As I find the Windows Start Menu too crowded for easy use, I've been using True Launch Bar and Powerpro on Windows XP to modify the taskbar to start programs the way I like. Unfortunately, the Windows 7 task bar works much differently than in any other version of windows and my old reliables just don't work very well on my new Windows 7 box. After looking around, I found a freeware program that both looks nice and does the basic job I need done, even if it does not have all the bells and whistles I'm used to: 7stacks.

My 2002 era XP machine died last week: the motherboard failed after years of 12-18 hour a day use. I decided not to replace the motherboard as even new P4 motherboards do not provide much support for "ancient" technology like IDE drives, AGP 4x video cards, etc. -- buying a new motherboard would mean replacing most of my peripherals as well. I finally decided to go with an Emachines ET1331G-03w.

If you are like me, you have a huge collection of bookmarks in Firefox. I have some that I bookmarked years ago. I really need to go through my 1500+ bookmarks, look at each one, and decide if I still need it. However, I know this is something I will probably never have time to do. With CheckPlaces, I can at least let Firefox check each bookmark to be sure the web site still exists.

While extra spaces usually aren't a problem when you are entering data by hand in Microsoft Excel, they often worm their way into data that import from other formats. Once in your spreadsheet they can be hard to find and they will often foul up your spreadsheet to the point it doesn't print -- or even work -- correctly. Manually finding these extra spaces at the beginning and/or end of items is a time-consuming and error-prone process.

PDF files have become a standard way to send formatted documents that you do not want the recipient to be able to change. Unfortunately, the Adobe Acrobat, the commercial software designed to create PDF files is priced for businesses and individuals who have money to burn. Acrobat also has many features that post people will never use. Fortunately, there are many programs, including a good select of free programs, that will create PDF files without Acrobat. PDFCreator is one of the best of the free PDF creation programs.

Google Reader is probably the most popular RSS Feed Reader around. It allows you to follow RSS news feeds from your favorite web site in one place. And you can access Google Reader from any computer. Some people, however, prefer to use a RSS Reader program on their computer as these programs generally provide features that online RSS Readers -- like Google Reader -- do not.

If you are anything like me, you often need to launch multiple programs to do your work. For example, when I'm working on a web page I need my HTML editor, my browser, my photo editor, my text editor to use as a scratch pad, and I need to start my local web server and database server. It's a bit annoying to have to find each of these programs in my start menu (I don't do the hundreds of icons on my desktop bit) and start it.

Enter the freeware Lacuna Launcher.

Abiword is a powerful free cross-platform word processor program with the features most people need with the bloat and complexity of all the features few people ever use. The focus of the latest 2.8x version of Abiword is on improved collaboration features.

Here are some of the new features:

Improved Collaboration support

It's hard to beat Windows Live Skydrive from Microsoft with its 25 gigs of free remote storage. This beats any other free storage service I know of. However, it can be a bit of a pain to use as you have to go to the Windows Live Skydrive site in your browser to upload or download files.

The first stage of the move to Drupal (from Wordpress) is finished. Software Gadgets is up and running with categories and comments again functional. There is a new Index page where all posts and pages are indexed in alphabetic order -- no need to guess the category. The anti-spam features on the comments are working. More features will be added with time, but this site is operational again.

You are probably wondering why I switched from Wordpress to Drupal. There are several reasons.