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Backups are a good thing. Whether it's your critical data, or some interesting tool that you downloaded that isn't available any more, it's always good to have a copy of your important "stuff" tucked away in a safe place.

One approach is to write down a list of what you've got, and try to make sure you remembered everything when you back things up. Another approach is to just squirrel-away a copy of your system's whole hard drive. That's a big pile of stuff, but at least you know you haven't forgotten anything.

Reflect is a disk imaging tool for XP and Vista. With its built-in scheduler, you can set it up to create backups on a regular schedule, making it harder for you to "forget" to take care of business. Images can be saved off to network drives, DVDs, or removable drives (USB and FireWire). Images can be password-protected for the security of your data.

Reflect is a Windows tool, and is available for both 32-bit and 64-bit platforms.

Download Macrium Reflect

More recent versions of Windows and Microsoft Office incorporate Outlook-style buttons in their file dialogs called the "PlacesBar". It's a way to navigate quickly around your hard drive, with links to locations like "My Documents" and "My Computer". It might be handy to be able to add to this list, and create the links you really want here, so that Windows and Office work the way you do.

Placesbar Editor lets you configure and tweak the entries in the PlacesBar, and to do so easily. While you could probably go in and mess with the Registry, you always put your system at risk whenever you break the metaphorical seal with "no user serviceable parts inside" printed on it. You can do some amazing things with the proper Registry tweaks; you can also brick your computer pretty fast, too.

PlacesBar Editor lets you configure the places that will appear in the PlacesBar. If you're always jumping off to this directory or that one, why not be able to go there directly? Whether it's downloads, a folder full of your latest project, or even just the Favorites folder, you can choose how to make those buttons work. And don't worry about breaking anything: a simple push of a button restores the system to its default state, so you can start again.

Placesbar Editor is a Windows application. It's compatible with Windows 2000 and later, and also works with Office 2000 and beyond.

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Have you ever needed to convert some media file to another format? It might be images, audio files, or some video thing. There are just so many different formats, and most applications are limited in the formats that they support. Having an all-in-one solution might come in handy.

SUPER, the Simplified Universal Player Encoder & Renderer, claims to be just such a solution. With a huge number of different formats supported, it shouldn't require Herculean effort any more to convert between any of the supported formats. All the necessary codecs are built in, so you can spend your time converting files, instead of looking around for more plug-ins and add-ons to really make the software work for you. You can even rip video files to audio, grabbing the sound for your MP3 player.

SUPER, the Simplified Universal Player Encoder & Renderer, is a Windows app, and it's compatible with most systems.

Download SUPER, the Simplified Universal Player Encoder & Renderer

USB drives are pretty cool. You can take all that data and stick it in your pocket and walk away. That's handy if it's your drive and your data. That's not so handy if it's in somebody else's pocket.

Rohos Mini Drive is a tool that creates a hidden, encrypted partition on your thumb drive. The partition is totally hidden until you enter the correct password. You don't need to be an admin for the machine, you just need to know the password to open, read, and write from this hidden volume. As far as Windows is concerned, it's a real drive, but once you log out, it goes away and doesn't give any indication that there's more data on the drive than meets the eye. Now if the unthinkable happens and somebody walks off with your data—or you just drop it, leave it plugged into the machine, or any of a hundred other nasty scenarios—all is not lost, and you don't have to go join the Foreign Legion.

Rohos Mini Drive is a free Windows application. To use it, you'll (obviously) also need a USB drive.

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Windows Explorer attempts to serve as the Swiss Army knife of file managers for Windows systems. While there's a lot that it can do, not everything can be accomplished easily. Sometimes add-on applications can help to extend Explorer's functionality in such a way that it becomes even more useful.

FileMenu Tools is one such application. You can do things like tweak the time stamps on files, change folder icons, delete locked files, and all sorts of other handy things. Synchronize folders, delete files without sending them to the Recycle bin, and even shred files to really, really get rid of them.

In addition, it's easy to configure the "Send To" menu, making it easier to open files and documents in non-default applications. Other context menu (right-click menu) items can be configured as well. There's really quite a list.

FileMenu Tools is a free Windows application.

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How many copies of [name of some file] do you have on your machine? We're forever running across some interesting file—program, PDF, MP3—and downloading it. Some time later—days, weeks, months—we grab it again. Now we've got several copies of the file, wasting space on a hard drive with too much data already. But who has time to dig around and find all these duplicates?

CloneSpy can give you a hand with de-cluttering your hard drive. It goes out and finds duplicate files, whether they have the same name or not. It finds files with duplicate names. It even finds zero-byte files on your system. Once these files are identified, CloneSpy can delete the duplicates, move them to a specific location (so you can verify them before they go away), export a list of duplicates, or even feed information into a batch file you've created to apply your own set of rules to these files.

While it may not leave your hard drive smelling "minty fresh", CloneSpy will help rid you of these pesky space-wasting duplicates.

CloneSpy is a Windows application, and runs on anything from Windows 98SE on up. In keeping with the notion of helping you to maintain a clean hard drive, it installs only a single executable on your system—no junk dropped into remote locations.

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How much extra junk do you have on your Windows system? Leftover keys in your Registry, old backup and temp files that aren't so temp, that sort of thing.

nCleaner is an all-in-one system cleaner and tune-up app that will help you to run a lean, mean, Windows machine. Along with cleaning up the leftovers, you can monitor your system for potential problems, and disable unnecessary features and services to shut down potential system vulnerabilities, as well as freeing up precious resources on your machine.

For added security, nCleaner includes a shredder that makes it impossible to restore deleted items and free space, making your system just that much more secure. Startup manager lets you see what apps and services are running at startup, and allows you to tweak or disable those that you really don't want running around unchecked. You can run cleanups at startup, shutdown, or at other specified intervals.

nCleaner is a Windows app that is free to use for non-commercial purposes. It runs under XP, 2003 Server, and Vista.

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No matter how fancy things get on your system, there's just some stuff that is best accomplished with a command line utility. Pretty GUI applications notwithstanding, being able to run commands as part of a batch file, for instance, can let you accomplish a lot without having to dig through a bunch of extra junk on your screen.

With NirCmd, you can read and write values to the System Registry, tweak INI files, mount or eject volumes, create shortcuts, show and hide windows, dump the contents of your clipboard to a file, the list just goes on and on. An extensive online help page gives you a huge list of the functionality you can invoke with this tool.

NirCmd is a Windows tool. It'll run on any 32-bit system from Win9x/ME up through Vista, although there is some functionality that is only available in NT/XP/Vista.

Download NirCmd

Mom just got a new computer. Dad just upgraded to a new operating system. Kids at school can't figure out how to tweak their systems to work the the college's network. Sound familiar? And what about the panicked phone call asking you in all your glorious geekiness to fix their problem. Sure, you can try to talk them through the process, but what about the "picture worth a thousand words" thing? Wouldn't it be easier if you could just turn the crank for them, or at least watch over their shoulder while they do the work?

TeamViewer allows you to share a computer desktop, and even to drive a system by remote control. Now instead of having to rely on repeatedly asking the "what do you see now?" question, you can actually see what is happening on the remote system in real time.

TeamViewer is free for personal, non-commercial use. It is available for both Mac and Windows systems.

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You're a pretty savvy guy (or gal). You've got the latest gizmos, and you're not afraid to use them. You don't carry your laptop with you everywhere you go—you just grab your USB drive and use that to shuttle data from here to there. You're on top of the world.

Until you come back home. Take that thumb drive, plug it into your desktop or laptop system, and then start looking. Where the heck is it? You've got to fire up Windows Explorer and then start hunting for that drive. Not if you use Desk Drive.

Desk Drive is a cool little application that puts an icon on your desktop that automatically points to your portable drive. Plug the drive in, and the icon appears; eject the drive, and the icon goes away. You can also use it with other removable media like CD-ROMs, or even network drives, so you'll always have a clear indication as to which devices are mounted, and you'll be able to get to them pronto, without having to dig through Explorer.

Desk Drive is a free Windows application. It requires WinXP or later, and requires version 2.0 of the .NET Framework.

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