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on the mail box.Why print to a sheet of paper when you may never look at it again? You can save a lot of paper and toner, or ink, by printing to a PDF file on your computer instead of a printer. It works from any Windows software that can print. To your software it looks like any other printer.
Why print a hard copy of all your online transactions or those web pages you want to save for future reference? If you ever need a hard copy you can print the PDF file. If you need to e-mail it you won't have to scan it in. I use CutePDF.
It's a free download from their web site at www.cutepdf.com/Products/CutePDF/writer.asp
My favorite compression utility is still EasyZip but the latest free version is dated 1999. Apparently it is now shareware and called PowerArchiver. EasyZip works on Windows XP but is becoming harder to find on the internet. One site has version 3.5 and I can't find version 4.6, which is only a few months younger, even though it's the one I use. I never noticed any difference between 3.5 and 4.6.
Version 3.5 can be downloaded here: http://www.thefreesite.com/easyzip111.htm
Another archiver I sometimes use is 7-ZIP. The interface is not as pleasant but it loads much faster. I find, however, that it takes longer to compress a subdirectory so it may be a wash.
You can download it here: http://www.easymarketplace.de/winzip-7zip.phpBoth are free.
Archives are nice but you sometimes have to find which floppy, CD or DVD that file you know you archived is on. Visusal CD is a great help. Run a removable media through it and it will create a searchable database. Ask it to find a file and it will tell you which media it's on. Free from http://boozet.xepher.net.
The clipboard is great. The clipboard is about as dumb as it comes. Most operating system's clipboard forgets what's in it as soon as you turn the computer off. So, there is a real need for a clipboard that will remember what you cut last. It would be nice too if it could remember not only that but also what you cut ten, twenty or thirty cuts ago.
When I first searched the internet for such a utility for Windows there were many of them around and all of them tried to out do the others with loads of features. Unfortunately for them I was trying to find something easy and light weight. Finding one literally turned into a quest the first time I worked with Windows at the office in early 1998. I was used to a really great utility on my OS/2 machines. It did not do graphics, it was very simple and just remembered the text of the last few cuts.
It literally took me over four years to find one. It's called miniCLIP.
I don't use file managers much but sometimes, particularly with Microsoft operating systems, they are necessary. I like xplorer2. It comes in a freeware version that is full of nice features but, I splurged and paid for the "Pro" version. What clinched the deal for this version is the search feature. The paid for version lets you build up Boolean (AND OR NOT) searches on multiple extended attribute fields such as the ones built into the Windows file system as well as EXIF and XMP from your digital photos. Given the near uselessness of the Windows search feature it was a few Dollars well spent. Check it out.
I carry on E-mail conversations with people across the globe. Most of them don't talk like us when it comes to temperature, speed, distance and the likes. They think we are backwards because of our units of measurement but I think that they are a bit mentally lazy. To them, life is simple and everything is in multiples of 10. We, on the other hand, are a bit sharper. We know that if that hurricane is 120 nautical miles offshore it's actually 138 miles away. I, as a construction estimator, can switch from our measurements to metric plans when I face a building, such as a Federal courthouse, owned by the General Service Administration.
Yet, I am not so sure they really live an easier life because they also seem to like to complicate things. They calculate their vehicle's consumption in liters per 100 kilometers whereas we have a simple miles per gallons. For example, if I am on the highway and my car does 29 miles per gallon and I see that I have approximately 1 gallon left and the sign says that the next exit is in 60 mile I immediately know that I have a problem. If I am on a European highway, see that the next exit is in 40 kilometers, and my gasoline gauge tells me that I have about one liter left what am I to do if I know that my car does 8 liters to the 100 km? Quickly take pencil to paper and divide 100 by 8!
Versaverter is a great little freeware program that helps you convert all kinds of units. Those you use everyday and those that you don't even know exist.
My main calculator is a real one. It's over 20 years old, is pretty loud and very fast. It has served me well through boxes and boxes of paper tapes in those BC (Before Computers) years. It still serves me well these days and still looks almost as good and works as well as the day it came out of the box. It sits by my right hand besides the blue prints. I also have a small one without a paper tape. I like it a lot too and it was free with a Time magazine subscription sometimes during the 1970s. Its numbered keys have yellowed a lot but, besides that, it's still a pleasure to work with. Then, there is a small shirt pocket Canon that runs on solar power with a battery backup. I've had that one for a long while but it's much younger than the other two. Still, while at the computer keyboard, I sometimes fire up one of two freeware calculators.
I use a freeware because, somewhere along the line, the people at Microsoft thought that it would be cool to take the memory minus key out of their Windows XP calculator and replace it with a memory store key. I suppose that for Microsoft, as with everything else it does, it's all about looks instead of functionality. All my real calculators have a memory plus and a memory minus key and I've been using the memory plus key to store quantities since I first used a calculator so I don't really need a memory store key particularly since the memory store key overwrites whatever is in memory. The memory store key is basically useless.
The two freeware calculators I like are RUCalc and Moffsoft FreeCalc. Moffsoft offers you a "tape" that you can print. RUCalc has no tape but it has three memories instead of just one and will let you set its display to floating, 0, 2 or 3 decimals. Moffsoft's does not. RuCalc will also let you set up to three user functions and a sales tax rate. Not so with Moffsoft's. Oh yes, both these calculators have memory plus, memory minus AND memory store. I never use the memory store but, Microsoft take note, it is possible to show a pleasant display with memory plus AND minus as well as memory store.
Note to memory store writers: If you implement a memory store function make it independent of the memory (i.e., don't overwrite what is already in memory if someone hits memory store; jut implement another register and make it useful).
As a final note, neither of these calculators has a scientific mode.