Login with username and password (forgot your password?)

There is also an open-source project called Windows Power Events Monitor at http://sourceforge.net/projects/windowspowereve/ ... also described at http://cool-stuff-or-not....ok-hdd-problems-with.html but you can just ignore the hdd-related part (which might work strange on certain configurations) and just use it to have your custom scripts executed on power events ... and of course you can extend the source code if you need that

[problem]

Your friend should spend some time learning how to present material properly, though... at not place does he explain what the problem really is. I guess it's read/write head auto-park on inactivity, though?

I believe that was improved a little after the weekend

[problem]

Your friend should spend some time learning how to present material properly, though... at not place does he explain what the problem really is. I guess it's read/write head auto-park on inactivity, though?

You are correct - he did some posts in the past on the same matter but none is linked in the latest one - he was probably targeting more the people that already knew or at least heard about that ...

Another thing you can do is adjust the acoustic settings using a disk feature tool from the manufacturer. You can trade a little performance for a quieter drive that will last a bit longer. The feature tool is usually a iso downloadable from the manufacturer's site that you burn to a bootable CD so you can change hardware settings.. This was one of the first things I did on my Thinkpad because my Hitachi HD was very noisy. I think many of the feature tools also come bundled with the ultimate boot CD: http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

Actually that small program is doing that too 
I believe the hdparm command for that is -M and with that program you can configure separate acoustic settings for AC and batteries ...
And if you are really serious about HDD lasting longer you should check the amount of load-cycles - my friend convinced me that the amount of excessive load-cycles is probably what kills more than half of the notebook drives, and now - after we saw a new Dell from a common third friend getting 100000 cycles in less than 4 months only using preinstalled Windows - I am a believer 

A friend of mine had some problems like that and in the end he created a small Windows program (that he also open-sourced) that works together with other open-source programs in order to fix those things (but IMHO the program is still only for the more technical users).

The more detailed description can he found on his blog - http://cool-stuff-or-not....ok-hdd-problems-with.html - and also links to the actual project on SourceForge.

I would like a program that works like FARR (my greatest find in a long time) except it would be for task switching. It would have a hot key that would open a window with all running tasks listed and a number beside each one.  Pressing the number would change to that window.  Using the AltTab is frustrating to me because I usually have lots of windows open at a time and I often go past the one I want and have to cycle through all over again.

XDESK ( http://xdesksoftware.com/ ) has a few task-switching and window-managing extensions - including a better ALT+TAB (SHIFT also goes back BUT you also have the key above TAB to do that - MUCH EASIER, CTRL shows some extra windows, also there is a QuickView and a TileView !!!

OK, give some predictions for the new year - software, computers, technical, political ...

My first prediction is that Windows Vista will be late and will be disappointing - but it seems I am not alone in that one - a quick search shows things like http://cool-stuff-or-not.blogspot.com/

... and that is very often neglected in most reviews ... so from this point of view what do you think would be the real best programs ?

You can also have a very advanced visual menu of tasks if you are using XDESK (the feature is called something like Task Menu and you can access it by holding at the same time the RIGHT and then the LEFT mouse buttons).

Please first remember that it might take some time until all extensions will be updated for 1.5 !!!

Here are a few suggestions:

- adblock / adblock plus
- flashblock
- image zoom
- translate

There are many mirrors around, like:

http://homepage.mac.com/bradster/iarchitect/

Quick observations:

a) it might have been interesting to have a "top 5 of all time" and a "top 5 this year", and eventually to place things in another 2 "dimensions" with "simply free" and "open source"!

For instance my suggestions:

top 5 of all time
- all stuff from Mozilla
- Linux
- all stuff from Sysinternals
- Pegasus Mail
- IrfanView

top 5 this year (first launched or seriously expanded):
- Firefox
- Opera 8.5
- ... (still researching)


b) "snakeoillabs" seems to be a little obsessed with encryption and hiding

Maybe some statistics might be interesting for all of us - not the specific (and generally private) information on how each member "wanted" the possible items, but instead some "aggregate" data - to give us some idea what was more desirable

Pegasus Mail was already supporting multiple email accounts when many of the competitors didn't even exist, and it was and still is free !!!

I am Catalin from www.xdesksoftware.com , our program XFilesDialog is one of the "winners" of the review and if you are a member of this site you can now get it with a decent discount !!! (see the special members-only forums for more details on that).

We can also let you know that we were already keeping an eye on some of the interesting ideas also suggested on this forum (even if for instance some of them can already be achieved with some extra work on configuration - our program is very powerful).

Please let us know what you think about XFilesDialog ... suggestions are always welcome!

For future reviews it might be interesting if "charter members" could also place a little feedback (ideally on programs that they know very very well and to which they are in no way affiliated) - unlike the review team they might have not seen all the programs so their "votes" or "ratings" will have a certainly smaller impact - maybe something like at least 66.66% for the review team and at most 33.33% for "member ratings" but ONLY IF there are enough such "member votes" so as to make those votes "statistically significant" !!!