Lifehacker's Complete Guide to Windows 7

Lifehacker's Complete Guide to Windows 7 will take you straight through from system requirements and upgrading your PC to highlighting Windows 7's best new features to helping you hit the ground running with all of the awesome tweaks Windows 7 has in store for you.

25 GB of free storage on Windows Live

With Windows Live SkyDrive, it's easy to store and share your files and photos with almost anyone. Get to your online files from home, work, or on the road. Keep your files to yourself, or share them with anyone you want. Drag files into your online folders, just like on your PC.

Find out if your PC can run Windows 7

To see if your PC is ready for Windows 7, download the free Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor. It scans your PC for potential issues with your hardware, devices, and installed programs, and recommends what to do before you upgrade.

Windows 7 Basic Migration from Windows XP

Windows 7 Basic Migration is a free application for migrating from Windows XP to Windows 7 on your existing or new computer. Download the migration tool and reduce the time and hassle of moving your data, along with user and application settings to the new operating system.

Migration from Windows XP to Windows 7 requires a clean install and you will need to manually download and re-install your favorite applications. Windows 7 Basic Migration utility will guide you through the re-installation of your software programs.

STREAMING VIDEO SOFTWARE

CamStudio is able to record all screen and audio activity on your computer and create industry-standard AVI video files and using its built-in SWF Producer can turn those AVIs into lean, mean, bandwidth-friendly Streaming Flash videos (SWFs). This is free software.

LISTEN TO ANY SONG OR ALBUM ONCE FOR FREE

Listen free on Lala. No ads, no subscriptions -- just an incredible catalog of music to explore. Listen to any song or album once for free. Music from major labels and indie labels, all legally licensed. New albums on the day of release, and hidden gems from an artist's early works.

Scan Tailor Cleans Up Scanned Pages

Tired of fiddling with scanned pages to remove borders, correct alignment, and otherwise prettify them before storing or emailing them? Then Scan Tailor could be right up your alley. Scan Tailor is an interactive post-processing tool for scanned pages. It performs operations such as page splitting, deskewing, adding/removing borders, and others. You give it raw scans, and you get pages ready to be printed or assembled into a PDF or DJVU file. Scanning, optical character recognition, and assembling multi-page documents are out of scope of this project. Scan Tailor is free software.

Sumatra PDF Viewer

The Sumatra PDF Viewer is a tiny, open-source, portable, and, most of all, lightning-quick replacement for the bloated Adobe Reader. It's only a 1.2 MB download. Sumatra is a free download.

Turn Your Web Cam into a Security Camera

If you've been thinking about setting up a web surveillance camera but were put off by the expense or hassle, Vitamin D makes it easy to turn your web or networked camera into an easy-to-use

Microsoft's SyncToy

Microsoft's SyncToy is a simple but effective tool for mirroring folders across hard drive locations, networks, or USB devices. With a 2.1 update, it's been retooled to run faster, back up configurations, and handle errors much better.