Favorite PC Software Tools

From Abdotcom

• Stickies for Windows (http://www.zhornsoftware.co.uk/) A great little systray app that allows you to have mac style 'stickies' on your desktop. I couldn't live without it. It's completely skinnable just by making your own custom bitmap. I made some nice subtle dark gray ones to live on my black desktop.
• USA Photo Maps (http://jdmcox.com/) Pulls map data from USGS into a desktop app that allows zooming and scrolling on areal photos and usgs topo maps. Invaluable for a gps geek. It will also sync with a garmin gps, (and many other flavors i believe) and send waypoints to that gps. So you can click on a building from a photo, and send a waypoint of it to your gps. Freakin cool tech!
• Knoppix (http://www.knopper.net/knoppix-mirrors/index-en.html/) The single most important tool in the PC user's toolkit. This universal PC boot CD gives you a full GUI and a suite of all conceiveable manners of software and utilities. It has full hardware detection, so booting off of it ensures that your network works. It's indispensable when Windows invariably craps out, allowing you to transfer your important files before wiping the drive (which it also does with an excelling utility called QTParted--formats drives in basically every single PC HDD format out there). If you dont' have this, why not?
• PcControl (http://www.christersson.org/index.php?page=software_pccontrol4) This is a little app that lets you use your bluetooth enabled phone to control your computer. It's extremely customizable (if you are willing to edit an xml file) and just all around cool. Works on the SonyEricsson T610 and a short list of other phones.
• FireFox (http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/) One of the best damned browsers i've ever used. Extensions make it so you can do any number of things with your browser (mine's a swiss army knife) and at the same time reduce the app (without extensions) to a nice simple lean machine. It fully supports current w3c standards (just trust me that's a good thing) and kicks IE's ass in a whole lot of other ways. See also Favorite FireFox Extensions.
• BartPE (http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/) This freeware utility makes a bootable CD or USB flash drive based on your Windows install disc, complete with GUI, and can also include other software packages (such as CD burning software) as well.
• Windows ME Boot Disk w/o RAMdrive (http://filebox.vt.edu/r/rywilson/RCC/bootmec.exe) This boot floppy image is possibly the only good that has ever come of Windows ME. Current MS OSes do not allow formatting drives over 32MB as FAT32, which can pose major problems to interoperability with other OSes/devices. To make matters worse, the version of fdisk included on Windows 98 boot floppies also lacks this kind of large disk support. By using the Windows ME version, however, this ability is restored (up to 180GB). (NOTE: After creating a partition with fdisk and restarting, the format program may display the size of the disk incorrectly. It does, however, format the whole disk regardless of what size it reports.)
• New fdisk (ftp://ftp1.fkkt.uni-lj.si/newfdisk.zip) If you do not wish to replace your entire boot floppy with a Windows ME version, this is just the new fdisk with very large disk support (up to 180GB), which can be copied to any boot floppy of your choosing. (NOTE: After creating a partition with fdisk and restarting, the format program may display the size of the disk incorrectly. It does, however, format the whole disk regardless of what size it reports.)
• SyncToy (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/prophoto/synctoy.mspx) This handy little "PowerToy" from Microsoft allows you to set up folder pairs for synchronization. There are a number of options available for the type of synchronization, allowing for a great deal of customization. Suggested uses: backing up "My Documents" to another drive, keeping a duplicate iTunes directory, syncing your files to a USB flash drive for portability, etc. Requires .NET 1.1, which the installer can download for you. The only drawback is that it is not automatic; you will have to run it manually. It does, however, eliminate one of the perennial hassles of file management.