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Way, way back when the earth was new and MS-DOS (and its cousin PC-DOS) was the name of the game, Lotus Development created a state-of-the-art integrated application that featured a spreadsheet, word processor, database manager, graphics app, and communications program called Symphony. Much more efficiently coded than most of today's bloatware, the entire app would load into memory when you booted your PC/XT and pop up for you when you pressed a hotkey.

DOS is almost forgotten, and Symphony certainly is–or was until now. IBM Lotus Symphony is now available, and it's free for home, school, and business.

Like its ancient namesake, the new Symphony is a suite of applications that features a text editor/word processor, a presentation manager, and a spreadsheet tool. Symphony uses the Open Document Format (ODF) for its files, and fully supports Microsoft Office file formats, allowing you to import- and export your data, as well as the ability to export to PDF files as well. Macros written for the Office platform aren't compatible with Symphony, and vice versa, but Symphony does have its own macro language that allows you to automate repetitive tasks to speed you on your way.

IBM Lotus Symphony is available for Windows (XP or Vista) and Linux platforms, with support for OS X promised in the near future.

And who knows: if they can bring Symphony back, can the DeLorean be far behind?

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With a name like "TaskJuggler", this application sounds like another calendar and PIM app that lets you create "to do" lists. That couldn't be further from the truth.

TaskJuggler is a full-featured, industrial-grade project management tool, like Microsoft Project, but without the $600+ price tag. You can use it as a planning tool to allocate resources, and as a reporting tool to track your progress and see how closely you're sticking to your schedule.

All you need to do to get started is to enter your project outline and any specific constraints that you have, and TaskJuggler will work within those parameters to tie all the pieces together. Rather than having to provide all the details at the start of your project, you can add and change the particulars "on the fly" as you progress, not unlike the approach taken with Extreme Programming or Agile Project Management.

You can generate reports in HTML and XML formats, and export to CSV files is supported, so that you can easily import project details into your office productivity tools.

TaskJuggler is a Linux app licensed under the GNU GPL.

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ContactKeeper is a free PIM (personal information manager) to keep track of contact info for your family and friends. Not intending to be a full-featured tool, it has a only few pre-defined fields, but provides for additional notes in each record, so you can keep track of what you need to know for each contact.

Along with basic contact information, you can keep track of birthdays, so you won't forget that all-important card or gift. You can sort by first or last name, and only one of those is an required field–nothing worse than having to keep track of "Mom Smith" just because the last name's required! Advanced search capabilities helps you find just the info you're looking for too.

Each entry supports unlimited phone numbers and email addresses, so you will always be able to get hold of your people. Data is stored in an .mdb (Microsoft Access) file, so backup is simple: just make a copy of your data file.

ContactKeeper is a Windows application.

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How does Windows work? Skillful engineering? Thoughtful design? Magic? Whatever the mechanism, one of the things that any operating system does it try to isolate the user from the minutia of what goes on behind the scenes. When you run a program, who knows what really happens out there. But some times, you do need to know.

Process Explorer is an app that will help you to see what's really going on inside your system. Rather than just knowing that Word is running, you can now see how many different processes are running, which DLLs are adding their two cents, and how your system resources are being used. System running slow? Maybe it's the fault of some poorly designed app you're using–one look in Process Explorer will help you to see just how much of a hit you're taking every time you re-calculate the totals in your spreadsheet.

Process Explorer has been around for a while, and is pretty well regarded. Microsoft must agree, since they bought its publisher in 2006.

Process Explorer is a Windows app and runs on any 32- and 64-bit Windows platform, including Vista.

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GnuCash is a full-featured personal and small-business accounting tool. As a double-entry system, you ensure that you can track the dollars from one end of the app to the other. Since it uses a checkbook-style register, you already know how to enter transactions for cash and checks, credit cards, as well as deposits, stock transactions, and all.

Along with keeping track of your personal income and expenses, functionality is included to track customers and vendors, including invoicing and bill paying, making it easy to keep track of all your small business transactions.

Built in reporting capabilities make it easy to see where your money is going; the integrated graphing facility makes helps you to better understand just what is happening with your finances.

With its statement reconciliation window, you don't have to dread balancing your checkbook any more. You can even print checks from GnuCash, and scheduled transactions make sure you don't miss any important payment deadlines.

GnuCash is available with an installer for Windows; in addition, you can install it on OS X, Linux, and just about any other platform.

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There are oodles of file compression and archiving tools out there. IZArc is one of the better ones, and it's free. Along with standard .zip files, it can also work with Windows .cab files, .tar and .gz files and their variants from the *NIX world, and a whole lot more. You can even convert between various archive and CD image file formats. Drag-and-drop makes it easy to add individual files to a new or existing archive, or you can grab whole directories at a time. You can encrypt your archives so that your data is safe. Fully integrated with Windows Explorer, you can run most of IZArc through context-sensitive right-click menus. It'll even help you to repair corrupt files, which can be a lifesaver when the compressed archive is the only version of your data available.

A command line add-on is available, allowing you to automate your archiving through batch files. IZArc2Go is available separately as a fully-functional archive tool that fits on a USB flash drive, so you can take it with you anywhere and not have to worry about installation.

IZArc is a free Windows app available for both personal and corporate use. It'll run on anything from Win98 on up through Vista, including NT.

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Got a pile of pictures? Need to make them all the same size? Got all day? If the answer to the last question is "heck no!", then Resize! may be the tool you're looking for.

While there are lots of tools that will let you resize image files, you may have to spend all day converting those files one at a time. With Resize!, you can batch process an entire directory full. Choose your pictures, tweak the size/quality settings, and choose the resize parameters. You can select a proportional resize, box resizing where you can constrain maximum height and width, or resize with independent settings for width and height, if you need to fill a pre-defined rectangular space.

Resize! is a versatile as it is easy-to-use. It is available for Windows, OS X and if you want to go really old-school, you can get a version for Mac OS "classic", for the old OS 9 platform.

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Portable Document Format (.pdf) documents are great thing. Platform- and resolution independent, they are a de facto standard for documents on the Web and in other uses. Unfortunately, the "official" tool to manipulate .pdf files costs at least an arm, if not also a log to buy. What if you just need to do some simple file manipulation and don't want to spend a king's ransom?

PDF Split and Merge (pdfsam) does what you'd expect: it splits and merges .pdf files. So just how is this useful, you might ask?

More and more applications put their user manuals in .pdf format, rather than publishing printed books. You don't have to have a very complicated program to have a manual that stretches several hundred pages long. What if you're only interested in Chapter 3? With pdfsam, you can go in and grab just that section of the bigger document and save it off by itself.

What about merging documents? If you scan your bank statement, you may end up with half a dozen individual .pdf files, each containing one single page. With pdfsam, you can combine those individual documents into one single .pdf file that you can then squirrel away, email to someone else, or whatever else you want to do.

PDF Split and Merge is a free Java app, so it will likely run on most any platform that has a Java virtual machine available on it. You can download the source code, or there is a Windows installer for most Win32 platforms.

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Rainlendar is a cross-platform calendar app that only takes up small amount of on-screen real estate while giving you all the bells and whistles of other calendar tools. It supports multiple calendars, so you can keep track of personal stuff, work-related dates, and even a list of ballgames or TV shows you don't want to miss. You get a list of this week's events, so you can be ready for that 8:00 am meeting tomorrow before you get to work. You can build a to-do list to keep track of tasks you need to take care of. And of course there are alarms to make sure you don't forget anything.

Skins allow you to customize Rainlendar's appearance and behavior, as you can include new buttons for added functionality.

Rainlendar is a free application. There is also a paid version available that adds support for Outlook, calendars shared across your network, as well as Google calendars.

Rainlendar is available for both Linux (Ubuntu 6.06 or equivalent) and Windows (Win2k) or later.

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Most antivirus tools depending on somebody's having seen a given virus before they can protect you. You've seen that you need to regularly update your virus databases to protect you from newly-discovered threats out there. Each of these updated depends on somebody's system having been infected. While protecting you from yesterday's nasties is a good thing, what about the new stuff that happens today? You don't want to be the guy (or gal) who prompts the latest update.

So-called "zero day" exploits are of concern to us all. Rather than depending on a recognizable signature of already-identified threats, ThreatFire (formerly CyberHawk) looks at behavior to recognize and isolate the bad stuff and keep it from messing you up. Keystroke records, spyware, rootkits–they're all fair game for ThreatFire.

By combining a tool like ThreatFire with the antivirus software you're already using, you can sleep just a little easier at night, knowing that your system is that much more protected against what the Internet can throw at it.

ThreatFire is a Windows app and requires Windows 2000 or later.

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