IT Pro Tuesday #221
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Welcome back to IT Pro Tuesday!
We’re looking for your favorite tips and tools we can share with the community... those that help you do your job better and more easily. Please reply or leave a comment with your suggestions, and we'll be featuring them in the coming weeks.
As always, we’re updating the full list on our website here. Enjoy.
A Training Resource
The Microsoft Learn Cloud Skills Challenge offers the opportunity to earn a free Microsoft Certification exam by completing whichever challenge you choose among the 7 provided areas. genjix1 explains, "By completing one challenge within the Microsoft Learn Cloud Skills Challenge, eligible individuals are entitled to one free Microsoft Certification exam… starts October 12, 2022 at 4:00 PM UTC (16:00) and ends on November 9, 2022 at 4:00 PM UTC (16:00)."
A Free Tool
TidyTabs brings tabbed browsing to all of your Windows programs. Integrates closely with the OS so the multi-tab functionality seems to be a core part of Windows. Kindly suggested by socksonachicken.
Another Free Tool
Fast WinDirStat is a fork of WinDirStat that offers dramatic speed improvements for NTFS drives. Reads the master file table of NTFS partitions to scan information about all stored files, for a potential speed improvement of a factor of 40-50 on normal hard disks and a factor of 3-10 on SSDs. jamesaepp explains, "Unlike WizTree, this one is FLOSS, and like WizTree, uses the MFT. :)"
A Cheatsheet
A Sysadmin's Unixersal Translator is a simple, well-organized lookup table for Linux/UNIX/BSD commands that serves as a helpful guide for those working on multiple Unix implementations. jackslastfucktogive adds, "I work in a place with varied operating systems like hp-ux and 5 different flavors of Linux, Sun solaris and VMS, along with every flavor of Windows server, so I have used the rosetta stone of unix for years."
One Last Free Tool
Beeftext is an open-source text substitution/expansion tool for Windows that saves you the trouble of repeatedly typing the same text strings over and over. Set up all your frequently used text snippets, and you'll never have to type them out fully again. Thanks for suggesting this one goes to Thecrawsome.
P.S. Bonus Free Tools
DVD Flick allows you to create playable DVDs of your video files, with added custom audio tracks, subtitles and a navigation menu. Our thanks go to QuietThunder2014 for recommending this "simple DVD authoring tool."
Purple Knight is an AD and Azure AD security assessment tool intended to help you find and close holes in your hybrid AD environment that could be exploited by cybercriminals. Allows you to perform a comprehensive set of tests to check your environment for the most common and effective attack vectors. Appreciation for the suggestion goes to dcdiagfix.
Have a fantastic week and as usual, let us know any comments.