A fellow by the name of Blake Handler seems to have a lot of time on his hands - he created a directory linking to over 150 Windows and Office programs available from Microsoft. Some of the free goodies include:

• Alt-Tab Replacement in addition to the icon of the application window you are switching to, you see a preview of the page.
• Calculator Plus also performs many types of conversions.
• ConferenceXP enables you to see & hear others in a virtual collaborative space, called a venue. You collaborate on an electronic whiteboard or PowerPoint presentation, send messages and more.
• FolderShare keeps important files at your fingertips - anywhere. All file changes are automatically synchronized between linked computers, so you always access the latest files.
• GroupBar desktop tool offers enhanced window management capabilities in a taskbar-like setting. Through simple drag-and-drop operations on window tiles within the bar, users can create lightweight, transient grouping relationships that allow them to perform certain higher-level window layout functions on multiple windows at once.

Check out the site for more.

Know what that’s a picture of? Three absolutely flawless Dell 2407WFP, 24″ LCD monitors. Each capable of glorious 1920 x 1200 resolution, and all three are perfect with no dead or stuck pixels. I received two of them yesterday, and quite frankly after my completely hellish experience with these monitors, when I un-boxed the two new ones yesterday I was expecting them to also be flawed. Somehow though, as I carefully set each one up, I had a small glimmer of hope that because they took so long to get here (about two weeks) maybe they came from the non-crappy factory. I powered up each one, ran some full-screen dead pixel tests, along with a colour banding test, and each was flawless. FLAWESS. I’m so happy this insane quest is finally done.

Sadly, I don’t have anything to connect them to yet - I’m still waiting for the Velocity Micro system to come back to me, and ditto for my XFX 7600GS for the Shuttle, so I can’t run dual monitors on that unit yet either. I’m hoping that by the end of the week all the pieces will have arrived and I can put my technology world back together again.

Now just you watch - in a month I bet all three Dell monitors will spontaneously die on me.