I've always been a rather keyboard-oriented person myself, but mouse lovers can enjoy their own kind of shortcuts. X-Mouse Button Control is a free Windows app that lets you customize all the various buttons on your mouse so that they are a bit more useful, and the best part is that you can customize it on a per-app basis.

I'm not a huge fan of Java-based apps, but IOGraph is actually kinda cool. There isn't any real purpose to the app... it is really just for your own amusement.

Microsoft has been on the right track with the Windows Explorer updates in Vista and Windows 7, and I really like the breadcrumb functionality that they added. I never really understood why they didn't add tab capabilities, which makes sense with how many Explorer windows some users have open at any given time. Heck, at work I probably average having a dozen Explorer windows open at any moment.

We don't write about too many kid-friendly apps, but this one sure is. Rapid Typing is a freeware application that teaches both adults and kids how to type. It has all kinds of lessons that target specific areas of the keyboard, and the beginning stages even target specific letters. It then branches out to punctuation, entire paragraphs of text, and also the number pad.

Getting both the hardware and software details of your system typically requires using multiple apps. You'd have to peruse through the device manager, jump on over to the Add/Remove Programs in the Control Panel, and then if you want to run some diagnostics or benchmarks you'd have to go hunt down some apps to do that as well.

Most people carry a USB drive around for storing files on-the-go, but that's not all they are good for. A free (for non-commercial use) program called Predator will actually let you use a USB drive as a key for your computer. Basically, when you remove the drive the computer will lock itself, and it will be unlocked the next time you insert the drive.

If you use the Windows Task Manager on a regular basis there's a pretty good chance that you've tinkered with an application's priority. This is typically accessed from the "Processes" tab when you right-click on one of the entries, and from there you can assign the particular process a priority that the OS will use to determine which applications/processes should be given special treatment.

Sometimes it can be a pain to constantly rename new files and/or photos as you move them onto your computer. We've covered quite a few batch file renamers in the past, but one area that makes Personal Renamer unique is in its automatic processing capabilities.

I love coming across useful network-related tools, and SoftPerfect Network Scanner is pretty cool for both system administrators and geeky home users. With it you can scan an entire range of IP addresses and retrieve things like their host name, MAC address, response times, and much more.

There are a lot of integration points in Windows that developers can take advantage of, and many of them do. For example, if you have a program like 7-Zip or WinZip installed you may see related entries when you right-click on a file or folder.

Similarity is a pretty awesome app for anyone who doesn't keep their music library organized. I don't have a very large music library (just a few hundred songs), but I know people who have tens of thousands of songs. Once it starts getting that big I could see some duplicate songs sneaking in there...

If you're reading this site there is a pretty good chance that you already know how to use the ping and traceroute commands from the command prompt. If you only have to do these once in awhile I'm sure you don't mind opening up the command prompt, but if you're anything more than a casual pinger you may find the free PingMaster app to be useful.

Keyboard shortcuts are something I've always try to make the most of, and doing so has served me well over the years. One thing that Windows has seemingly lacked was a way to let me make my own keyboard shortcuts, but with Clavier+ I am one step closer to eternal keyboard bliss.

Freeing up some space on your hard drive may not be a concern right now, but down the road you may find that the space left on your drive is a little lower than you'd like. When that happens you'll turn to a disk space tool such as FilePro.

If there's one thing I do a lot on a day-to-day basis it would be taking screenshots. We've covered a lot of different apps that are able to take screenshots some of which are more complex than others, but DuckCapture may very well be the cleanest and fastest way to get the job done.

I've never been much of an artist, but that doesn't mean it's not fun to dabble with some of the art-focused software. I'd link to think that a lot of the software would be better served if I had a drawing tablet to tinker with, but I'd say that my mouse skills are probably on par with any hand-drawn creation that I could come up with. Yeah, it's that bad.

Have you ever erased something from your computer, but were then concerned with whether the information would still be accessible? One situation I can think of is when giving away or selling a computer/hard drive, and the fear that the new owner may try to recover the information that you left behind on the drive.

Over the last few years I've written about several video converters, but I always felt that none of them offered the simplicity that they I know they should.

Like many things in life the art of taking photos can be a lot of fun, but the aftermath of organizing the images isn't always that exciting. It's especially daunting if you have thousands of photos scattered around in obscure locations on your computer that you always meant to sort, but never quite got around to.

Have you ever tried to open a file just to find out that you don't have something installed that is able to handle it? That's where the Universal File Viewer comes in. This free portable app is able to open most filetypes, and prevents you from having to hunt down the right app for the job. It supports most text, images, videos, documents, and many more.