I just recently received a new lappy from work, and aside from some minor hardware updates it has 8 GB of RAM instead of the 4 GB of the predecessor. Hence, it is running Windows x64, which necessitates a reinstallation of all of my favorite applications, utilities, settings, and hacks. This will be my fledgling effort to provide a concise list for my own future reference and for the benefit of all you geeks out there on the Intertubes.

At this point the list is in no particular order. I may organize it someday if I'mexcruciatinglybored.

• Edit 1: added God Mode to Tweaks & Hacks.
• Edit 2: added TFTPD32, BlueScreenView, and SlimDrivers.

Windows 7 Tweaks & Hacks

(or skip these and go to the Applications list)

Task Bar: set to use small icons, and set to double-height to allow for more window names, with less combining (grouping), when running a lot of applications at once. As an added bonus, this view also provides more date detail in the SysTray.

Task Bar: set to combine buttons only when full so all individual windows are visible for single-click access unless you have a whole ton open at once. This also provides for a quick and convenient way to close 100+ Word documents you may have accidentally opened all at once by right-clicking and using "Close Group."

SysTray (i.e., "Notification Area): Windows 7 hides most SysTray icons by default unless they are providing an active notification. That's fine for most apps, but there are some icons I alwayswant visible, so I customize the following: Pidgin, Juniper VPN client, Core Temp, Dropbox, Network, Power, Volume, Macrium Reflect, and Skype. More later on what all of these applications actually are…

Configure power button (Start -> type "change what the power buttons do") to activate Suspend by default. If I really want to turn off the computer, it's best to do this the standard way through the Start Menu; if the computer has locked up, just hold the Power Button down for five seconds and it will turn off regardless.

Start Menu: set the "Power button action" to "Hibernate." I usually Suspend my computer most of the time, but when I won't be using it for an extended time I prefer to Hibernate. Unlike Suspend, this mode truly turns the computer off and stops using any battery power. The disadvantage is that Hibernate usually takes a lot longer to enact and resume since your entire RAM has to be stated (copied) to the disk before the computer can turn off. I do use one of the latest and greatest SSD models as my system disk though, so even with 8 GB of RAM the Hibernate feature takes only 45 seconds or so, and only 25 seconds to resume.

Windows Explorer: the default Windows Explorer icon pinned to your Task Bar is about as useless as I can imagine in its default view. Therefore, drag commonly used folders to it and they'll be "pinned" at the top of the context menu (right-click on it). I pin Computer, Documents, frequently used folders, and even UNC-path network shortcuts to it.

Task Bar: dragging an application shortcut to the Taskbar will "pin" it there similar to how the old QuickLaunch used to work in Windows 5.x. You can also right-click an already-running application and choose to pin. I remove most of the default pinned apps, and here are the apps I pin: OpenVPN, PaperPort, Notepad++, Explorer, Chrome, Outlook, Internet Explorer, Pidgin, Macrium Reflect, KeePass, and two internally developed applications from my employer. More on these apps later, of course.

X-Mouse! I'm a UNIX guy at heart and I love the default X-Mouse behavior. For those unfamiliar, it makes a window receive focus whenever you mouse over it (without clicking on it), and does notbring it to the foreground. It's really convenient when you need to type in a couple different windows or apps often but necessarily need them to come to the foreground of your workspace. It's also much faster than clicking on them. To enable this functionality you need to hack a couple Registry entries. Set the following:

• HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\UserPreferenceMask (REG_BINARY): 9f 3e 07 80 12 00 00 00
• HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\ActiveWndTrkTimeout (REG_DWORD): 250 (Decimal)

The first entry enables the "focus on mouseover" functionality, and the second entry makes it more compatible with stupid Windows behaviors. By the latter, I'm referring to the many disconnected context menus and windows that pop-up on their own without a Task Bar entry. The number "250″ (in decimal) is the delay in milliseconds before the window is focused. By default there is no delay at all, and this is identical to the true X-Mouse behavior, but it causes all sorts of problems with some aspects of the Windows UI. Therefore I recommend setting to a value between 100 and 400 ms to allow just enough time to "cross the gaps" so you don't lose some important context menu, and other, functionality.

More X-Mouse!By default, the Windows pseudo-X-Mouse behavior hack from above only focuses to parent windows, not to child windows within the parent. But luckily there's a free program to fix the problem! WizMouse!

• Scrolls windows under the mouse without having to click first
• Enables the mouse wheel in applications that don't support mouse wheels
• Optionally reverse the mouse wheel direction (like OS X Lion "Natural" scrolling)

Sounds:Disable the Windows Start and Windows Exit sounds! These are useless, annoying, and slow down login and logout/shutdown.

Task Bar Autohide Keyboard Shortcut:I use some applications that really benefit from as many vertical pixels as I can give them, and the normal method of turning the Task Bar auto-hidefeature on and off is cumbersome, slow, and annoying. Fortunately there's an app for that! Taskbar Autohide. The website for this app has been down for a while now, but you can still find it on some download sites or by searching Google. Once it's running you can simply type Win+A to toggle the Task Barauto-hide!

Time Zone Selector Gadget:I routinely travel among the four common United States time zones, and Windows doesn't make it quick or convenient to update your current time zone. Luckily this Gadget (what Windows calls "widgets") will happily sit idle on your Desktop and change your time zone instantly with a single click. Time Zone Selector Gadget.

More Gadgets!AddGadget.com has a nice variety of Gadgets you can use to see detailed statistics and graphs of your CPU, network, drive, GPU, and battery. There's even one that reports worldwide earthquakes. AddGadget.com.

God Mode:there's an interesting way to put all administration functions into better-organized folders than Control Panel. It provides many common tasks at your fingertips. For most tasks I know the name of the app or service I need, so I simply type the Windows key and then type the name of the task to instantly find the app or service. But sometimes when you can't remember, this trick is handy for sorting. Use this script to create all of the "God Mode" folders:

mkdir "Special Folders cd ".\Special Folders mkdir "God Mode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C} mkdir "Location Settings.{00C6D95F-329C-409a-81D7-C46C66EA7F33} mkdir "Biometric Settings.{0142e4d0-fb7a-11dc-ba4a-000ffe7ab428} mkdir "Power Settings.{025A5937-A6BE-4686-A844-36FE4BEC8B6D} mkdir "Icons And Notifications.{05d7b0f4-2121-4eff-bf6b-ed3f69b894d9} mkdir "Credentials and Logins.{1206F5F1-0569-412C-8FEC-3204630DFB70} mkdir "Programs and Features.{15eae92e-f17a-4431-9f28-805e482dafd4} mkdir "Default Programs.{17cd9488-1228-4b2f-88ce-4298e93e0966} mkdir "All NET Frameworks and COM Libraries.{1D2680C9-0E2A-469d-B787-065558BC7D43} mkdir "All Networks For Current Connection.{1FA9085F-25A2-489B-85D4-86326EEDCD87} mkdir "Network.{208D2C60-3AEA-1069-A2D7-08002B30309D} mkdir "My Computer.{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D} mkdir "Printers.{2227A280-3AEA-1069-A2DE-08002B30309D} mkdir "Application Connections.{241D7C96-F8BF-4F85-B01F-E2B043341A4B} mkdir "Firewall and Security.{4026492F-2F69-46B8-B9BF-5654FC07E423} mkdir "Performance.{78F3955E-3B90-4184-BD14-5397C15F1EFC}

More information on "God Mode" is available from this PC World article: Windows 7 GodMode: Tips, Tricks, Tweaks.

That's it for the Tweaks & Hacks section. If you have some more useful ones, please comment and I'll add them if I find them useful, too! Now onto the Applications.

General Applications

Please keep in mind that most of the applications listed below are free, but many of their installers default to opt-in for crapware such as toolbars and other junk. Please be sure when you're installing any software that you read the offers and opt-out as appropriate if you don't want this extra cruft clogging up your PCIe lanes. On the other hand, those opt-in offers do provide some amount of revenue back to the author, so if you do genuinely enjoy their software and opt-out of the crapware, I encourage you to make a direct donation to them. Even a few dollars provides drastically more revenue to them than the bundled crapware.

Microsoft Office 14 ("2010″):Microsoft Office is insanely expensive, and most people don't need the additional functionality it provides over other free solutions. I'm only writing this because if you depend on Microsoft Office, even if only for Microsoft Outlook (which, incidentally can be purchased separately), I want you to know that version 14 ("2010″) is amazingly superior to version 12 ("2007″). I absolutely hated version 12.

And just like Windows, Office now has a versioning math problem. They went from Office 12 to 14, skipping 13. And in Windows they went from version 6.0 ("Vista") to 6.1 ("7″). Obviously they wanted to distance themselves from the mess of version 6.0 as much as possible, so simply calling it Windows Vista.1 wouldn't do. Instead they added 6.0 and 0.1 to come up with "7?" Anyway, I digress…

The point is this: Office "2007″ to Office "2010″ is about the same as Windows "Vista" to Windows "7." Microsoft released Office 2007 and then fixed it with Office 2010, just like they released Windows Vista and then fixed it with Windows 7. They also hoodwinked the public by getting them to shell out the most cash ever for a major version upgrade to Windows 7, despite it only being a minorupgrade to 6.1. And the same is true for Office 2010; if you've used Office 2007 with the Ribbon interface for any length of time, you'll be right at home with Office 2010, but you'll find it faster, sleeker, and the Ribbon interface much better organized. Microsoft Office 2010.

LibreOffice:most people don't need the power of Microsoft Office. There have been numerous "office productivity" suites produced, both before and since the debut of Microsoft Office. One of the best in the 1990s was StarOffice, which then forked to OpenOffice.org in the early 2000s. After Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems, principle maintainer of OpenOffice.org, most of the developers decided to fork the project to get out from under Sun's and then Oracle's control. The new fork, called LibreOffice was released in 2010. It provides compatibility with reading, writing, and manipulating virtually all Microsoft Office files, and has its own open file format used natively. It's intuitive, easy to use, and free! I use it often, and exclusively, for things outside my workplace. LibreOffice.

Google Chrome:if you have a multi-core CPU and a decent amount of RAM, Google Chrome is hands-down the fastest general web browser I have used. As a longtime user of Mozilla Firefox, over the past year I have completely transitioned to Chrome. If you have older hardware (single-core CPU) or little RAM (2 GB or less), I still recommend Mozilla Firefox. Google Chrome.

OpenVPN:I run an OpenVPN server at home that allows me to securely transact on my network while away on business trips. It's opensource, free, and highly secure. And since it's an SSL-based VPN there's no messing with the NAT-traversal headache IPSec often presents from hotels and other networks.OpenVPN.

Pidgin:the ubiquitous instant messaging client with a humorous name. Pidgin started its life as Gaim in 1998 as an AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) client for Linux. After a naming dispute with AOL the software was renamed Pidgin. The current version has Windows and Linux support, and supports the following protocols: AIM, Yahoo, Google Talk (XMPP), Bonjour, Facebook (XMPP), Gadu-Gadu, Groupwise, ICQ, IRC, MSN, MXit, MySpaceIM, SILC, Simple, Sametime, XMPP, and Yahoo Japan. And it allows your many IM accounts to converge in one streamlined, easy-to-use, ad-free, client. And it has a most excellent tabbed conversation window! I've been using it since the late 1990s when it was still called Gaim. Pidgin.

Skype:the software I love to hate. It's huge, kludgy, and filled with ads now, but it still provides the best video and voice calling service that I've found. It's available for almost all platforms too, including most mobile phones (finally). Since I travel a lot we use this software very often to allow easy communication with my young children. Some warning though: this software uses peer-to-peer (decentralized) transmission, which is in general a good thing. However, if you have a fast Internet connection, your client may elect you as a "Super Peer" proxy for a bunch of other users without your knowledge or control. I recommend against keeping Skype running all the time. I only run it when I'm expecting a call.

Kill Skype Home:one of the more annoying aspects of recent versions of Skype is the "Skype Home" window that pops up ads in your face each time you open the application. Skype provides no way to opt-out of this annoyance, either. Fortunately someone else has written a small program that watches for that window and kills it immediately. After running the app, look for the small gray dot icon in your SysTray. Right-click it and you'll find some convenient options: Start with Windows, Persistent Mode, and Minimize Skype on Start. Since I start and exit Skype at will, I use Start with Windows and Persistent mode; the latter keeps the Kill Skype Home program running even after it has done its job. This way if you exit and restart Skype later, it will close that Skype Home window again. Kill Skype Home.

KeePass:awesome password manager with extensible plugins. This program is simply a small, portable app that lets you keep all of your passwords in a searchable and versioned database. It has a lot of really cool features, including keyfiles, so I highly recommend reading the documentation. Looking for even more convenience? Try storing your KeePass database file in Dropbox! There are also ports available for Android, iOS, and BlackBerry. KeePass.

PaperPort:in the mid-1990s I supported IT at a company that had need to scan and manipulate a lot of paper documents. I found a great program called PaperPort that allowed all of the functionality and organization they needed. Today the program has switched owners many, many times, but it's still great software if you have a lot of paper scanning you need to do. I use it to scan and organize receipts for expense reports, bills, and faxes. PaperPort.

Notepad++:an advanced, tabbed, text editor. Supports coloring, plugins, macros, regex, and so much more. I use it for notes, HTML, PHP, TL1, and logs. Notepad++.

Dropbox:a very easy-to-use, cross-platform, cloud-based file storage service. Seriously, that sounds complicated but it isn't; it's magical. There's a tour video on the webpage that shows how easy it is to use. Create a free account (2 GB), install the client on Windows, Linux, Mac, Android, iOS, web, etc., and then anything you store in your Dropbox folder is automagically synchronized across all of your devices and computers running the client. There's also a Public folder where you can put something you want to share; just right-click it and choose Copy Public URL. There's a similar feature for instant photo galleries. And you can create Shared folders that allow multiple users to have access to the same files without using the same account. Simple and awesome. The way Dropbox actually works is pretty neat. Aside from the obvious synchronization, they employ an advanced deduplication scheme within their storage network. Sometimes people like to keep very common files on their Dropbox, for instance application installers or ISOs. Many users keeping the exact same file on Dropbox is inefficient, a waste of upload bandwidth, and time. Therefore all files are hashed with an advanced one-way algorithm that provides a unique "fingerprint" for every single file. You'll notice this computing taking place when you copy a new file to your Dropbox and the SysTray icon says it's "Indexing." And magically sometimes when you copy a large file, it will be instantly present without waiting for it to upload! This is enabled by that unique hash ID; if the hash matches, regardless of the filename, Dropbox doesn't upload the duplicate content but simply links it into your account. Unfortunately they still count this space usage against you. Dropbox.com.

Toshiba Bluetooth Stack:Windows 6.x comes with a built-in Bluetooth stack courtesy of Microsoft. Unfortunately, as with most half-baked Microsoft afterthoughts, it's a piece of crap. It continually disconnects (powersave mode) my Bluetooth mouse and doesn't properly wake up. I can't establish Bluetooth networking using it. Bluetooth mono and stereo audio works about 30% of the time and is unreliable even when it does work. And Bluetooth serial profile? Yeah right. And because Windows now comes with a Bluetooth stack of its own–however horrible–most of the Bluetooth hardware providers aren't providing software any more. There's a way around this. You used to be able to buy the Toshiba Bluetooth Stack and solve all of the mentioned problems. It's an older interface design, but it works. No more problems with my mouse, networking, serial, mono or stereo audio, etc. Unfortunately Toshiba no longer sells it for non-Toshiba hardware. But if you're resourceful you can still find it. Otherwise try the BlueSoleil Bluetooth Stack, which is still available for sale. It isn't quite as good as the Toshiba stack, but very close.

TrueCrypt:opensource, free, and highly secure encryption software. For many years I used to keep my personal data in a TrueCrypt volume mounted as a drive in Windows. I would create Junction links and Reparse points (NTFS 5.x+ version of the venerable hardlink and symbolic link/symlink) to forcefully relocate default application data stores into the TrueCrypt volume. For instance, the %appdata% data stores for Firefox, Pidgin, KeePass, and more were moved into the TrueCrypt volume and then linked back to the place they should be located. This way, if someone were to steal my lappy, they could access all of my work files but not my personal files. Each time I would logon to Windows I would use a defined keyboard shortcut to mount the TrueCrypt volume with a strong password and keyfile. Unfortunately after doing this for many years, it started to become anuisancebecause the stores kept growing larger than the volume. So occasionally I would have to create a new, larger volume, copy all of the data to the new volume, and then finally delete the old volume. If I were using a large system disk I would just create a very large volume and be done with it, but for a couple years now I've been using SSDs–first a 60 GB and now an 120 GB–and I need all the space I can get. If someone would like to buy me a 256 GB or 512 GB SSD, I won't complain. ;o)

So to keep my data secure, and yet maintain more space efficiency on my SSD, I've changed my methodology a bit. I still use TrueCrypt, but now I encrypt the entire system volume. TrueCrypt has some really cool features for this, including hidden operating systems, shadow operating systems, etc., allowing plausible deniability. It also takes advantage of hardware-accelerated AES encryption engines available in most modern CPUs so the encryption has no noticeable impact on performance. I won't go into too much detail here on my public blog about what I do exactly, out of concern for security, but I would like to add that I also employ an ATA lock/password through my BIOS/SSD as well. Not many people realize this (techie geeks included) but virtually all modern ATA-based HDDs and SSDs employ a locking/password mechanism that can be controlled through most lappy BIOSes and many desktop BIOSes. On my particular lappy I locked the SSD with a password, but I saved that password in the NVRAM so I don't have to enter it each time I turn on the computer. I do have to enter my TrueCrypt password, however.

What's the point of locking the disk without requiring entry of the password? Simple. It prevents someone from removing the disk from my computer and easily hacking away at my TrueCrypt-protected volume. Any other computer will be unable to access anything without the user first providing the lock password. You can't even erase/wipe the disk. Without that lock password, the disk is unusable to anyone else in any computer but this lappy. This means that if someone does decide to boot from USB, optical media, or eSATA, they still have to work around the confines of that limitation and the processing power of my computer, in order to break the TrueCrypt encryption (which they won't be able to do anyway because I know how to make secure passwords ;o).

Elegant solution, in my opinion. TrueCrypt. Don't leave home without it. ;o)

Torrent:one of the best examples of sleek, efficient programming I've ever seen. This is a BitTorrent peer-to-peer client, and perhaps the most popular one, too. BitTorrent is an awesome, decentralized peer-to-peer transfer protocol. I use it often to download large files such as LibreOffice, Linux ISOs, etc. Often using BitTorrent allows for far faster transfer rates than achievable to a single mirrored file host. The protocol is amazingly resilient and efficient, and there's even a new protocol used not calledTP that is more efficient/faster than the old TCP method. The latest version ofTorrent has started a new, live delivery media platform that allows content providers to live stream events without requiring a huge server presence at an Internet hub. For this to work, all they need is popular content so enough people are watching that the load can be distributed against the network. Incidentally, the "" Greek character is used to refer to "micro" in English, so you pronounce the name of this program, "MicroTorrent," not "u-Torrent." ;o)Torrent. Yes, please.

Adobe Acrobat Pro:as a rule, I despise all Adobe software. And there are plenty of free ways to create PDFs (I'll mention one later). But when you need to perform advanced editing and manipulation of PDFs, nothing works better than Adobe's own software. Just be prepared for sticker shock. Adobe Acrobat Pro.

ImgBurn:simple and reliable CD & DVD burning, and much better than Windows 6.x's built-in CD & DVD burning capabilities. ImgBurn.

Paint.NET:sometimes you just need to capture an image or apply a quick manipulation of an image. The default Paint program supplied in Windows is almost useless, but usually we don't need a full-blown Adobe Photoshop-like application (such as The GIMP). For times such as these, Paint.NET fits the bill with some surprisingly advanced functionality, ease-of-use, and support of even PNG files. Paint.NET.

3CDaemon:a tiny, easy, monolithic daemon for FTP, TFTP, and syslog. Unfortunately the version I have wouldn't install with the x64 edition of Windows 7, even after using some tricks to work around the problem. Additionally there are security vulnerabilities in this old program, but that never was an issue to me since I only ran it occasionally for specific temporary use. And there is no longer an official 3Com or HP webpage for this software, probably as a result of a lack of will to fix the security vulnerabilities. So if you need it, use the Google. And if you know if a similar, very simple FTP & TFTP daemon, please let me know by way of the Comments below.(See the next app for a excellent replacement to 3CDaemon!) (I do use FileZilla Server for serving FTP, but it doesn't handle TFTP and is also much more complicated than was 3CDaemon.)

TFTPD32:free, opensource IPv6-ready application which includes DHCP, TFTP, DNS, SNTP and Syslog servers as well as a TFTP client. Available in 32-bit and 64-bit, and as a standalone or service-based version! TFTPD32.

7-Zip:a powerful, opensource, free, statistical compression utility. It can create archives using the latest statistical compression algorithms such as LZMA, LZMA2, PPMd, and BZip2, as well as create standard Zip archives. And if that wasn't enough, it can also read virtually every kind of archive on the planet, including RAR, gZip, tar, Arj, Cab, cpio, deb, dmg, HFS, ISO, lha, lzh, RPM, SquashFS, Z/compress, and more. Its GUI refinement and other utilitarian abilities still far well short of WinRAR, but you can't beat the compression and price. 7-Zip.

CCleaner:easy-to-use application that can quickly clear the cruft from your disk. You might use this if you wanted to clear the histories of various apps, or in preparation of defragmenting your disk. CCleaner.

Cool Timer:I'm easily distracted, especially when roasting my own coffee, so I depend on timers to remind me to do things. This helps my house keep from burning down, my children from dying, and preserves my marriage. Most of the time I just use an app on my phone for the timer now, but occasionally I don't have my phone handy. And besides, you can't beat the defaultfuchsia color scheme and gong sound. Cool Timer.

Core Temp:useful for keeping tabs on the temperature of your CPU cores. I use it because the CPU Usage Gadget referenced earlier is able to incorporate Core Temp's data. Core Temp.

Corz Checksum:the most handy, fastest checksum/hashing application I've found for Windows. It has some really advanced features, too. Did I mention it's fast? Corz Checksum.

f.lux:do you use your computer during the evening or night? And then find yourself restless when it's time to sleep? This program adjusts the gamma of your monitor based on your locale and the time of day, to simulate the difference in outdoor color temperature. This helps keep your internal clock on-track and at least for me, helps me sleep faster after using the computer. I do adjust the nighttime gamma to a little cooler, halfway between the halogen and fluorescent settings, or my eyes do become fatigued. f.lux.

iGuidance:in days past, before handheld GPS navigation units were cheap and plentiful, before virtually all phones had some sort of GPS navigation software available, we road warriors used our computers with portable GPS units and mapping/navigation software. I don't use this method much any more, but there are occasions when it's warranted. And iGuidance is the best software I've ever found for navigation. DeLorme Street Atlas is the best for advanced mapping.

• Portable GPS unit stops working.
• Phone out of coverage area.
• Need a better quality GPS in certain environments such as urban canyons.

For the last point above, I highly recommend the MTK-II GPS radio sold in the Qstarz BT-Q1000-series products. These are very small, extremely accurate GPS receivers featuring long battery life, USB, and Bluetooth. They even have logging features, 5 Hz sampling, geotagging software, and AGPS functionality.

iNav iGuidance. DeLorme Street Atlas.

LinuxLive USB Creator:handy utility for loading a USB flash drive with bootable ISO images of various Linux distributions. It also works with most other generic bootable ISO images. LinuxLive USB Creator.

Macrium Reflect:I back up my lappy at least once per day. I've recently switched to this software from Acronis TrueImage after having some problems with the later versions of TrueImage. Macrium Reflect is a very focused program. It does what it says, and it does it well. The free version can create full-disk images, but you'll need the paid version to create differential or incremental images. The price is very reasonable. The only thing I'm missing from the current v5 release is the ability of the application to push the backup images to an FTP server on its own. Once they include this support (on which they are rumored to be working) it will be perfect. Aside from Acronis TrueImage I've also evaluated Paragon Backup, but they've fallen short of my needs, preferences, and expectations. These are the only applications I'm aware of that support transparent, full-image, backup while still being able to use Windows in the process (via the VSS feature). Macrium Reflect.

Areca Backup and Personal Backup:I don't often use these applications myself, but they have come in handy before. They're simple file-by-file backup applications, and are not capable of producing whole-partition imaging nor backing up in-use files. But they do support extensible batching, many advanced options, FTP support, and scheduling. I've evaluated at least a half-dozen different applications of this genre and these are the only two I'm comfortable recommending. Areca Backup is my preference of the two for most users due to its simplicity. Personal Backup has a nice Wizard for use during the intial setup, but after that the interface is enough to make you just turn off the computer and go outside for a bit. Personal Backup may be a little more reliable on slow and/or unreliable FTP transfer, though.Areca Backup. Personal Backup.

MPC-HC:Media Player ClassicHome Cinema is a simple, fast, and versatile media player. It's also the only application I know of that currently well supports DXVA playback of MPEG-4.10 (H.264/AVC), VC1, and MPEG-2. DXVA is Microsoft's abstraction layer to allow hardware-decode of the video compression algorithm directly by the GPU instead of depending on the CPU, available in Windows 6.x only, and only available with certain GPUs from nVidia, AMD, and Intel. This allows low-powered CPUs to still play high-definition video as well as keeping your computer cooler and less noisy. Incidentally, use the 32-bit version even if you're running an x64 edition of Windows. The 64-bit version is still buggy and honestly, there's no compelling reason to use it over the 32-bit version. Some software really doesn't need to be 64-bit. ;o)MPC-HC.

MyDefrag:intelligent defragmentation application that takes into considering the physical nature of traditional spinning-platter hard-disk drives. Traditional HDDs write from the outside tracks toward the inner tracks (like a vinyl record; opposite of most optical disks). Because the HDD spins at a constant velocity, the outer tracks are actually faster than the inner tracks. MyDefrag uses this knowledge to rearrange the data on the disk into "zones" classified by the type and purpose of the data. Zone 1 is for the operating system itself, Zone 2 is for frequently used apps, Zone 3 is for frequently access user data, etc. For best results, run the "Monthly" script at least 2-3 times at first. After that once is enough and it will be very fast. It also has an option for Flash disks such as SSDs, which have a constant random-access time across the entire addressable space (unlike HDDs) but still benefit from sequential reads. MyDefrag.

PDFCreator:creates a virtual printer to which you can send your print jobs for conversion into PDF or many other image types. Supports a lot of options and features, including hold-in-queue, and "combine" to merge many print jobs into a single PDF without using expensive PDF manipulation software. PDFCreator.

Picasa:an extremely easy-to-use, somewhat fast, photo organization and enhancement application. It's produced by Google now, and I use it almost exclusively for enhancement and organization of my 27,000+ photo database. Technically the database is maintained in Gallery but I have a read-only share configured from the albums' web server root. I mount this share in Windows and let Picasa crawl the library. Because Picasa by default stores all photo manipulation in a database and dynamically applies on view, instead of permanently altering the file, this allows a lot of power and flexibility without risking any damage to the original photos in the library. Picasa.

PuTTY:the venerable Windows client for SSH, Telnet, and Serial sessions. Portable, free, extremely stable. I use it every day. PuTTY.

Windows 7 USB DVD Download Tool:the Windows 7 install DVD is slow, simply because it's on optical media and not properly arranged in order of needed sequential access. Fix this, as well as make your Windows 7 install disk easier to carry around, by using this tool. Windows 7 USB DVD Download Tool.

FileZilla:easy-to-use and flexible FTP/SFTP client. I used WinSCP for many, many years but lately the author updated the installer to push some crapware, so now that FileZilla supports SFTP it's time to switch to an opensource application. FileZilla.

Mounts Script:Windows never correctly mounts my persistent network share on logon. I think this is generally because, especially with the SSD boot drive, Windows loads so fast that it tries to mount the network shares before the network interface is up and has obtained an IP address from the DHCP daemon. My solution is not to mount the shares persistent, but instead to mount them from a script I place in the Startup folder of the Start Menu. The script employs a short delay before mounting. If you don't include your password(s) in the script, it will prompt you, but I provide my passwords since my entire drive is encrypted and I always lock it when I walk away. Here's my (scrubbed) script you can use for reference in your own attempts to thwart a problem I've noticed ever since Windows 4.0 ("95″).

@echo off echo Pausing 5 seconds for net to up/up... ping 1.2.3.4 -n 5 -w 1000 > nul echo Mounting h:... net use h: \\123.123.123.123\share /user:username password echo Mounting g:... net use g: \\123.123.123.123\gallery echo Mounting n:... net use n: \\123.123.123.123\mcdtech /user:username password echo Done. rem pause

BlueScreenView:Windows 7 is surprisingly stable. I've had very few problems with it, aside from somenuisancebugs that have hung around since Windows 4.0 debuted back in 1995. However, since I do repair computers as part of my side business, I often see misbehaving Windows 7 installation. These are almost always due to malware or drivers. If you routinely see the dreaded BSOD ("Blue Screen of Death"), check out this program that can analyze the dump files and help pinpoint a cause, usually due to a misbehaving driver. If after updating the driver, or a driver isn't usually pinpointed as the cause to the BSOD, you probably have a hardware problem. Defective RAM accounts for around 80% of the BSOD-causing hardware problems I see. While Windows 7 does come with a boot-time option to run a memory diagnostic tool,MemTest86+is much better.BlueScreenView.

SlimDrivers:have you narrowed down stability problems to perhaps a faulty driver? This tool allows quick and easy driver updates without having to sort through the computer vendor's or hardware manufacturer's webpages. I do caution you against haphazardly updating your drivers, though. If you aren't having problems, and there isn't a very compelling reason to upgrade your drivers (i.e., some new killer feature or performance tweak that you really need), leave your drivers alone. SlimDrivers.

Well that's all I have for now. There are quite a few small utilities I have used in the past that I also have on record, but since I don't use them often I'm refraining from posting about them right now. There are also some handy utilities I use often on my HTPC so maybe in a while I'll add to this article with those recommendations, too. Enjoy!

And if you have any comments or suggestions, please feel free to share below.

(or go back to the Windows 7 Tweaks or the Applications list)