a-Squared HiJackFree

No matter how much anti-spyware protection you've got on your PC, it's not enough. Spyware is notorious for being able to slip through the cracks of anti-malware software, and you're best off if you have more than one anti-malware tool on your PC. That's where this freebie comes in. Use it as a backup to your main anti-spyware program for extra protection.

It doesn't offer "live" protection like some other programs. Instead, use it to examine your system, to see if it's been infected, then kill the malware. It's a surprisingly powerful tool, and with far more features than we can cover here. --Preston Gralla

Price: Free

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a-Squared HiJackFree

Sick of scrolling through IE's clunky Favorites list? Once this freebie is ensconced on IE's toolbar, you can summon a quick search box in one click. Enter a keyword, and a list of clickable bookmarks appears. You can search a bookmark's name or the URL itself, and automatically create a handy Last Items Found folder. Note: Your anti-spyware program may alert you to the presence of a browser helper object, but in this case it's not a security risk. --Robert Luhn

Version: 2.0
Price: Free

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DzSoft Favorites Search

Millennia Calendar Lite

If you frequently need to calculate dates in different calendar systems, this little freebie can help. Millennia Calendar Lite provides dates, days of the week, Julian day, and phases of the moon for a span of 7000 years. The program includes data for Gregorian, Julian, Hebrew, Islamic, Coptic, and Indian calendars.

--Kim Saccio-Kent

Version: 1.2.0
Price: Free
Operating Systems: Windows NT, Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows Me, Windows XP, Windows Vista

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Millennia Calendar Lite

Sharpshooter's Miniature Golf

Up to four people can play this 3D course, where slopes, pinball bumpers, conveyor belts all react with your ball according the laws of physics. There are also warp zones that react according to the laws of Star Trek.

Version: 4.27
Price: Free
Operating Systems: Windows XP

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Sharpshooter's Miniature Golf

And Yet It Moves

The typical side-scrolling game puts a character in an underground labyrinth from which he must escape by running, jumping, and solving the occasional puzzle. (Side-scrollers are a class of games where characters generally move from left side of screen to the right to achieve their goals.) This game unique among sidescrollers for another reason: And Yet It Moves makes gravity a key element by allowing you to rotate the world. (That explains the title based on Galileo's defiant heretic claim that the earth revolves.) A false turn can send our young hero plummeting onto spiked rocks or put him in the trajectory of a falling boulder.

--Ron White

Version: 1.4
Price: Free
Operating Systems: Windows XP

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And Yet It Moves

Enjoy the colors of fall with this pleasant--and free--theme. The wallpaper is a photograph of a mountain stream banked by many-hued trees. The icons and cursors are fall leaves, and the sounds are birdsong. The screen saver is also pretty: The desktop image remains on screen, but the water flows softly, accompanied by piano music and bird songs. Very Zen.

--Kim Saccio-Kent

Price: Free
Operating Systems: Windows NT, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows XP

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Autumn Brook

If you delete a file, it isn't really gone because Windows just marks the space they occupied as being available. And anyone with a program such as Restoration could probably recover them, meaning that personal data could get into the wrong hands. The author of Sure Delete says that this free program deletes the file, then wipes and removes the data left over.

--Richard Baguley

Price: Free
Operating Systems: Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows 9.x, Windows Me, Windows XP

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Sure Delete

Download this free theme and be transported to deep space, where in the inky blackness a ringed planet whirls against a cloud of glowing gas. Your pointer is a little rocket ship and turns into a spinning Earth when the computer is busy.

--Kim Saccio-Kent

Price: Free
Operating Systems: Windows XP

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Worlds Upon Worlds