Ten Essential (but Cheap) Utilities

Want to know a secret? Windows isn't perfect.

You knew that? Okay, but did you know the best way around some of those shortcomings? Utility programs. When Microsoft leaves out an important feature, someone else often comes along and does it right.

Here are some of the best downloadable utilities for plugging the holes in Windows. The good news is, all but one of them are free.

Finesse Your Windows

Anyone can alter their Windows environment. You just have to edit the Registry--a job as simple as itemizing your taxes. Microsoft actually created a much easier tool for this job, Tweak UI. But instead of putting it in Windows, where it belongs, the company just gives it away for free (but offers no support for it). Tweak UI lets you get rid of those annoying shortcut arrows, control whether CDs start automatically, adjust mouse sensitivity (now there's a phrase to confuse anyone who's been asleep for the last 20 years), log on without typing your password, and a whole lot more.

Microsoft created two versions of Tweak UI: one for Windows XP and a separate version for all other flavors of Windows.

Surf Without Wipe-Outs

Wouldn't it be nice if you could open a Web page and not have 8 million other Web pages open up with it? Panicware's free Pop-Up Stopper will keep most--but not all--of those annoying pop-up ads off your screen.

For $20, Pop-Up Stopper Pro gives you some extra bells and whistles, including a log of all the sites that tried to pop things up and the ability to give sites permission to pop windows your way.

The $40 Pop-Up Stopper Companion is a bit more tempting. In addition to stopping the pop-ups, Pop-Up Stopper Companion cleans the cache and history and manages cookies. It offers a few other handy surfing aids, including an option to open the folder into which you just downloaded a file.

Be Your Own Photo Lab

Irfan Skiljan's IrfanView is an easy, powerful, and free tool for managing your digital photos. You can view thumbnails of many pictures simultaneously and one full-size photo. You can rotate, flip, and crop your pictures, remove red-eye, or swap colors--converting, for instance, all the red to green and green to blue (now that will bring out Aunt Agatha's personality). You can also create a slideshow and save it as a screen saver or as a stand-alone program.

Note a Better Pad

Text editors (as opposed to full-blown word processors) are supposed to be light, quick, and simple, but Windows' own Notepad takes that ideal to a ridiculous extreme--it barely does anything. On the other hand, Fookes Software's free NoteTab Light does outlining, math, search and replace, and has a Microsoft Word-like auto-correct feature that will work in other applications. It has special tools for writing HTML code and comparing files. And NoteTab Light will even tell you your ideal weight (if you have the guts).

Change Your Resolution

Some jobs are easier to see on-screen at 1024 by 768 pixels; others at 1152 by 864 or 800 by 600. But who wants to right-click the Desktop, select Properties, click the Settings tab, adjust the slider bar, click OK, and then approve the result? A much better solution is EnTech Taiwan's MultiRes. This simple, free program sits in your system tray; click it for a menu of available resolutions, color depths, and refresh rates. You just select the setting you want on the fly. You can even create shortcuts for particular settings. For example, I keep shortcuts on my Start menu that bring me immediately to 800 by 600 and 1024 by 768--one less thing in the system tray.