Auto Mute is a free little program that simply mutes your PC whenever it is turning on or waking up from sleep or suspend modes.
It is useful in cases where you might want to ensure that your computer will be completely silent unless you actively un-mute it, such as working late at night or around sleeping children, or in public places such as buses, cafes, or conferences, etc.
A brilliant strangely original app, but also potentially very useful. This blog, for example, is mostly written on a laptop on the bus that I take to and from work, and I often find myself inconvenienced by the unintended Windows startup chime blasting on the bus when I start up my laptop, which I have to wait out and can do nothing about.
In other situations I was surprised by the annoying “congratulations, you just won an Ipod” or somesuch voice ads while surfing in cafes or at work, or by the unanticipated introductory music or sound effects from a game that I may have been considering for a review, etc.
More notes on this app:
- How to use: unzip in a place you like and run. All settings are self explanatory.
- Wish list: although not a problem in Windows 7, for XP I would have liked the option to hide the program icon in the system tray.
- Mute/unMute by hotkey: Ctrl+F10 by default. Can be changed at user discretion.
- Size in memory: 9 megs, which isn’t a lot but surprisingly large for the provided functionality.
The verdict: nothing more to say on this one, except that it will become a permanent fixture on my laptop.
Version Tested: 2.0
Compatibility: Any 32 bit or 64 bit version of Windows.
Go to the program home page to download the latest version (approx 326K).
