Here is a handy little program that doesn’t even require installation and can give you more information about your system than you know what to do with. It is freeware for Personal Use, so this won’t be particularly helpful as an IT program, but it could certainly be of help when you are working on your parent’s or friend’s computer and need to get the low down on EVERYTHING that there is to know about the system.
I particularly like the ability to dump all the info to an easy to read html file for later dissection. Not only does this program give you information about your hardware and software installed, but it also can show you all the passwords stored on your system and the open ports your system has (only those saved by certain programs, like Firefox, IE, IE6, MSN Messenger, etc.).
System Information for Windows — Everything you want to know about your PC. [http://www.gtopala.com/]
Chances are pretty good that unless you have a Mac, you’ve got a keyboard that has the “Windows” key on it. You know the one, that little funky symbol between the Ctrl and the Alt keys on the left side of the keyboard (sometimes in different places on a laptop). Ever do anything useful with that key? Yea, me neither. But there are actually some good uses for the key, and 
I found this tool the other day while reading a post on 
I am. I love multiple monitor setups. I have for a long time. At one point I had three 21″ monitors and a 14″ laptop all in a row, and I loved it. These days, I’ve ditched the humongous 21″ CRTs for a single 24″ Dell LCD aside my 15″ MBP, but sometimes I really miss the wide open space of that massive 4800×1200 desktop. I’m using a Mac most often these days, and it is amazingly intelligent when it comes to switching back and forth from dual monitors to the single laptop screen, but back when I lived in Windoze land, I would occasionally get some weirdness when I switched from dual monitor more to single monitor mode, and an application or two would get lost off the edge of the screen. At the time, I usually futzed around with things for a while until either giving up or successfully performing the magic keyboard and mouse incantation to get my screen back, but if only I had had 
This week, Microsoft released yet another update to Windows XP. While I recommend to my parents and others that they configure Windows updates to happen automatically and in the middle of the night, I don’t practice what I preach and I apply each manually with the “Custom Installation” button when the update systray icon says that there is an update available (I’m just not comfortable with stuff getting installed automatically no matter which company it is from). Usually, after an update is finished, the system has to reboot, so I close all my stuff and bounce it. But sometimes, like this week, I’ve got a massive pile of windows open and a whole bunch of ongoing projects that I’m just not ready to close up and put on hold while I reboot. This week I’ve got 30 windows open, I’ve had them open all week, and I probably won’t be ready to close most of them until sometime over the weekend. But that stupid little automatic update icon keeps popping up saying that I’ve got to reboot, and it keeps nagging me what seems like every five minutes (but it might actually be 15 or 30, I don’t know). Anyway, I’ve seen articles before on how to permanently disable that notification, but honestly, I want to keep it around cause I’m somewhat forgetful and being reminded that I need to reboot is a good thing. What I need is a way to disable it temporarily, while I’m working on my projects, but not permanently. In steps 