Alarm is a simple, free program that does just what it says. I have it on my desktop and use it frequently. Whenever I want to be sure that I do something at a particular time, I call up the very small alarm box, set the time and take it off the screen. At the appointed time it will make it clear to me I should be doing something. One can have it announce the fatal time in a number of different ways and at different volumes.

One of the cleverest utilities I have come across recently Is Mouse Zoom. It comes up on the screen as a square magnifying glass. It can magnify any part of the screen many times. It can also show what the color is at any pixel on the screen. Moreover, it can measure the distance between any two points on the screen. This little gem is also free.

Ad-Aware 6 Personal is a free tool to examine your entire system, looking for programs that without your knowing it have been downloaded to keep tracks of your interests. These so-called spy programs generally do not do a great deal of harm, but they can slow down your system. This is an effective, well-recommended solution. What I do is simply run it periodically rather than have it working continuously.

Paperless Notes (EPad995) is a small free program that allows you to make notes on a very small pad, move the pad around anywhere you want, then hide it or not. It is automatically saved. There is even support. You can have any number of notes. You can choose the color of the note box and choose among several levels of transparency. (At a high level of transparency, you can continue to see what is being hidden by the note without moving it.) The only problem I found with it is that deleting notes is counterintuitive. Clicking the x in the upper right corner of the note takes the note off the screen, but tomorrow when you start your computer there it will be again. To delete a note permanently you must left click the left hand corner. A menu will appear and then you can delete permanently. No big problem, just something you have to get used to.

If you are going to try a number of free programs and do a lot of surfing, you need to have a good security program. There are free anti-virus programs that look good. However, it is hard to judge effectively how good, and I do not wish to find out I was wrong the hard way. For this reason, I have used PC-Cillin (Trend Micro) for several years now and have been remarkably free of any worm or virus problems. The latest edition costs $50 a year from Trend Micro and includes a firewall. It may be possible to obtain it more cheaply through the internet. PC-cillin service has been excellent by email or telephone.

For some reason, my acrobat PDF reader was not working so well. So I downloaded the free version of the Foxit Reader from Foxit software. It works flawlessly. It also seems to have installed itself as my default PDF reader. So I do not have to worry any more about the Adobe Acrobat.

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