I don't know about you, but I often send cool stuff I find on the web to my personal email address.  This is mostly because I'm at work or because I often too busy I can't check it out right then and there, nor is it likely it's 'work safe' :).  What I've discovered is that this stuff gets mixed in with all kinds of spam, notifications, etc.  So I found a really simple way of isolating the stuff I send myself for further investigation.

 I append the subject line of the email with a 'cto'.  Short for 'Check this out'.

I then have sub categories.  'cto:Cool stuff', cto:Information' , etc.

I then add rules to my email client that automatically sorts these items to folders I've created.

 This is a great way to sift through the BS and queue up items I might not get to for a while!

I recently installed Windows Vista on a work computer and ran into a problem when ever I would drag and drop files.  Windows Explorer would crash everytime.  Initially I thought it was a permissions issue.  After a few weeks of looking and searching the web I was about an hour away from a fresh install when I found the issue.

The Issue:

Get this...It's a bad context menu handler.  That's right, you know the 'right click' options.  Apparently a poorly coded context menu will make Explorer crash.

Solution:

There is a way to edit your registry to fix this, but my guess is that 99% of people don't like doing this because it can have unintended impacts.  So I recommend downloading Shell Extensions Manager.  This little utility will show you all the shell extensions currently installed.

Open the program and disable all extensions that are not Microsoft, Windows, etc.  Then try to drag and drop!  If you need some of the extensions start enabling them one by one until you identify the one that's impacting your system.

Hope this helps!!!

It's important to know that you don't always have to buy software in order to get what you need.  I admit I'm a Microsoft fanboy, but there are times when open source software equals or rivals a pay-to-play vendor.

Here is a list of some software that i recommend:

Media Center: http://www.team-mediaportal.com/

Email:  Thunderbird http://www.mozilla.org

Office:  http://www.openoffice.org

I've been a Napster to-go subscriber now for about two years.  I have to say that I'm 100% satisfied with Napsters service.  At $14.95 a month it's a great deal IMO.  Recently Napster upgraded their client to 4.0.  For lack of a better term let's just say 'It's Hot'.

Check out Napster