3DNA Desktop 1.1
This gotta-try alternative interface turns your 2D Desktop into a 3D house where you literally walk among applications and media bays to click oversized icons to access all your familiar tools, apps, and data. Favorite photos can go on the walls, and you can walk upstairs to play a game of 3D hoops on the upper deck. 3DNA offers a number of 3D worlds, including underwater and Mercury. Clouds move across the sky, and the light changes according to real-time. Finally, Windows gets trippy. (Shareware; $29.99)
www.3dna.net

Avedesk 1.1
Billed as a Windows Desktop enhancer, the program can place unique, oversized, fully configurable and programmable Desklets on your Desktop that can do a variety of tasks. Included in Andreas Verhoeven's 1.1 release is an FTP Desklet, which can send any file to your FTP server that you drag and drop onto the icon. Another Desklet recites text you drag onto it. Our own Chris Pirillo calls Avedesk "a freakin' sweet way to get interactive widgets and alpha-blended animated icons on your Desktop." (Freeware)
www.avedesk.com

CursorXP
If you are going to play with your cursor, then play with power. The free version of Stardock's CursorXP comes with a dozen prefab cursor themes, and you can download scores more made by a community of users and designers. Every aspect of the look and feel, from animations to shadows, is configurable in every one of the cursor's states. For the $10 fee, the Pro version gives you transparent cursors, color changes, exotic animations, and mouse trails. And, yes, you (or your kids) can change your cursor into candy canes. (Shareware; $10)
www.stardock.com/products/cursorxp

DreamRender
You've got all that 3D accelerator power under your PC's hood; why reserve it just for games when you can let it run your Desktop? From abstract visualizations to rain on a pond, sunflowers to flying bees in RayBans, DreamRender turns your wallpaper into 3D animated hallucinations. Scores of downloadable dreams depict various bucolic landscapes. The coolest feature is transparency, which makes all of your windows translucent so that the animated Desktop always shows through. Take your Dramamine because you may not be ready to live with a moving Desktop. (Shareware; $19.99)
www.dreamrender.com

Microangelo Toolset
For total Desktop control freaks, there is nothing quite like rolling your own icons, and Eclipsit's Microangelo is the mother of editors. In addition to a complete paint program for pixel-by-pixel icon modification, it has a screen capture tool that lets you grab images and turn them into icons and a brilliant animator that lets you create moving icons frame-by-frame. Other pieces in the suite help you manage icons on the Desktop, as well as create a library of usable icons. (Shareware; $39.95)
www.microangelo.us

Stickmen Screen Saver
OK, we know that screen savers are lame, but we just can't resist a clever and creative one like the aptly named Stickmen Screen Saver from The Spencer Group. It fills your Desktop with stick figure armies marching from either side of the screen to do various levels of battle. In this case, however, the otherwise innocent stickmen are carrying shoulder launchers, swords, and fire throwers, wreaking bloody carnage across the screen. A bloodless G-Rated version is available for those who object to the senseless loss of stick figure lives. (Shareware; $4.95)
www.stickmenwar.com

Tweak UI
What do you mean you don't have Tweak UI yet? This venerable PowerToy from Microsoft has only gotten better over the years as the quickest way to tweak Windows' look and feel. The tabbed interface drills into all of the OS guts, from which icons get placed on the Desktop to menu and mouse behavior. Many of the common OS look-and-feel tweaks that many people adjust in the Registry can be set easily in Tweak UI by checking or unchecking the right box. (Freeware)
www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx

Tweak Me: Little Conveniences

Adobe Reader Speed-Up 1.28
Adobe Acrobat PDF files are the de facto standard for digital distribution of documents online and offline, but the Adobe Reader software is a slow-loading behemoth that always makes us think twice before loading one of these data files. Joseph Cox's superb Speed-Up program accelerates the Reader by disabling some of the modules that are unnecessary for reading most PDF files. Speed-Up keeps these modules in reserve for calling up if needed, but the net effect in most cases is a much spryer Acrobat. (Freeware)
www.tnk-bootblock.co.uk

EscapeClose
Chris Pirillo recommends this cure for the cluttered Desktop. The appropriately named EscapeClose (SaNaPe Software) lets you close the active window by hitting your ESC key, pretty much the way God intended. More cautious users can have the ESC key send the mouse cursor to the window's corner Close button instead for easy, quick action. A Pro shareware version ($14.95) lets you define exceptions to this escape clause, define boot modes, and add a mode that minimizes rather than closes the window. (Freeware)
www.sanapesoft.com

jv16 Power Tools
Without the breadth of Super Utilities Pro, MaceCraft's jv16 is still a remarkably deep set of system tools for advanced users. One suite of tools edits, searches, and cleans your Registry, while another helps you write scripts for automating tasks. Yet another cleans files and even hunts down empty directories and unused DLL files lingering in the system. Control freaks who love drilling into Windows' innards will love this one. (Shareware; $29.95)
www.macecraft.com

Kill Win Pro
If PCs are so smart, then why do we need an astonishing program such as this to teach them how to shut down automatically and intelligently? BK-Soft's Kill Win Pro can not only schedule logoffs, shutdowns, and reboots, but you can also program it to first execute specific programs, hang up modems, open DOS boxes, and operate the program within scripts via command line options. You can even customize Kill Win Pro's System Tray menu of shutdown commands. It will make you rethink what your PC can do automatically. (Shareware; $15)
www.bk-soft.com

Mo'Slo 4BIZ
Most tweaking programs claim to speed up your PC, but Dr. David's Super Crispy Software's Mo'Slo 4BIZ deliberately slows down the execution of select programs. It is recommended by Samit for PC veterans who have a trove of old DOS and Windows programs that can't handle contemporary processor speeds. Mo'Slo can create custom slowdown settings for the executable and produce a special shortcut icon with the profile. An online database of compatible programs includes games like XCOM and Magic Carpet. (Shareware; $25)
www.hpaa.com/moslo

Remind!
Go way beyond Outlook's puny little alarm system with this gem from Crystal Office. You can create alarms that automatically initiate tasks, such as open a program, open a specific URL (great for reminding yourself about live Webinars), and even dial a phone number via your modem. Write notes to yourself that pop up at a given time and customize alarm sounds and the look and feel of reminders. And, rest assured all you procrastinators out there; there is a Snooze button. (Shareware; $19)
www.crystaloffice.com/reminfo

Super Utilities Pro
While it is one of the most expensive programs in our roundup, the sheer breadth of Superlogix's Super Utilities Pro functions makes it a bargain. A single, user-friendly console accesses a group of suites, from disk, Registry, and browser cleaners to an uninstaller, a shredder, a password protector, and even a tool for modifying options in your context menus. It also gives you control over startup programs and repairs shortcuts. This is truly the Swiss Army knife of PC utilities. (Shareware; $54.95)
www.superlogix.net

Driving Tools: File & Disk Utilities

DiskJockey File Viewer
This is what Windows Explorer should have been, a full-featured file management program that lets you peek into 220 file formats and comptessed files without opening the associated program. Clear & Simple's DiskJockey File Viewer is perfect for browsing the contents of your docs and image files. The superb multipane interface can encrypt and password protect files with a single click, call up the command prompt, view Hex code, and even transfer files directly with an FTP server. The built-in browser is mighty handy, too. (Shareware; $29.95)
www.clear-simple.com

Karen's Replicator
Karen Kenworthy, one of freeware's veteran contributors, hits a home run with Replicator, a dead simple way to automate backups. You choose your source files or folder, point to a destination (including networked drives), set the timer, and the program makes backups at regular intervals. A tagging function lets you append various time-stamp labels to each backup for easier identification later. Karen has taken away our last excuse for not making backups: We forgot. (Freeware)
www.karenware.com

Lupas Rename 2000 4.0
Media mavens know that MP3s and digital camera images often come onto our PCs with overlong and inappropriate file names. Lupas Rename is specifically designed to perform batch rename tasks. You can tag and rename select folders and files, replace or add text in file names or extensions, alter case, automatically number new file names, even undo mistakes and create batch files for renaming files under DOS. While a bit crude and in need of a Help file, Ivan Anton Albarracin's Lupus Rename is a great one-trick pony. (Freeware)
rename.lupasfreeware.org

Power Desk Pro 5
One of Samit's favorites, VCOM's PDP5 goes way beyond file management and puts virtually all of Windows' major functions (from command prompt to Regedit to Control Panel) on toolbars within a single console. It not only copies, zips, and synchronizes files and folders, but it can also preview many media formats (including video and audio files). PDP5 also lets you create custom Desktop toolbars. Imagine Windows Explorer . . . with a brain. (Shareware; $39.99)
www.v-com.com/product/PowerDesk_Pro_Home.html

RegSeeker 1.35
Get a unique view of your system with HoverDesk's RegSeeker, which lets you see the Registry keys that contain your environment settings, browser and file use histories, startup programs, look and feel options, etc. Double-click most entries, and RegSeeker brings you directly to the listing in RegEdit. A Registry Cleaner function vacuums out outdated links, and a Tweaking screen lets you toggle off things such as the arrow on shortcut icons and adjust the Start menu pop-up delay. (Freeware)
www.hoverdesk.net/freeware.htm

WinRAR 3.40
The other file compression format, RAR's multilingual file naming support makes it very popular internationally. RarLab's WinRAR is the compression engine that speaks fluent RAR and even comes in versions for 21 languages (including Macedonian!). It boasts special modes for optimal file size reduction of multimedia and text files and highly secure file encryption. With support for decompressing ZIP, ARJ, ACE, CAB, and many more archive types, WinRAR could be the only archive manager you need. And if you are Macedonian, there may be no other choice. (Shareware; $29)
www.rarlab.com

WinUndelete
Never say "Oops!" again. Among file recovery programs, WinRecovery's WinUndelete is both powerful and very convenient. It works with most disk formats, from NFTS to DOS, and it can target a search for specific deleted file types. Best of all, it can exclude cluttered listings from deleted Internet and empty files. In our tests it ran very fast and did a great job of showing us where the deleted files were found in our directory tree. The built-in wizard walks you through every step. (Shareware; $49.95)
www.winrecovery.com

Burnin' Fool: Media-Making Tools

BlindWrite 5
Backing up your copy-protected CDs and DVDs doesn't get much simpler than with VSO Software's BlindWrite. One button click makes either a byte-for-byte copy of one disc directly to a burner or on your hard drive for later copying or for use with virtual drive software. This one is perfect for those who don't need or want to fiddle with the minutiae of optical disc copying, and a throaty female voice even announces program events. (Shareware; $35)
www.vso-software.fr

BurnQuick
The cool thing about this data and audio CD burner is that you don't have to load the program to use it. BurnQuick from Triton Interactive integrates with Windows' context menus so that you right-click a file and either burn it directly to CD or place it in a queue to burn later with other files. BurnQuick can make mixed media CDs that contain both CD audio and data. It is what WinXP's built-in CD-copying function should have been. (Shareware; $17.95)
www.burnquick.com

DVD Decrypter 3.2.3
Lightning UK's DVD Decrypter is so good at unprotecting a DVD and copying it to your hard drive that we barely have to tell it what to do. It detects your DVD at startup, highlights all of its relevant files (though you can tag select chapters, as well), and asks you to click a button to make the recording. The files play back with any of the usual software DVD players, so it is perfect for notebook users (with hearty disk space) who want to bring a movie along with them without the disc. (Freeware)
www.dvddecrypter.com

DVD Shrink 3.2
This could be the most amazing freeware of any kind. DVD Shrink lets you scan a full-sized DVD and copy and compress select pieces so that a 9.4GB movie DVD can be burned onto a 4.7GB DVD burner. It has a brilliant preview screen so that you can peek into any piece of the DVD structure, choose which audio tracks or titles to use, and completely reauthor a DVD to your liking. Simply incredible. (Freeware)
www.dvdshrink.org

Easy CD-DA Extractor 7.1
Its rips, converts, and burns, and Poikosoft's Easy CD-DA Extractor does all of them very fast and with stunning control and unique extras. It rips CDs (including many copy-protected ones) directly into any of 12 file formats (no extra plug-ins needed). The internal digital signal processor levels the volume and even "compresses" quieter passages so they stand out on car and portable players. Easy CD-DA Extractor even has an error recovery and repair mode for reading badly scratched CDs. For serious music managers, this is the one. (Shareware; $29.95)
www.poikosoft.com

Easy DVD To DivX/VCD/SVCD Converter
The program name might be a mouthful, but that is because it eats enormous DVD discs and converts them to a wide variety of formats for playback on a
PC or burning onto standard video CDs in VCD or SVCD formats. For basic users, it is a click-and-record affair, but advanced burners get to fiddle with
the audio and video codecs' frame rates and A/V quality settings in order to
customize the compression rates. (Shareware; $29.95)
www.easydvdcdburner.com

PicsToCD 2.1
For making simple slideshows that you can burn to disc and even send to Grandma for easy playback, nothing beats Triton Interactive's PicsToCD. A wizard walks you through choosing images from your hard drive and lets you edit or reorient them and even add captions. The program converts the tagged and captioned pics into an HTML slideshow that burns to disc. The slideshow autoloads when the CD is popped into another PC, so Granny can see an album of the grandkids without calling tech support. (Shareware; $19.95)
www.picstocd.com

What A Sight: Video Tools & Players

AVS Video Converter 3.3
We love the simplicity of AVS Media's AVS Video Converter's push-button interface. To convert an AVI, MPEG, or RM (RealMedia) video file to any of the other formats (or burn to DVD/SVCD discs), just point to your source file, choose your format, and click. If you want to trim a bit here and there or split a video file into pieces, the program has rudimentary editing tools, as well. Other programs offer more control and detail, but nothing makes video conversion so easy. (Shareware; $29.95)
www.avsmedia.com

Fraps 2.2.5
Forget about running tortuous 3D benchmark routines. Just load beepa's Fraps, the program that superimposes the current frame rate in a corner of your actual gameplay screen, can save benchmark stats to file every second, and even takes in-game screenshots (DirectX 9 is required). But the coolest function records your own heroic gaming exploits to a video file at up to 30fps, just in case no one in your office believes you can take out a room of Doom zombies in under three seconds. No, really, guys, we can. (Shareware; $29.95)
www.fraps.com

GSpot 2.5
Downloaded video files often fail to play because of a missing codec or play only the audio without the video. Alas, most media players are too dumb to tell us precisely which codec the file wants. GSpot analyzes any audio and video file, as well as your system for the codecs you already have, the media types they play, and where the drivers live on your system. Point it to any file to discover the compression scheme it needs. (Freeware)
www.headbands.com/gspot

ImageResizer
For digital camera buffs that end up with folders filled with 1,600 x 1,200 poster-sized snapshots, this oft-ignored Microsoft WinXP Power Toy is indispensable. Install it on your system to add a new Resize Pictures command to the context menu for almost all image file formats. The tool lets you instantly resize the image to the most common resolutions (even PDA-sized) or pick custom dimensions. Aspect ratios and image quality remain pristine, and you don't even have to load your photo editor. (Freeware)
www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx

PowerStrip 3.5
This is still the must-have tool for graphics card addicts who want optimum control over their card's memory and GPU speed, refresh rates, and color and gamma settings. You can turn any of these tweaks into profiles to run with specific programs and games. En Tech's PowerStrip scratches the tweaking itch every PC nut has. (Shareware; $29.95)
www.entechtaiwan.com

Rage3D Tweak
For ATI Radeon card owners, this comprehensive tool is an indispensable add-on to the Catalyst video drivers that has its own tabs in Display Properties. It lets you drill into and adjust every imaginable video setting. The overclocking tool ramps up both GPU and memory clock speeds. There are scores of customizable display modes that go way beyond the standard Windows settings, and Rage3D also lets you make game-specific profiles. (Freeware)
www.rage3d.com

Red Eye Remover
The one image-editing tool most digital photographers need is red-eye correction, and Vicman Software's Red Eye Remover is a dedicated tool that does this and only this. You highlight the pupil area and use a slider to adjust the level of correction. Another option lets you darken the pupil, as well. It does a great job and spares us the effort of having to drill into the labyrinthine menus of our full-featured photo-editing software. (Shareware; $19.95)
www.vicman.net

What's That Sound: Audio Players & Tools

#1 Sound Recorder
This audio-grabbing software will record from any source, including streams from the Internet, games, movies—anything that is running and making sound on your PC. The simple interface lets you choose the input channel (including what you hear for audio streams), and the recorder builds a library of WAV files, which it can convert to MP3s, as well. A-One Software's #1 Sound Recorder is great for recording Webcasts or just grabbing cool audio bits from any DVD. (Shareware; $29.95)
www.aonesoft.com

dBpowerAMP Music Converter
Samit's audio format converter of choice, the dMC can rip a CD into countless audio formats, from MP3 to Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, AAC, and many others via downloadable codec plug-ins. Converting among these many formats is as simple as right-clicking one or more audio files and accessing dMC's many conversion options from the context menu. You can even up-convert two-channel sources into four and 5.1 channels and apply volume leveling. For the Ogg converts among us who still have a library of MP3s, dMC is indispensable. (Freeware)
www.dbpoweramp.com

Dictation Buddy
With a microphone or phone adapter plugged in to your mic jack, a PC can become a sophisticated dictation machine. High Criteria's Dictation Buddy takes this input and lets you bookmark the recording to relocate important points of conversation or add typed notes. You can slow down the playback for easier transcribing and speed it up to find the right passage quickly. A great usability feature here are the hot keys, which let you control Dictation Buddy while transcribing in another program, so your hands never need to leave the keyboard. (Shareware; $32.95)
www.highcriteria.com

foobar2000
Why wait for the massive Windows Media Player or MusicMatch to load every time you want to play a tune when the memory-efficient foobar2000 by Peter Pawlowski pops up faster than a context menu? This open-source player handles all of the major audio formats, and a community of developers writes numerous plug-ins to play back a wide range of more obscure file types for those who like living on the cutting edge of audio codecs. More than slim, foobar2000 also has an awesome 18-band equalizer and uses the ReplayGain standard to level volume across various MP3s. (Freeware)
www.foobar2000.com

MediaMonkey 2.2
Our favorite bargain of the audio player world is also designed for power digital audiophiles. In addition to playing, burning, and transferring all of the usual formats, Media-Monkey also converts tracks across MP3, OGG, WAV, AAC, and other formats via plug-ins. But we like its tagging smarts. It detects files with incomplete tags and fills in their blanks using available file name information. The Monkey even knows when to go to sleep; it can shut down your PC after completing a playlist. Good monkey! (Shareware; $19.95)
www.mediamonkey.com

Natural Voice Reader
Tired of text-to-speech tools that make everything sound like Stephen Hawking? Natural Voice Reader's free version is not much of an improvement, but the upgrade to the Professional version ($39.50) does boast astonishingly clear computerized voices. This freeware does let you block any text in the Web browser or application for reading or even saving to disk as an audio file, from the context menu. Voice speed is adjustable, and even in the free versions, the cadence is very natural. We're edging closer to PCs sounding like the Hal 9000. (Freeware)
www.naturalreaders.com

Noise Maker
Frankly, we'd rather be at the beach, and the oddly effective Noise Maker from Icegiant Software actually takes us there. It literally makes the sound of waves breaking along the sand. Even stranger, it has four different settings, with the sounds of bay, gulf, and ocean waves (yes, they are different). The Pink Noise option is a hiss designed to blot out other background sounds. Actually, that one sounds like irritating static, but the waves are believable and soothing . . . really. (Shareware; $5)
www.icegiant.com

Wired Tools: Internet

AI RoboForm Pro 6.0
When the Autofill option in the Google toolbar is not long enough for all of the sweepstakes entries, registrations, and credit card info you fill into Web-based slots, Siber System's AI RoboForm Pro is the ultimate form filler. Not only do you put in all of your personal and financial information just once, but you can create multiple identities, save logins and passwords as you enter sites, and keep all your personal information password protected. The depth of information here is extraordinary, and all of the functionality is available directly from the browser toolbar. (Shareware; $29.99)
www.roboform.com

Firefox
If you give one alternative to IE a try this year, let the brilliant Firefox be the one. With a tabbed display of multiple Web sites, integrated Google searching, protection from malicious ActiveX invaders, add-in modules, and a small footprint to boot, Firefox makes IE look and feel like a bloated rhino. It handles bookmarks and downloading better and just performs better overall. Microsoft should save themselves a lot of time and money and simply adopt Firefox as Windows' native browser. As if! (Freeware)
www.mozilla.org

Flash Saving Plugin
If you've ever seen a Flash movie online that you just had to keep for posterity or wanted to play when offline, this IE add-on is a must-have. UnH Solution's Flash Saving Plugin adds a button to the IE toolbar and a context menu item that brings you a gallery of Flash programs currently on a given Web page. You simply check off the ones you want to save to a designated directory, and
they are on your hard drive for replaying anytime. (Freeware)
www.unhsolutions.net

Gaim
You got Gaim? You need it if you are juggling multiple IM clients like AIM, Yahoo, MSN Messenger, ICQ, etc. because Gaim puts those and other IM accounts into a single client with a consistent interface. While it is not as robust as any one of the major clients it embraces, Gaim lets you log on to multiple IM accounts simultaneously, have sound cues for events, and post keep away messages, and the programmers are working on file transfers. (Freeware)
gaim.sourceforge.net

NewsLeecher
If you can't get enough of downloading images, videos, MP3s, and such from binary newsgroups, then NewsLeecher is a great special-purpose Usenet tool, and one of Samit's favorites. In addition to downloading and reassembling multipart binaries, the program can leech from multiple servers at once and keep up to 99 download threads open for ultrafast executions. The built-in file manager, along with the latest codecs, ensures that you will be able to decode and view whatever you download. (Shareware; $34.95)
www.newsleecher.com

Protected Storage PassView 1.61
How many usernames and passwords have we had to make in our years of traveling the Web? Clearly too many to recall, and that is where NirSoft's Protected Storage PassView comes in. The free tool decrypts and retrieves in one spot all the stored passwords and AutoComplete data that have been recorded in your Outlook, Internet Explorer, and MSN Explorer programs. Recommended by Chris Pirillo, PassView lets you search its archives and save and export listings. (Freeware)
nirsoft.mirrorz.com

Star Downloader
Download managers are notorious for including ads and spyware, but both Star Downloader's free and fee versions are clean of ads and simple to use. They integrate with major browsers and open
multiple streams and mirror sites to download much faster. You can also pause and resume a session or just schedule a download to execute later. Even with broadband connections, Star Downloader can accelerate downloads from otherwise sluggish sites. Star Downloader Free is an older, less feature-rich version but also ad-free. (Shareware; $19.95)
www.stardownloader.com

Let's Be Safe Out There: Security

AbsoluteShield Internet Eraser Pro 3.38
The final solution for total paranoia. Costing less than many privacy protectors but with a user-friendly interface that covers all of the bases, we like Internet-Track's AbsoluteShield Internet Eraser Pro's comprehensive approach to wiping traces of your online and offline PC activity. In addition to the usual (browser cookies, history, etc.), this program also eliminates file run histories in most common applications, erases saved passwords and usernames, and even cleans your Windows swap file of incriminating traces. A built-in scheduler lets you automate the clean ups. (Shareware; $34.95)
www.internet-track-eraser.com

AppProtector XP
Ax-Soft's AppProtector XP lets you password protect any program to keep prying eyes out of your executables. The program integrates with Windows itself, so once it is installed, simply right-click the executable you want to secure and use the context menu to activate your new Lock command. Assign the executable any password, and henceforth you will need it to open the program. This ensures that nobody sharing your computer can mess up your Sims game. (Shareware; $9)
www.ax-soft.com

DigiSecret Lite
This is one of the most intuitive encryption tools we have used. TamoSoft's DigiSecret integrates with the Windows interface, so you can send any file to this Desktop lockbox where it is both compressed and encrypted (including a 448-bit key). You can turn the archive into a password-protected storage bin or an executable that can be passed on to colleagues for self-extraction. Files can be encrypted, password protected, and emailed to a colleague, all from the context menu. Now you'll have to find some other reason to be paranoid. (Shareware; $29)
www.tamos.com

Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer 1.2
If Windows is destined to be unsecure, then at least Microsoft can tell us where the holes are. MBSA runs a full body check of your Windows configuration, looking for common weaknesses such as using too simple passwords, maintaining guest accounts, or finding programs such as WMP and IE that lack the latest security updates or have been set to low security levels. Best of all, MBSA issues a report that lets you click through to detailed explanations of security flaws. The new version adds support for Office applications. (Freeware)
www.microsoft.com/technet/security/tools/mbsahome.mspx

Mutilate File Wiper 2.9
It has a creepy name for software, but Craig Christensen's Mutilate File Wiper is a simple and straightforward tool for permanently wiping files from your hard drive so that they cannot be reconstructed by snoops (or divorce lawyers). It offers four levels of erasure, including a custom level for deep paranoids that distorts old data up to 297 times. The Power Mutilator lets you tag multiple folders for genuinely disintegrating "deleted" files across the hard drive. Forget the name; get the program. (Shareware; $20)
home.att.net/~craigchr/mutilate.html

SpamBayes
For Outlook 2000 or later (not Express) and many POP3 and IMAP clients, SF Project's SpamBayes is a free, open-source spam segregator for those who want optimum control over their email filter. The program puts all of your email into an Unsure folder where you train it to distinguish your spam from ham (the good stuff). What we like most about this alternative spam-killer is the community of developers who offer new scripts and antispam strategies. Mike Magee says, "It's top-notch at cutting down the detritus. It's free and always will be." (Freeware)
spambayes.sourceforge.net/index.html

SpywareBlaster 3.2
Unlike spyware cleaners, Javacool Software's SpywareBlaster actually blocks the most common ActiveX tricks used by Web pages to plant these culprits on your system but also lets most legitimate ActiveX controls through without having to give special permission. A system snapshot tool lets you restore a badly infected PC to its former, cleaner state. Javacool's online database indexes the latest ActiveX controls used by these invaders, and it keeps SpywareBlaster updated. Mike Magee uses it along with a standard spy cleaner to help immunize his system. (Freeware)
www.javacoolsoftware.com