Tired of that long lag under XP while your torrent spins up? Tired of your Web browser slowing to a crawl while you're downloading multiple torrents? If you're using Windows 7 or Vista, you probably don't know what I'm talking about. If you're an XP user, you do, and there's a quick and free cure: Half-open Limit Fix.

If you've ever needed to pull the text out of an Adobe PDF document, you know how frustrating it can be. The virtually universal file format doesn't exactly make it easy to re-use text from one document and paste it into another. Formatting, line-spacing, and images all conspire to make PDF documents a challenge. But Able2Extract ($100, 7-day free trial) makes child's play of this tedious task.

CrossGL SnapDraw, formerly called CrossGL Alpha Screenshot, is a screen capture utility that can see the Windows Aero interface natively. That means that if you capture a window with a rounded corner, the utility won't grab the pixels behind it as if it were a square window. This ability makes SnapDraw ($30, 30-day free trial with some feature limitations) very useful for technically accurate screenshots.

Mediaraptor Free finds music videos and songs from social media websites. It can then record and convert the music video, or snag the MP3, depending on what it's found. It then converts them into the more portable WMV and MP3 formats, respectively. Mediaraptor Free can snag tracks from several social media sources, including MySpace. Also, if MySpace Video, YouTube or a number of other sites have a music video, Mediaraptor can grab that, too.

The FireFound add-on for the Firefox browser adds tracking and remote wipe features that can help with lost or stolen computers.

Do you have scores or even hundreds of photos squirreled away on various drives? And just how many of them are duplicates or near duplicates? Bolidesoft's Image Comparer ($35 for home use; 30-day free, featured-limited demo) is a simple program that helps you sort through multiple instances of the same picture, select the best, or discard extra copies.

Driver Reviver attempts to make it easier to find and install updates for old drivers and software, but the just-released software ($30 for a one-year license, free feature-limited demo) currently makes the wrong call for a number of programs.

If you have more than one computer, and you're looking for a way to share their screen real estate, you could put the unique program MaxiVista ($40, free usage-limited demo or 15-day trial) to good use. Available in 32-bit and 64-bit versions, this program lets you turn a second PC or laptop into an extension of your main monitor, allowing you to treat their screens as if they were part of the same display. In that way, you can use both monitors as if they were one large one. Both PCs will have to be on the same network.

Ad networks and Web sites constantly track your behavior as you surf the Web, recording what sites you visit, what pages you visit on sites, and what kind of content you like to view. If you'd like to keep your personal Web preferences to yourself, get the free Firefox addon PrivacyChoice Opt-Out, which lets you stop more than 100 companies from tracking your behavior.

VistaSwitcher is an enhancement/replacement for the hoary, ancient, alt-tab program switcher attached to Vista like the vestigial leg bones buried deep inside a blue whale. It's free and nifty. It's available in a 32-bit version and a 64-bit version. Go ahead and download the one that suits your system.

Wouldn't it be nice if you could make a mash-up of Microsoft Office and Google Docs, using all of Office's great tools for document creation and editing, and Google Docs's online storage and collaboration tools? With OffiSync (free), that's exactly what you can do. You use Office to create your documents, and can then store and access those documents via Google Docs, without having to use Google Docs itself. Instead, you do the editing in Office, then save them and get them from Google Docs.

Unity isn't for writing Pong. Oh, you could do that with Unity, I'm certain, but it would be like using Deep Blue to maintain your grocery list. Unity 2.6 is a professional-level game engine and editor, and you need to know a lot about what you're doing to get the most out of it. Familiarity with 3D modeling is essential, as is real coding skill. While Unity has a slick, modern, GUI interface and simplifies or automates much of the tedium of game coding, it's not a beginner's toolkit or a "point and click, drag and drop, presto, you've got a game!" tool.