Dave's Favorites: Shrink Images With a PowerToy

Resizing your digital images--say, from 6 megapixels down to a Web- or e-mail-friendly 1 megapixel--has always been harder than it should be. Now it's one right-click away, thanks to Microsoft's free Image Resizer PowerToy. This little tool is a great addition to your software library. After installing it, right-click any photo icon and you'll see a new item in the context menu: Resize Pictures. Select it, and you can use the resulting dialog box to make a smaller copy of the picture in the same folder. You can pick a standard size or type in any arbitrary dimension.

PowerToys are "unofficial" utilities written by Microsoft employees who were apparently unhappy that they ran out of time to pack more features into Windows before it had to ship to the stores. There are a slew of XP PowerToys available, and you can download the whole lot from us.