TechNet Virtual Lab - "Ever wanted to test Microsoft's newest software in a sandbox environment? Wouldn't it be great to be able to test new servers immediately, without formatting hard drives or dedicating one or more computers to the project? Now you can, with the TechNet Virtual Lab."

Arco Data Protection Systems offers unique RAID products which will appeal to the "less is more" crowd. Among the many reasons:

• DupliDisk works on virtually all operating systems and processor architectures.
• There is no need for utility software to run in the background.
• There are no drivers!
• DupliDisk will work with multiple operating systems on the same drive.
• DupliDisk can be used with a new drive or an existing drive with data already on it.
• DupliDisk does not require system resources.
• DupliDisk is invisible to the operating system.
• DupliDisk does not take up an IRQ.

Format144 - Tiny open source app that formats demagnetized floppies in Windows XP. (via Mike Mills)

Carbon Copy Cloner 2.3 [880k] Backup, synch, and clone utility for OS X. Includes scheduling function.  

The average American watches 4.5 hours of television every day.

You sleep for eight hours. You get up and work for eight hours. Come home, eat some dinner and turn on the television. A few hours later you're getting sleepy. Time for bed.

WHAT ARE YOU DOING??

We're not kidding. All those things you wanted to have in your life: passion, romance, love, childhood, parenthood, adventure - when are you going to do all that?

You're staring at a piece of furniture!

People on TV are not your friends. They're not in the room with you. You are alone in the dark, staring at a plastic box. Think about it. This is like a science fiction horror story; but it's really happening. People have stopped living as humans and connected themselves to machines instead.

- excerpt from White Dot's message found at TV-B-Gone.

XMPlay 3.1 [299k] + Audio player with support for: OGG, MP3, MP2, MP1, WMA, WAV, MO3, IT, XM, S3M, MTM, MOD, UMX audio formats, and PLS, M3U, ASX playlists. Many more formats are supported via Winamp plugins.

Free Antennas - Make your own wifi antenna.

CMSimple - Open source simple content management system in less than 50k. WYSIWYG editor supports Internet Explorer under Windows and Mozilla under Windows and MacOS. The entire site is stored in a single HTML-file - there is no need for databases. While it is open source, be sure to read the license terms, which copyleft your page design unless a commercial license is purchased. (via CG Conner)

Mark Twain quotations is a gold mine of thought-provoking statements, including:

In religion and politics people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination.

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.

I believe I am not interested to know whether Vivisection produces results that are profitable to the human race or doesn't. To know that the results are profitable to the race would not remove my hostility to it. The pains which it inflicts upon unconsenting animals is the basis of my enmity towards it, and it is to me sufficient justification of the enmity without looking further.

TxtPrint 1.0 [75k] {S}+ Text file printer. Save trees by tweaking columns, rows, font size, etc (requires MFC runtime DLL).

rcFTP - Similar to SendTo FTP. Installer-free 82k archive, but VB runtime required. (via Allen Day)

Perhaps in response to the charge that their original GDI Scanning Tool was worse than useless, Microsoft has released a new scanning tool (download here). They have also provided a detailed overview that includes advice to use Process Explorer for determining which version of gdiplus.dll is in use by a given application.

Be sure to check out GDI Scan and this tutorial as well.

Google has finally released its local search app for Windows 2000 SP3+ and XP. O'Reilly has a review. (via Slashdot)

Microsoft Online Seminars - "Streaming media seminars presented by the experts. Presentations are designed to meet the needs of developers, IT professionals, and business decision makers."

lucidCMS - Small yet powerful open source content management system. (via Pete)

Snap.com - Yet another search engine. Sort results by: Popularity, Satisfaction, Web Popularity, Web Satisfaction, or Domain (an explanation of these terms is available here).

Zebedee - Open source secure IP tunnel. Versions available for Windows, UNIX/Linux, Java, and Ruby. (via Jean-Marc)

HydraIRC [740k] {S}+ Open source IRC client with support for: DCC chat and file transfers, connecting to multiple servers, dockable floating tabbed windows, channel monitoring, message logs, event viewer, reg-exp highlighting, and much more.  

GMail Drive "creates a virtual filesystem on top of your Google GMail account and enables you to save and retrieve files stored on your GMail account directly from inside Windows Explorer. GMail Drive literally adds a new drive to your computer under the My Computer folder, where you can create new folders, copy and drag'n'drop files to." (via Slashdot)

PCStats.com has loads of great beginner guides, including:

• Remote access
• Printer sharing
• Wireless security
• Annual PC checkup
• Setting up an FTP server

SATs (Stand-Alone-Tools) - Floppy (or bootable CD) based tools that do not require installation and run on 386-SX or greater:

• HDClone - Copy contents of hard disks to other hard disks on physical level.
• HDShredder - Complete irreversible hard disk drive deletion.
• DiskSpy - Display, search and edit the hard disk drive on physical sector level.
• DiskCheck - Checks if IDE and SCSI harddisks are supported by the SATs and measures their troughput.
• PCISniffer - Search the PCI bus for devices and show its names, functions and configurations.
• NetSniffer - Montitor network traffic for a variety of network adapters.

SiteSucker [208k] Save entire websites to a local directory. (For Mac OS 9 and X)  

Text|Generator - "Tired of using Lorem Ipsum for dummy text in your latest masterpiece? This text generator has been developed based on years of careful research and is guaranteed to improve even the most lacklustre of designs."

Windows-Tools on CD-ROM (or USB stick) - Listing of freeware tools suitable for inclusion on a bootable CD. See also Win32 SAPPS (Stand Alone Apps).

MS Windows history with screenshots and feature lists. (via ritilan)

"The Chinese Outpost is pleased to offer its inaugural Gallery Exhibition: select images from a series of 143 engraving by the British Architect and Illustrator Thomas Allom. Accompanying the engravings are original commentaries published with them by G.H. Wright, a Protestant missionary who had spent some considerable time in China."