Yes, You Can Dump MS Outlook

When you buy a new Windows system, you will likely have Outlook Express preinstalled (I don't know anyone who uses it these days). Worse, you may feel inclined to dish out $85 for MS Office Standard 2007 (which includes MS Outlook) because the Windows office productivity space is crowded by Microsoft products. If that's all your workplace supports (because they use Exchange servers), you have no choice. But what if you could dump all that for a free email, calendar, and task management solution? It's easy and attainable.

For email, install Mozilla Thunderbird. It does everything MS Outlook does as far as sending and receiving emails, and I think perhaps a little smarter in organizing your mail, searching, and customizing. One caution: resist the temptation to import settings from other mail clients - it gets messy within Thunderbird.
You need the Lightning plugin to add task and calendaring features: download and save the .xpi, then from TB, install it using Tools | Add-ons. After TB restarts, viola! Il y a un calendrier.

Since I routinely work on more than 3 computers, I need them all to have my updated schedule at all times. For this, online calendars provide the needed synchronization link. If you use Google Calendar, you can set up Lightning to synchronize with it from Thunderbird, like this:
Download yet another plugin - the Provider for Google Calendar. After installing it as an add-on for Thunderbird and restarting:

1. Open your Google Calendar from a web browser
2. Click on Settings, then on the Calendars tab, click on your calendar.
3. Scroll to the Private Address area (bottom) and right-click the XML link to copy its URL.
4. In Thunderbird, select File | New | Calendar : On the network : Google Calendar (and paste the URL here) : provide credentials.

That's all. Since all your calendars now feed off the same online calendar, your computers always have an updated copy whenever you run Thunderbird. This is a totally winning solution that's free and effective. At this point I was ready to backup my messages in Outlook and uninstall it from all my computers. I haven't seen issues in a couple of months since I did this.

Lots Of Free PC Utilities

I happen to also be a PC Service Technician (aside from everything else I do for work), and I survive on having the right utilities to service your computer whenever you call on me. PC Magazine is running an article that comprehensively reviews over 90 utilities you can use to tweak your Windows PC. I spent all evening pretty much checking out all the free ones (not evaluation copies) I didn't already have, and I'm quite impressed. Most are small downloads that install cleanly (no need to reboot) and are unobtrusive in your daily computing tasks.

Missing from the list are some on my wish list:

1. A tool to convert movies from DVD, AVI or YouTube to iPod format easily. My current setup takes all night to rip a DVD - but it works.
2. Networking tools such as one that can load-balance network bandwidth between multiple NICs on a system. Theoretically, if I use a wireless card and regular ethernet, I should have double the bandwidth, right?
3. Program backup - a tool that can backup individual programs. Say, if I want to backup my MS Office, this tool should know which files, registry keys, DLLs, etc that are needed so that you can make programs more portable. Something that goes beyond System Restore and regular file-based backup/restore.
4. A daemon to lock up your registry and startup folders (such as Adaware's Adwatch used to do). I having to manually clean up these areas once in a while.
5. Optimization tools - anything that'll make your machine run faster.
6. CD/DVD copyright restrictions cleanup. After a while, DVD players refuse to play encrypted CDs and DVDs because someone thoughtlessly decided that protection by region should be tracked.
   

Nonetheless, the PCMagazine's list is a good start for someone wanting to milk more from their Windows system. There's just too much stuff out there that perhaps it all couldn't be covered in one article.
My personal favorites from that list:

• IrfanView = See any image file and most digital videos, convert files to other formats and do some quick editing and annotation.
• Microsoft PowerToys = Useful tools that don't come with Windows, especially SyncToy, ClearType Tuner, Open Command Window Here, Alt-Tab Replacement, Power Calculator, Virtual Desktop Manager, Taskbar Magnifier, and Webcam Timershot.
• FreeCommander = Much better than Windows Explorer in controlling your files.
• QTTabBar = Advanced, tabbed interface.
• 7-Zip = No more expiration popups from WinZip and Winrar, and it does better zipping up stuff in a variety of formats.
• TrueCrypt = For those files for your eyes only. I don't think Administrators can get past this. Good for USB thumb drives.
• TeraCopy = If you are tired of single-file copying or having to start over when something goes wrong.
• FileZilla = New favorite FTP client. Supports SSL too.
• µTorrent = For the file sharing nerd in you, torrents and many P2p networks are your friends.
• WinDirStat = Visual statistics of what's on your hard drives.
• Xinorbis = Even better file statistics of what's on your hard drives.
• System Information for Windows (SIW) = Their tagline of "everything you want to know about your PC" isn't wrong.
• Absolute Uninstaller = If you ever want to uninstall multiple programs all at once - instead of one at a time.
• Undelete Plus = Now you can recover files you didn't mean to delete. Watch for this program's cache, and empty it periodically.

So yea, I'm officially a geek and my computer has never had issues (not).

Alternative PDF Reader

If you are growing tired of Adobe Acrobat's bulky reader, there's hope in Foxit Software's free PDF reader. This app is fast, renders stuff much better, and is not a resource hog as Acrobat is. I had come across it 3 years ago, but at the time, I still has Acrobat 5, which was moderately good. Then came 6.x and 7.x and the angst grew, so I had been looking for an alternative to Acrobat Reader. The answer came in Foxit's extremely small application that does wonders! Consider this: Acrobat uses about 80MB working with a 9MB PDF file, takes forever to install and get started, causes Firefox to hang while closing, browses documents sluggishly, does a bad job rendering "weird" pages, and has a habit of calling home for updates; Foxit uses only 18MB for the same document, displays/renders fonts and images much crisper, and is a breeze to start and install. In fact, it is the fastest install I have ever seen! The installer itself is small - 2.5MB. I'm impressed by this program.
The guys at Adobe must be scratching their heads on this: how does a relatively unknown company do their idea better than them? Performance-wise, it's superior to Acrobat. I haven't used it long enough to know what other features and issues it has, but for my needs of reading (huge) PDF's, this is the clear choice.