Last week Download Squad dug up a real gem when they found a website called AlternativeTo. This website lists out a lot of really popular applications like Photoshop, Nero, Dreamweaver, and the various Microsoft Office products. Then for each of them it provides alternatives (both free and commercial) that users can choose from.

I've seen extensions before that let you designate specific directories on your computer for files to be saved based upon the extension of file. The thing that I normally hate about this is that it's tough to say where I want the ZIP files I download to be stored.

I'm a big fan of file renaming utilities because they can save a ton of time when you have hundreds of files or photos who's filename needs to be cleaned up. There are a few different tools that I used in the past to do this, but lately I've found myself gravitating to a freeware application called Ken Rename.

Most of the time I use my computer's desktop as a temporary holding place for things that I need to organize later on. It's normally filled with attachments that have been downloaded from emails, apps I've downloaded to try out, and more. My goal is to always have a clear desktop because that means I've filed everything away, but that rarely happens.

Keeping your Windows Registry clean is something that can be quite a chore. Comodo, who happens to make an incredible free firewall tool, also has a free registry cleaner that not many people know about. One thing that I love the most is that you can download the typical installer, or you can grab the portable format that requires no installation.

There are all kinds of free applications that will let you do things like adjust a window's transparency, minimize it to the System Tray, and pin a window so that it remains on top of all others.

There is a good chance that you've had a program crash on your while you were away from your computer, and it probably caused quite a headache. Maybe you have a web server or FTP server at home, and the application running it crashed when you were at work leaving those files inaccessible.

Big news came Wednesday at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) when Steve Ballmer said that they would be releasing a copy of Windows 7 Beta that the public can actually get their hands on.

Mozilla is on the verge of releasing Firefox 3.1 Beta 2, and it's quite possible that in the next month or two the final version will be pushed out the door. A major new release like this means that some of your favorite extensions might not be working, and Mozilla doesn't want that to happen.

In the past we've talked about some mouse gesture applications for Windows including ones that targeted specific applications like Firefox. For some people these gestures can save significant amounts of time day in and day out. If you're one of those people you should probably know that there's a new mouse gesture program in town, and it's called gMote.