Description: DIRMS is (was?) a freeware defragmentation program that's run from the command line in Windows 2000 and XP. I don't know if it's compatible with Vista or Win7. In any event, this is a small package I created that contains the freeware DIRMS command-line executable, a Windows (XP only) registry file, and a batch file; "installing" this little kit does two things—adds a "Defrag with DIRMS" to your right-click context menu and adds a batch file that immediately begins defragging when you choose that "Defrag with DIRMS" option. See notes below.

Usage notes: The newest DIRMS versions on the official site require registration every 30 days or so. This version does not, though it won't be as technically good as the newer versions, which also include a GUI option.

This download is actually a very small, self-extracting "install" kit that I created to add a context menu feature (WinXP). Be aware that because this is a manual quasi-install, there is no uninstall method besides manually deleting the registry key. To run DIRMS from the context menu, just double-click the kit I created, and the "installation" batch file will allow you to add the menu option. Then just right-click a hard drive letter to see the menu.

If you don't want to use the WinXP registry and batch option, you can open the dirms.exe kit executable in an archive program (I use PowerArchiver, but something like WinZIP will probably work) and just extract the single DIRMS executable to your Windows root directory like c:\windows. That way, if you open the command line ("cmd" from the Run dialog box), you can run DIRMS with whatever switches you like. Just type "dirms /?" without quotes to see the options.

Description: Foxit PDF Reader is a freeware that's lighter and less insidious than the Adobe PDF Reader that manages to stuff its tentacles deep into your system and constantly force-check for updates against your wishes. Foxit can be easily set up to avoid such nonsense. Moreover, this ZIP archive doesn't need to be installed; just unzip into a folder and run. Additional plugins are available from the official site.

Usage notes: One of my favorite features is the Typewriter (see screenshot for menu location), which allows you to "type" directly on the PDF. You can thus fill out nondynamic forms, add notes, and so forth. If you try to save or print using this freeware reader, however, it'll add a watermark or something because they want to encourage you to buy a pro version. However, see PrimoPDF below...

Description: There is definitely more than one free PDF printer driver out there, but this just happens to be the one (and version) that I latched onto. A PDF printer driver is a piece of software that, when installed, tricks your system into thinking you attached a new printer. When you attempt to print to this new "printer," the driver actually outputs the printed document into PDF form. In short, a PDF printer driver is basically a file conversion done through the "print" mechanism.

Usage notes: This is a great way to store documents that you need to print, for example, but you don't have immediate access to a printer: maybe you want to save an online receipt from a transaction, but just saving the HTML from your browser makes for an ugly copy. Maybe you just want to convert a Word document quickly to the more universal PDF format to post online or email to someone who doesn't have your MS Office version. There are many possible uses for a PDF conversion like this—anything that can be printed can be converted through this driver.

I have version 3.1, and I assume 3.2 isn't vastly different; the reason why I still use an old version (the current version is 5.x) is because I don't like the new user interface. It looks too busy, and I think they use larger advertisements. This old version, if you look at the screenshot, is rather minimalist. (I also happen to use my firewall to block the driver from connecting to the Web, which I think further blocks any ads.)

Description: Hotkey/launcher utilities are system tools that allow you to execute any number of actions via keyboard shortcuts. A good example is how I always open my Web browsers using the keyboard, skipping the Start Menu or any desktop icon (e.g. Win+O to open Opera); this not only saves time but desktop space.

Usage notes: See the official website, which has a rather impressive online help system for a freeware. Here is a rare instance where I'm recommending a software I haven't actually used yet. This is because I'm using a different shareware application with similar features, but I don't want to uninstall it right now and then redo all the shortcuts I had programmed. Judging by the numerous reviews and my own requirements, however, this does look like a winner, and I plan on switching once I do my reformat/cleansing routine.

Description: WinHTTrack is a Web utility that copies websites for offline viewing. This version is a noninstalling, portable version that can be run from a USB key.

Usage notes: I use this to mirror websites for research, especially smaller, noncorporate sites for which the content may change without notice (like personal sites suddenly disappearing). While the tool does its job admirably, the interface options can be a bit daunting (see screenshot). The help is usually useful, but this tool is not for users with little understanding of how Web directory structures work.

Description: ImgBurn is a straightforward CD/DVD-burning utility (data, audio, DVD video) that also works with image files. In general, the newer the version, the more drives it can support; if you have an older computer and/or a generic drive, I wouldn't worry about it too much.

Usage notes: I happen to like this for its simple interface. I can point things out rather easily to friends and family, for example. You can, however, do more complex things and use advanced settings. The official website is fleshed out nicely and has a user forum.

Description: I've used this particular free graphics viewer/manipulator for a long time, so I'm pretty stuck to it out of habit now. It's small, portable (I only use the "no install" versions), and pretty easy to use. As a plain viewer, Irfanview covers many file types. It has some basic editing functions and more advanced features like a batch conversion viewer-editor (see notes below). There's a basic FAQ, a forum, and plugins on the official site.

Usage notes: The first screenshot shows the main window and basic editing you can do via the Image menu, and there are more functions in the Edit menu. The first batch conversation screenshot (1) shows the main batch dialog (from the File menu or from the "Browse with Irfanview" bulk viewer), which probably doesn't seem intuitive; files listed in the bottom pane from the top file listing will be converted/renamed with the settings on the left side. The second batch version screenshot (2) shows the Advanced dialog when you choose "Use advanced options" and then press the [Advanced] button; it looks daunting unless you're familiar with more technical details of digital graphics.

Description: I've used this file renamer tool for a long time and am thus stuck to it out of habit. This version is an older version, released before the current one (5.0) that is available on the official site, because the new interface changes were not compatible with my subnotebook accessibility screen settings (large icons, large fonts, etc.). I'm sure the 5.0 version has some nice features/fixes, though, so I'd recommend trying that out—Lupas always has non-installing ZIP versions, which is nice, but I do not believe you can run both v5.0 and v4.2 on the same machine. I tried once and got a strange conflict. Anyway, though I converted this download's original ZIP download to a self-extracting EXE, it does not require an actual install.

Usage notes: While you can open Lupas independently and navigate to the folder containing the files you want to rename, I always just right-click the folder in question to start there (saves a step); the option to add "Lupas Rename from Here" to your context menu is in the More Options tab (4.2b), and if it ever messes up for whatever reason, just click the registry button twice to "uninstall" and reinstall the option. You can also rename folders instead of files, and that option is also in the More Options tab, but I rarely use it. You can set rename options in one tab and move to another tab to add more, such as adding text to the filenames along with autonumber.

Description: If you use MS Office 2000, XP, or 2003, you will need these file compatibility converters from Microsoft to view documents made in newer Office versions (.docx/docm extensions, etc.). You'll need to patch your Office 2K/XP/2K3 and make sure it's fully updated before installing these converters, supposedly. Note that I renamed the file to something more obvious, but this is indeed the same download from Microsoft.

Usage notes: One of my campuses ran into a ridiculous problem after they decided to upgrade to Vista and Office 2007 (still a bad decision, in my opinion): Students who edited documents in the school computer labs and then tried to work on them on their own non-2007 computers couldn't open their own files. This is because Microsoft decided to change file formats and extensions in their new Office, and the "save as" option is not intuitive to find. Most Windows users do not see extensions in their systems due to default settings. Let's just say that much confusion and frustration ensued for many people. I don't normally host such large files here, but this is one of those utilities that's necessary for school and work when sharing documents across different systems and Microsoft versions.

Description: How can you not like a company called Tall Emu? Their Online Armor firewall has quite a few accolades, and I like the freeware version just fine. The free version has the firewall and program guard. I'm still using the 3.5 version, but the download is the official 4.0 version.

Usage notes: I'd say the interface is nicely uncluttered, and various parts of the running application take up less than 20MB of memory on my main system. While installing, you can allow the firewall to figure out what programs should be able to connect to the internet. There's also a "learning mode" and many other options when you open the GUI window: control individual applications, check what is autorunning, disable auto-updating, etc. The only reason why I don't list a freeware antivirus to pair with this firewall is because I use a paid version of Eset's NOD32.

Description: The Opera browser has been around since 1994 and is credited with bringing many innovations to the browser market before its competitors and is highly standards-compliant. I mean, they invented page zoom in 1996, something I always need on my subnotebook. This is a power-user's browser but has been redesigned in the past few major iterations to be less intimidating from the gate for people used to other browsers. (Documentation for 9.64. Tutorials and tips for latest version (11.5x).) I have both 9.64 and 11.50 on my computer for different purposes, though I now use a portable version of 11.50 as my primary browser.

Usage notes: My Opera looks nothing like the default screenshots; the interface is fully customizable just by right-clicking any of the GUI elements (e.g. a toolbar). For example, my mini panel is on the left, tabs and URL bar on the bottom, and I have nothing at all on top (no menu bar nor navigation buttons). You can remove and add individual buttons to different bar locations as well.

You can browse in Opera three ways: mouse only (mouse gestures), keyboard only (can change keyboard shortcuts easily), and voice (needs a special plugin download)—or any combination of the three. I favor using the keyboard most of the time and do so very efficiently, from browsing back/forward to instantly disabling a page's CSS styling for usability. (Latest Opera 11.5x keyboard shortcuts are very close or identical to the old Opera 9.64 shortcuts, but I had customized several of them in 9.5 to my liking and simply ported my custom shortcuts to new versions.)

I browse with Javascript, Java, Flash, cookies, and referrer all disabled by default and graphics toggled off until I want them; it doesn't get more secure than this, assuming I don't download something sketchy. Does this break the websites I normally need to use, like Gmail and my bank? Sure, which is why Opera offers absolute control and allows you to edit site-specific settings for all those things.

The first screenshot (version 9.64—the latest versions are slightly different) shows the two menus users should know: the F12 menu on the left instantly de/activates various things in the entire browser like Javascript/cookies (only two keystrokes), while the right-click context menu offers additional site-specific options like timed reloading and blocking ads. The second screenshot shows the Edit Site Preferences dialog, so if you're a power-surfer like me who disables everything for security/privacy reasons, you can make sure your usual websites have cookies enabled and such. *A small handful of websites will have problems with Opera due to poor site design/programming (nonstandard coding, etc.), though most of these "problems" are actually due to irritating browser sniffer scripts that send you to different pages based on your browser. Opera has a built-in browser identity masking feature, which can trick these scripts into properly showing the content. Otherwise, I also have five other browsers installed, so I'm pretty covered.

Description: This is a tiny utility I like using on my XP systems; I believe Vista/Win7 has some redundancy in effects. With this, you can control transparency, always-on-top, CPU priority, and minimize-to-tray for nearly all Windows applications; there were a few incompatibilities I found over the years, but I don't remember them now. This is the non-installer version, but you can get the installer version from the official website.

Usage notes: You can access Powermenu by clicking the application title bar icon (upper left little icon in Windows) or right-clicking the application button in the task bar, such as in the screenshot. I personally only use the transparency and always-on-top functions.

Description: This is a tiny, standalone secure shell (SSH) or telnet utility—rather famous. I use this to log onto my websites' Apache servers and do stuff. Explicitly compatible with Windows 7; this ZIP package from the author's website contains his other files (like SFTP) and a couple help documents. No installation.

Usage notes: You can customize various things (I never do) and save login sessions. There's not much else to say, really. It's about as bareboned-functional as you can get compared to a lot of things. Command line isn't terribly pretty. Screenshot is from version 0.60 of PuTTY.

Description: I sometimes work offline with internet access disabled, so I like to have an offline dictionary/thesaurus handy. You have the option of installing it as a portable application (no registry entries and no uninstaller), which is what I like to do. Over 210,000 definitions and over a million thesaurus relations; lots of features like history, reverse search, phonetic search, wildcards, anagrams, etc.

Usage notes: TheSage is system-integrated (if you do a full install instead of portable) so you can do direct lookups from other applications; I personally just run it from the system tray. The combined dictionary-thesaurus is quite useful when writing papers.

Description: It's not "u"Torrent—it's μTorrent! (It's a Greek letter, pronounced myoo.) This is a tiny little bittorrent client that's still quite configurable. This is an older version, not the latest 2.x, because newer versions are bundled with the Ask toolbar; its installation is optional, but I don't like it bundled regardless.

Usage notes: You should know a bit about torrent technology before futzing around the preferences. Otherwise, this is a very simple and lightweight client that doesn't hog resources. Discussion forums are available.

Description: This is a small, standalone auditing program that will analyze your PC system and spit out all its specifications, including hardware devices and installed software, etc.

Usage notes: An audit of this nature is often necessary for troubleshooting purposes. This is great to stick on a USB key for IT support, or email it to people and tell them to run it and send you the HTML report. Compatible with Windows systems from Win95 through Win7.

Description: Wink creates Flash-based tutorials and presentations by capturing screen activity (screencast), similar to CamStudio or Adobe Captivate. Its user interface and abilities are fairly simple, but this should be fine for many folks who only wish to create small Flash videos, like how to burn CDs in Windows. Audio capture is also possible, though there may be bugs.

Usage notes: The official website has a user forum, which I recommend for tips and troubleshooting. The application comes with a Wink tutorial of its own, which is a nice touch. I wouldn't say this is one of my "must have" utilities because it's so specialized, but I did use it for a graduate course and quite liked it for its simplicity.

Description: WinSCP is a small, portable client that I use all the time to manage my websites. This isn't the latest version, which you can get on the official site.

Usage notes: Rather straightforward, if you look at the screenshot. The synchronization and "compared directories" options are very useful. The site also has documentation and a user forum. Also, I recommend not editing documents directly on server side (right pane); you should always have offline backup copies of whatever server content you need to edit, whenever possible. If WinSCP crashes—for example, if your internet connection suddenly fails—while you're editing server side, the server document will likely be cleared of all content (this happened to me once).