Working with various versions of the Windows operating system over the years, I"ve always enjoyed discovering and using programs or utilities designed to provide the user with handy additional features.
My all-time favourites, the PowerToys collection, are a set of additional components from Microsoft -- first for Windows 95 and then for Windows XP. Most of the PowerToys tools perform a single function, which I think makes them very efficient and easy to use.
While there isn"t PowerToys for Windows Vista, Windows Vista"s set of Sidebar tools called Gadgets come really close to PowerToys. (Read my column, My six favorite Sidebar Gadgets.) And while I"m always on the lookout for new Gadgets, I recently expanded my parameters a bit to see what else was out there for Windows Vista. In this article I"ll take a look at two programs that I have found to be nice PowerToys-like additions to Windows Vista.