excel file. By just clicking on the "MS Excel WorkSheet" in the left panel, Undelete Plus displayed the file I was looking for.

Obviously, this is a trivial example. If your real life is more complicated, there is a powerful filter capability.

Remember that undeleting files is not guaranteed. Your mileage may vary.

Christmas Wish List 2006

Uniden TCX440 Cordless Color Handset 5.8GHz

This is another extension for our new phone system.

I got our current ones from Staples but they are out of stock right now. I'd recommend looking on eBay. Find one that has "Buy It Now." It should be less than $50 with shipping.

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Pandigital 7" Digital Photo Frame

This is a digital photo frame like we gave Hanley when he got his Masters.

OfficeDepot has it on sale for $89.99 after a $10 rebate.

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Maxell CD-R Spindle, Pack Of 50

I can always use blank CDs.

OfficeDepot has them on sale for $5.99.

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Seidio Stereo Adapter

I know I've asked for and received one of these before but my new car has a place where I can plug my Treo into the radio. This will let me use my Treo to play my podcasts while I drive.

You can order it here.

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Smartphone Experts P6 Pouch Case

This is a horizontal case for my Treo.

You can order it here.

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Exilim EX-Z1000 Digital Camera

This is the latest model of the same camera that I have but with more megapixels and anti-shake.

You can order it here for $279.96 with free shipping.

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ACU-RITE Digital Thermometer with Humidity Gauge

This is an indoor-outdoor thermometer. I know we have one now but it is wireless and I have trouble keeping it working.

I found this at Lowe's for $12.97.

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Update 12/25/06: Thanks Santa!

Browser Share II

Last June, I posted about the changes in the browser share on my blog. I looked again last week at the mix. I was surprised to find that Internet Explorer (all versions) had dropped from 59% to below 48%. Kind of makes you wonder if IE7 isn't too late.

Firefox has dropped 3% points (10% relative). I wonder if that's not where the IE7 growth came from.

Since both IE and Firefox declined, the usage had to go somewhere. It went to Opera and Safari, together up from 3% to 20%. That's odd.

PPTX

I went to the HP Technology Forum last month. As usual, it was excellent. They just posted the presentations to their web site and I went out and downloaded the decks for the sessions I went to and was interested in.

One of them was a .pptx file. I guessed what that was (an xml file from Office 2007) and being curious, I doubled clicked on it to see what would happen. To my surprise, PowerPoint 2003 immediately opened it (or tried to). Seems that PowerPoint 2003 has a file association for .pptx files.

As expected, PowerPoint 2003 couldn't open it. Unexpectedly, I got an interesting pop-up.

Of course, I clicked on "Yes."

This took me to the 2007 Microsoft Office system preview site where I was offered a "Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats." Sure, I'll bite.

I expected some kind of viewer but again I got the unexpected. When I downloaded and installed it, I then had the ability to "Open, edit, save, and create files in the robust file formats new to the 2007 Microsoft Office system in Microsoft Office 2000, Office XP, and Office 2003."

Read that closely. With this update, you can "open, edit, save, and create" Office 2007 formats in "Office 2000, Office XP, and Office 2003."

Try it yourself.