Few days ago, I wrote a post about Paint.NET, the amazing opensource graphics editing program meant for Windows operating system. After I wrote that, I realized I’ve gotten in love with opensource applications so here I am bringing you another nifty program: WinDirStat!

To tell you: WinDirStat is not new, but probably this could be the first time you heard about this program. WinDirStat basically will solve your hard disk mysteries by letting you see your hard disk’s contents in a “bird-eye” view. If ever wondered where your space has gone off or if you want to know which file is eating your space away, this program will help you identify it. Yes, no more hard disk mysteries, bar none.

The first screen you’ll encounter is the hard disk selection (shown in a list above). You will see multiple entries if you have more than one hard disk drives. In my case I only have one, and there is less than three gigabytes remaining space on my 80 GB laptop hard disk drive. This is where the mystery kicks in: how come my hard disk is almost full? I will let WinDirStat solve this for me.

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I’ve never been a fan of open source programs until recently because I grew up in the world of proprietary Windows-based applications. Curious and incredulous, I surfed the Web to take a sneak peak of the beauty of these “free-to-use” programs, though I knew it isn’t new, I was surprised how robust they are.

The open source program that awed me is called Paint.NET, a raster graphics editing program for Windows, developed under .NET Framework using C# and C++ languages. When I saw the program running on my screen for the first time, I doubted if the program is really free – and it really is.

Paint.NET program has a familiar user interface. The toolbox looks similar to that of Photoshop. The whole program looks actually like a downsized Adobe Photoshop version. It supports layers as well, transparency, blending, plug-in and has dozens of in-built image effects to choose from. The program is amazingly fast and lightweight. Paint.NET can be downloaded here for only 1.6 MB disk space.

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