These are tools that FCAL support uses or have proven useful to us. We wanted to share them with you in case you also find them helpful, and in case we need to use them to help resolve your support request. Please share your favorite tools with us and other users in the comments section below!
Disclaimer: we have not exhaustively researched and compared all available tools in the market to conclude that these are superior than other products.
Web Browser
Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox
Text Editor
Notepad++ is a lightweight but powerful text editor. Can be used for opening MET/CAL procedure files, ini files, XML files, and many other file types encountered while using Fluke Calibration software. Right-click a file to open the context menu, then select Edit with Notepad++ to quickly open the file in Notepad++ instead of the default application that's associated with that file extension. Don't forget to check out the Plugins menu for powerful text editing functions.
File Archiver
7-Zip provides fast and easy extraction of zip file contents. Tip: if you need to extract multiple zip files at once, select them and then right-click to open this context menu. Open the 7-Zip menu and select Extract to "*\" and 7-Zip will extract each zip into a separate folder, where the folder name will match the source zip.
Screen Capture
Greenshot - a powerful, open-source screen capture utility. Includes an image editor for marking up the image after capture. Many options are available for customization.
SnagIt - includes screen capture and recording
File and Folder Comparison
Quickly compare the contents of files or folders with a comparison tool. These tools will detect and highlight even a single character difference between two files, making it very easy to detect changes between two versions of the same file.
WinMerge - open source
Beyond Compare - fast and very powerful
Compare (Add in for Notepad++) -
Computer System Information
Capturing technical support details
This website captures several different pieces off technical support information and makes it very easy to share them with technical support teams: https://supportdetails.com
Windows Diagnostics information
How many times have you walked up to a system in your office and needed to click through several diagnostic windows to remind yourself of important aspects of its configuration, such as its name, IP address, or operating system version? If you manage multiple computers you probably need BGInfo. It automatically displays relevant information about a Windows computer on the desktop's background, such as the computer name, IP address, service pack version, and more. You can edit any field as well as the font and background colors, and can place it in your startup folder so that it runs every boot, or even configure it to display as the background for the logon screen.
Because BGInfo simply writes a new desktop bitmap and exits, you don't have to worry about it consuming system resources or interfering with other applications.
To see the computer info on the screen at all times (desktop background) you can use BGInfo from Microsoft located at https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897557.aspx?
This allows you to see the details of a computer at all times
When you run it you can set it up as such
Which will result in this being displayed on the desktop.
You can also set it up to run as a service (see help on the link given above).