Automated Shutdown Tool

AMP WinOFF is a utility to automate the shutdown of Windows. It supports shutdown, restart, hibernate, lock workstation, and can also be scheduled to perform the action at a regular time or when the CPU becomes idle. In addition, it can hang up the modem, capture the desktop and/or execute a program before the shutdown.

Digital Janitor

Digital Janitor is a program that helps you sort your folders. Imagine downloading a lot of documents, pictures and photos every day, in the end your "Downloads" folder will be full of files that you will have to cut/paste by yourself into their proper directory. Digital Janitor sorts the folder depending on where the user wants a certain filetype to go.

Make Apps Always Open Maximized

From the How-To-Geek. It can be annoying when opening an application and having to resize or maximize the screen. This can be especially annoying when you want to see all of the data in an app like Access or Excel.

To fix it all you need to do is right-click on the application shortcut and select Properties. Under the Shortcut tab change the dropdown next to Run to Maximized.

Advise for Computer Backup

Remember: it's not if your hard-drive fails, it's when. This article highlights various backup strategies. The Dropbox online backup service is worth considering for your precious documents.

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.

ORGANIZE YOUR PDF DOCUMENTS

Mendeley Desktop is academic software that indexes and organizes all of your PDF documents and research papers into your own personal digital bibliography. It gathers document details from your PDFs allowing you to effortlessly search, organize and cite.

NICE NOTEBOOK COMPUTER FOR $380

Newegg.com has the Lenovo G530-444635U NoteBook Intel Pentium dual-core T4200(2.00GHz), 15.4" Wide XGA screen, 2GB Memory,160GB HDD 5400rpm, Dual layer DVD Burner, for $380 and free shipping. Comes with Vista Home Basic.

STELLARIUM IS A PLANETARIUM FOR YOUR COMPUTER

Stellarium is a free open source planetarium for your computer. It shows a realistic sky in 3D, just like what you see with the naked eye, binoculars or a telescope. It is being used in planetarium projectors. Just set your coordinates and go.

YAHOO EMAIL DRAG MESSAGE STRAIGHT TO FOLDER

Highlight a message in your inbox, hold the left mouse button down and just drag the message to one of your folders.

YAHOO EMAIL QUICK COMPOSE

Type the letter N to start a new message, R to reply to a selected message or F to forward a selected message.

WINDOWS WORD SHORTCUT

Quickly move the cursor to the location it was at when the document was last saved by pressing  SHIFT + F5.

MAKE THE OFFICE ASSISTANT GO AWAY

1. Click on the Office Assistant, then click on Options.
2. Clear the Use Office Assistant check box.

You can also customize the behavior of the Office Assistant by checking or clearing the checkboxes on the Options tab. If you want to learn how to customize the Office Assistant, but it's not currently visible, choose Show the Office Assistant from the Help menu.

CHANGING INTERNET EXPLORER HOME PAGE

To change your home page:
1. Go to a web page that you want to have as your  initial page when you start IE
2. Select Tools / Internet Options
3. In the Home page section, simply click on the Use Current button

INCREASE VIEWING AREA INTERNET EXPLORER

Make the web page viewing area bigger by pressing the F11 key. This switches Internet Explorer (or any other browser) into full-screen mode, removing all trace of the browser and letting the web page occupy the entire screen. If you move your mouse near the top of the screen, the missing parts of the screen reappear temporarily. Get back to normal by pressing F11 again.

ASUS 23.6" WIDESCREEN LCD MONITOR FOR $165

Newegg has the ASUS VH242H Black 23.6" 5ms HDMI Widescreen LCD Monitor for $175 - $10 rebate [Exp 8/31] = $165 with free shipping. Resolution at 1920 x 1080 pixels, 300 cd/m2 brightness, 1000:1 contrast ratio, 5ms response time. This monitor is highly rated by those who have purchased it.

SPEEDING UP WINDOWS OUTLOOK

Keeping a nice, clean mailbox is probably one way of speeding up your Outlook experience. You can do this by using the Auto-Archive feature. Archiving simply moves the emails to a backup file.

You can turn on the built-in Auto Archive feature by heading into: Tools -> Options -> Other--- and setting up your preferences for when to archive—you may need to tweak them to fit your own emailing behavior, but the key is to keep your daily mailbox nice and small.

RESTORING WINDOWS OUTLOOK ARCHIVED FILES

The process for restoring the archived file is:

1. On the File menu, click Import and Export.
2. Click Import from another program or file. Click Next.
3. Click Personal Folder File (.pst). Click Next.
4. In the File to import box, change the default file name in the path from backup.pst to the name of the archive file you're importing from. Click Next.
5. Click the folder to import from. If you want, click Include subfolders.
6. Specify how you want Outlook to handle duplicate items.
7. Click Import items into the same folder in, and then click the folders with the same name as the folders you're importing from.
8. Click Finiish

HIDING SYSTEM TRAY ICONS: You can manually select how you want individual icons in the System Tray to be displayed.
1.Right click on the Taskbar
2.Select Properties
3.Check Hide inactive icons
4.Click on the Customize button
5.This will bring up a dialog box that will allow you to select one of three options for your applications: Hide when inactive, Always hide, or always show
6.Highlight current or past applications and make any changes you like.
7.A small arrow will now appear in the System Tray that will allow you to show or hide these icons.

GROUPING SIMILAR TASKBAR BUTTONS: When you open more than one document in the same program and then minimize each document, rather that  showing separate icons on the taskbar for each document, WindowsXP groups them under a single icon for that application. If you want to group, or ungroup, similar taskbar buttons,
1.    Right click on the Taskbar
2.    Select Properties
3.    Check or Uncheck Group similar taskbar buttons

CLOSING MULTIPLE TASKBAR ITEMS: You can highlight and close multiple taskbar windows at once by using the same syntax you use for selecting multiple files in Windows Explorer. To do this: 1.)Hold down the CTRL key and click on each taskbar item you want closed. 2.)When you are done selecting them, release CTRL and the mouse button. 3.)They will all become selected, and you can right click on any one of them and choose ‘close group’ to close all selected windows.

SPEEDING UP THE DISPLAY OF START MENUS: An easy way to speed up the display of the Start Menu Items is to turn off the menu shadow. 1.Right click on an open area of the Desktop 2.Select Properties 3.Click on the Appearance tab 4.Click on the Effects button 5.Uncheck Show shadows under menus.