Laura Blackwell

Whether warm and fuzzy or elegantly squamous, pets are cute. But photos of them too often plunge down the taste ladder into cutesiness. Websites like the famous Disapproving Rabbits have figured out the perfect blend of cuteness and sarcasm. When animals appear to glare, withering captions spring to mind, and a long-lasting Internet meme is born. In this free Windows 7 themepack, PCWorld has populated a virtual Snootiest Pet Shop for your (dis)pleasure.

This cat, along with the other animals of These Pets Disapprove, will teach you the meaning of disdain.Members of the DeviantArt community share photos of their disapproving pets. When PCWorld editor Kim Saccio-Kent gazed into the soft, reproachful eyes of the dog in AGoldenHeartBeats's "A Disapproving Look," the captions started writing themselves. Read the condescending minds of common house pets with mobbe-pingvin's "Disapproving Cat" and Rachel Leah Blumenthal's "Disapproving Pug." If exotic animals are more your thing, writhe in discomfort under the scorn of Fayesie-Daisie's "Disapproving Iguana," Spyrre's "Disapproving Llama," A. Jaszlisc's "Cardinalfish," and PossibleHeartbreak's "We Are Not Amused." No collection of animal contemptousness would be complete without a rabbit; CrazySparkles06's "Bunny or Sphinx?" gives us the hairy eyeball.

At PCWorld, and especially at PCWorld.com Downloads, we love trying out software. October's breakout stars were utilities: Everything from video file conversion to software updates to running Android apps on a PC. We'd be happy to see productivity-enhancing programs like this any month of the year. To see all these downloads in one unranked chart, check out PCWorld Reviewers' Favorite Files: October 2011.

BlueStacks App Player runs Android applications within Windows.You don't have to have your Android phone charged--or even have an Android phone at all--to use Android games and other apps. BlueStacks App Player (free alpha version) comes http://cms.pcworld.com/cms/article/edit.dowith several popular Android apps.

Every Halloween, PCWorld editors dig up some free scares for your desktop. Favorite fonts, themes, and screensavers haunt us year after year...and this October, a few new ghouls rise to capture your imagination. PCWorld's latest Halloween collection includes a frightening font, Windows 7 themepacks, and two exclusive wallpapers from horror artist Chad Savage of Sinister Visions.

Sinister Visions' Autumn Harbinger Desktop Wallpaper glows with Halloween spirit.The zombies of Savage's Zombo-o-Lanterns Desktop Wallpaper appear to be dressing up as jack-o-lanterns, but with the determined way they reach their rotting fingers toward the viewer, nobody's giving them candy. They're after your brains. For a treat with fewer tricks, invite the deep blues and fiery oranges of Autumn Harbinger Desktop Wallpaper onto your PC. Two grinning pumpkinheads cross their skeletal hands across a backdrop of a setting sun and a sky brimming with stars. If it weren't for the golden "Happy Halloween," the scene could edge into November as a solemn harvest image.

Whether you're copying, downloading, or opening them, big files mean long waits. Soothe your irritated nerves with Ben Stone's Instant Elevator Music. This small free/donationware program plays a pleasant tune in a loop while your PC sets about its work.

Instant Elevator Music's Settings window lets you decide when you want to hear the music.By default, Instant Elevator Music starts playing when Windows or supported programs perform certain actions. It will play while Microsoft Office opens, for instance, or while you copy a file. If you have Firefox's "Show the download window while downloading a file" option selected in Firefox, IEM will play its gentle tones in a loop as you download, say, Corel Painter. You can also set IEM to play during boot time, to ignore certain programs, and so on.

Make your Windows 7 PC a window into the future--without compromising its actual function--with these science fiction themepacks. Whether you want cyberpunk or Cylons, dreamscapes or dystopias, Time Lords or tyrannical computers, you can immerse yourself in these images and sounds. We've combed through decades of sci-fi favorites from the silver screen and the small screen for these Windows 7 themes, and we've even tossed in a few fonts that sparked our imaginations. Each of these downloads is free.

(For links to all of the downloads in one convenient list, see our Electrify Your Windows 7 Desktop with Free Sci-Fi Themepacks and Fonts collection.)

You don't get to be the longest-running science fiction television series in history without a few casting changes. Time-traveling show Doctor Who debuted on the BBC in 1963, and since then eleven different actors have played different incarnations of the Doctor. This Windows 7 theme starts with the very first Doctor and displays images of all the Doctors to the present...with glimpses of his time machine, the TARDIS (inside and out) over the years.

The Doctor himself is the only constant in Doctor Who's ever-shifting temporal and physical settings, so this theme concentrates on the titular Time Lord. It's a walk through TV history, starting with the First Doctor (William Hartnell) in dignified, grainy black-and-white, and showing a couple images of each Doctor in order, ending with the dramatic lighting and special effects around the Doctors of the twenty-first century. The sharpening details and increasingly vivid color reflect advances in photography and video technology.

The next Chinese Lunar New Year starts Thursday, February 3. Now's the time to freshen up the house, yourself--and why not your PC?--for the year to come. A few of these holiday traditions seem especially useful right now. And to learn more about the lunar calendar itself, check out Chinese Calendrics ($20, free demo).

Cleaning House and PC

Farmer extraordinaire Alice Greenfingers is back, applying TLC to her lazy Uncle Berry's neglected farm. In this sequel to the popular agriculture-and-market simulation game, Alice grows new crops and sells them at the farmer's market. Visually updated, with slightly different gameplay, Alice Greenfingers 2 will appeal to fans of the first game without confusing new players.

As in the first game, you can't really lose. The worst you can do is earn trophies slowly. The basics of the game are the same: Plant crops, harvest crops, sell crops. However, Uncle Berry sets specific tasks (such as sales goals and dandelion weeding) for Alice, making it feel more like a story and making the gameplay a little more linear. One innovation is that at the end of each day, you choose between various power-up rewards: a cash bonus, increased farm space, a free ad in the local newspaper, unlocking items in the store, and so forth.

GPL Ghostscript isn't a program to use on its own. Rather, it's a helper that interprets PostScript and .pdf documents. For instance, some Adobe Reader alternatives require Ghostscript to work. Often these files, such as CutePDF Writer, allow you to install Ghostscript as part of their own installation process. However, if you find yourself needing Ghostscript for another program, such as Scribus, you can download this one and install it with the instructions at Ghostscript.com.

Note: The vendor does not offer technical support on the free version of this software, which comes in 32-bit and 64-bit versions. This is the 64-bit version, which is for 64-bit PCs running a 64-bit OS. If your PC is running a different supported OS, please download the 32-bit version instead.

GPL Ghostscript isn't a program to use on its own. Rather, it's a helper that interprets PostScript and .pdf documents. For instance, some Adobe Reader alternatives require Ghostscript to work. Often these files, such as CutePDF Writer, allow you to install Ghostscript as part of their own installation process. However, if you find yourself needing Ghostscript for another program, such as Scribus, you can download this one and install it with the instructions at Ghostscript.com.

Note: The vendor does not offer technical support on the free version of this software, which comes in 32-bit and 64-bit versions. This is the 32-bit version. If your 64-bit PC is running a 64-bit OS, please download the 64-bit version instead.

In October, our reviewers might have floated from place to place like falling leaves; they certainly liked mobile software. When at the desk, they kept connected to the world outside with cloud storage and the Web. Video conversion struck a chord, as did security.

Marvelous Mobile Helpers

Whether you like your Halloween spooky or silly, you have plenty of time to get in the mood over the weekend. These free and low-cost picks from the PCWorld Downloads library will haunt your desktop and your thoughts. The prices won't give you nightmares, though: Two of these have free demos, and the rest are free forever.

Desktops take on a manic jack-o-lantern grin with Windows 7 theme Halloween Theme.