Everyone, even unhandy folks like me, should have a home toolbox. You've got your hammers and your pliers, your ratchet wrenches and your Allen wrenches, your screwdrivers, both flat blade and Phillips. The only tool I don't have is a pipe wrench. The last time I used a pipe wrench to fix a leak under the sink I tore apart the kitchen cabinets when the wrench slipped. A plumber charged $900 to make things right. A cabinet maker lightened my bank account by $5,000. So, no pipe wrench.
Just as every home should have a toolbox, every computer should have Parallels Toolbox, a collection of virtual tools that enhance everyday computing and make complicated tasks as easy as clicking on a mouse. Parallels, which also makes software for running Windows on a Mac, just released a new version of its toolbox for the unbeatable price of $20 a year.
There are more than 30 tools for both Windows and Macs that can be launched with one mouse-click. A few examples of the tools:
If you're making a presentation using a PC that projects its monitor to a larger screen, the last thing you want is to have email notifications pop up on your PC. There's a tool to prevent that from happening. It will hide everything on your desktop. Taking screen shots and even videos of a PC's desktop are easy enough for newbies to perform. Videos can be downloaded, too and they can be cropped and converted to different formats.
There are alarms, a file-archiving utility and programs that will clean a hard drive, free up memory, lock the screen so that nosy co-workers won't know what you're up to. Microphones can be muted, there's a stopwatch feature, and you can take photos or videos of anything and anybody if your PC has a camera. Multiple programs can be launched simply by dragging their icons onto a box. But my favorite is the presentation mode feature that blocks incoming distractions such as notifications. You wouldn't want a room full of potential customers to learn that your next meeting is one you want to cut short.
Those are just the highlights; dozens more are available. To help you decide which tools would be useful on your computer, a seven-day trial version can be downloaded at www.parallels.com
