Free tools for organising your PC

Keep track of appointments, holidays, and tasks awaiting action with Task Plus from http://contactplus.com/ The free version has calendars, appointment diary with alarm, and a To Do list. All can be categorised, and filtered, with customised categories to suit your needs. It sites in your task tray next to the clock, and pops up when you need it.

Note Keeper from http://home.pacific.net.au/~pws/ is a PC-based notebook. Organised in pages, with an Explorer-like tree interface, you can create different projects each with folders and pages for storing notes. It's very flexible, but easy to use, and loads quickly to give you access to the information you've saved. I wouldn't be without it!

Get your Start Menu, Favorites, and Programs Menu into order with Start Menu Tweaker from http://bidtech.faithweb.com/programs/strtmenu.htm This utility does what IE and Windows should have been designed to do - it sorts your start menu into alphabetical order so you can find things easily. It also makes your start menu cascade, so you don't have to scroll up and down to find things. It also has many other options.

Want to make a note but your colleagues / kids / dogs have stolen all your scratch pads? Add Listy and Scratchy to your task tray to make quick notes when you need them. Scratchy is a scratch pad, and Listy a list box. Scratchy will reload the same text file every time, so items remain until you delete them. Listy is ordered into blocks, suitable for web addresses, phone lists, etc. I like the license agreement on this Canadian program : "L&S is not intended for use on nuclear submarines". Any sub-mariners reading this - you have been warned! Check the freeware sites below for this program.

Windows Explorer is fine for finding, copying and moving files - but not so good at telling you which of those files are swallowing huge chunks of your hard drive, and haven't been used in months. SequoiaView will do this with a method called cushion treemaps. Instead of folders and files, it shows directories and the files in them as coloured cushions. Put your cursor on a cushion to see what the file is. Use the filters to check which files you haven't used. It's easier to install and use than to describe, so try it from http://www.win.tue.nl/sequoiaview/

A program I really need to use more often is Favorites Cleaner from http://wettberg.home.texas.net/ Check which of your favourites are dead links before you export them for a friend! Steve Wettberg plans to add multi-threading to the next version, so it will check several links at once. If you are paying by the minute for your connection, that will be a welcome upgrade.

TempFree will get rid of all those unwanted files in your Windows TEMP directory. You'll be surprised how many files the Windows "Disk Cleanup" utility leaves behind. The first time I ran this program, it deleted 2Mb of files - not bad on a 2Gb hard drive! Get it from http://www.powerup.com.au/~marver

Some of my favourite freeware sites:
http://www.completelyfreesoftware.com/
http://www.webattack.com/
http://www.jumbo.com/
http://www.moochers.com/

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Dianne Reuby is co-author of the e-book "First Website Builder", http://newbieclub.com/builder/?pramclub Dianne created and runs the Free Site Builder web site and ezine, dedicated to helping newbies create web sites with free tools, services and resources. Visit FSB at http://freesitebuilder.co.uk/
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