If you plan on sticking with Windows XP for as long as you can, there are a lot you can do to optimize it and better your XP experience. Even though a lot of us are guilty of not performing it, basic maintenance is essential. If you don’t already do so, you should run Disk Defragmenter (Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Defragmenter) or another defragmentation tool on a regular basis. Not only will this speed up hard drive access times, but it will reduce the chances for data and operating system corruption. If you add regular anti-virus and anti-spyware scans to your maintenance regiment, you will keep XP running for longer periods of time without error. Performing maintenance is not all you can do to keep XP running optimally. Microsoft has also released some free tools that will help you use Windows XP more efficiently.

Microsoft’s SyncToy allows you to synchronize data between folders. This utility is easy to use, and it will allow you to quickly set up synchronization rules, and ensure that your data integrity is maintained while synchronizing. This is especially useful when synchronizing files between a flash drive (or external hard drive) and your desktop or laptop. It is easy to use and freely downloadable from Microsoft.

ClearType Tuner allows you to control how fonts are displayed within Windows. It allows you to better control how dark, crisp, and smooth fonts will be displayed on your system.  After installing this application and running the setup routine, fonts are displayed much more clearly, kern better on screen, and I have experienced less eye fatigue. This free tool has really changed font management and display in Windows XP for the better.

Microsoft’s Image Resizer allows you to resize images without opening an image editing application. Once it is installed, it places a Resize Image option on the context menu when you right-click on an image. You can choose from 640×480, 800×600, 1024×768, or 240×320, and once you choose your desired size, the application makes a copy of the image in the desired size without changing the original image.

These are just a few of the free applications that Microsoft offers to enhance the Windows XP experience. They will save you a lot of time and money while allowing you to get the most out of Windows XP.

The Calgoo team has decided to make the full version of Calgoo 2.0 free. Calgoo is a desktop calendar management application for Windows, Linux, and OS X. It allows you to manage your calendar, and synchronize it with Google Calendar, Outlook (2003 and 2007), 30 Boxes, and iCal. Not all of the Calgoo features work  with every calendar service it syncs with, but you can easily manage multiple calendars in one place. It’s also a great cost-effective alternative to Outlook’s calendar, because you can use it offline, and it will synchronize your calendars at regular intervals.

Previously, the basic version of Calgoo was free, but a few premium services were reserved for paying customers. Now all of their software, including Calgoo Calendar, Calgoo Connect, and Calgoo Hub are free. The company intends to deliver ads to Calgoo Hub, their calendar sharing service, and ads will possibly appear in Calgoo Calendar and Calgoo Connect when they are used with Calgoo Hub.

Since Calgoo is multi-platform compatible, it makes it easy to keep your Mac in sync with your Windows and Linux machines. You can synchronize across systems via Calgoo Hub, or you can install it on multiple systems and point them to the same Google or 30 Boxes calendar. Either way, you don’t have to worry about porting information back and forth among machines, or attempting to synchronize your calendar from a PDA or Smartphone in multiple places.

Calgoo can also interact with your Facebook account via the Agenda Share Facebook application. Once you’ve added it to your Facebook account, and run the setup in Calgoo Calendar to give the application permission, it will add your calendar information to your Facebook profile. You can limit the information displayed on Facebook via specific tags, or you can choose to share one or all of your calendars. If your Facebook friends need to see your schedule, this is a convenient way to share it with them.

If you’re looking for a robust Outlook calendar substitute, Calgoo is a great option. It may not replace your other calendar software, but it is a great synchronization conduit for those of us managing multiple calendars.

I enjoy using Facebook. After using Friendster, Tribe, MySpace, and Orkut, Facebook was a breath of fresh air. I have never received Spam, and I’ve only had one or two random people try to “friend” me during the 2 years that I’ve been a member. Since Facebook evolved from a university setting, it lends itself well to interaction (unlike Friendster), it doesn’t assault my senses with horrendous themes or auto-playing multimedia files, and people are usually clothed in their profile pictures. It’s really a very positive experience after using MySpace.

Facebook is getting ready to launch a brand new interface (which you can see at http://www.new.facebook.com), and the changes promise to be for the better. Everyone I know has a mild case of Facebook Application fatigue. For at least two months, I fought my way through Zombie, Pirate, Snowball Fight, and Knighthood requests, just to see if there was any legitimate communication from my friends. Unfortunately, there were far more application referrals and updates going on than anything else, and communication was reduced to a lot of clicking on links and buttons. The new Facebook interface will change this by significantly tightening up application security. Application developers will no longer be allowed to force you to invite your friends in order for you to see the outcome of a quiz, test, or any other information you’ve submitted. This should dramatically reduce the application clutter that everyone is experiencing. Applications that don’t meet certain privacy requirements and applications that continue to force users to promote them will be banned. Maybe this will force the developers to work harder to keep user interest instead of trapping them in an unbreakable invitation loop.

Privacy is also going to be a much bigger priority on Facebook . There have been several complaints, petitions, and requests from the user community for additional privacy controls, information from application developers about how their information is being used, and ways to prevent Facebook itself from distributing their information (remember Beacon anyone?). Facebook is changing all of that by allowing users to try the applications before they allow their information to be shared with the developer. This gives me a little more piece of mind about my application use, and I think it’s a huge step in the right direction. Facebook is learning from their previous privacy mistakes, and these new changes will give them a significant edge over the competition.

Since the launch of Google Docs, it’s been obvious that Google is slowly constructing a full-scale online office suite. Even though Microsoft’s hold on the market is loosening, the vast majority of web-based office productivity applications still have a long way to go before they can replace their desktop counterparts. So far, Google is holding their ground against the web-based and desktop application competition, but there are still a lot of features missing from existing applications, and some applications have yet to materialize.

Task Management

Gmail was launched in 2004, and Google Docs (including the word processor previously known as Writely, and an Excel-like application) was launched in 2006, but Google has only insinuated that they’re working on a task management application. If this suite of applications is going to seriously compete against any desktop-based office applications, task and project management will prove to be the cornerstone that will hold the suite together. Google Calendar, although very adept at helping me schedule my time, does not replace a task management application.

I have virtually abandoned Microsoft Outlook, but task management is one of the only things that forces me to launch it. Right now, it’s the easiest solution to get tasks to my Blackberry. Google has been very friendly with Remember the Milk, and it does sync with the Blackberry, iPhone, and iPod Touch. This could turn into a permanent relationship, and it would be immensely beneficial to the collective user base.

Desktop Based Applications

Not everyone has warmly embraced the idea of using online office applications. Even though there is a high adoption rate, and a lot of competition among the applications, some people are just using them as a backup plan and still rely on desktop applications. There are plugins for Microsoft Office and other desktop office suites which allow you to save your work directly to the web-based applications, but formatting and functionality might get lost in translation.

When I was trying out Think Free Office, I readily embraced their low cost desktop suite. I never had to worry about my formatting getting lost when I opened documents created in the desktop applications online. Adobe has launched an AIR interface for their new suite of office applications. I think that everyone would benefit from a similar suite of Google applications. Working offline in Gears is great, but it’s not a replacement for a desktop application.

Contact Management

Google’s contact management is really a comic afterthought. Gmail users have been pretty vocal about their challenges with it, and recently Google has responded by addressing the issues.

You can now stop Google products from adding contacts to your contact list automatically. This followed closely behind some user-friendly adjustments to the contacts interface. If Google wants to compete seriously in this arena, they need to start integrating their products more closely instead of creating silos of information. Google Grand Central address book does not interface with the contacts in Gmail and Google Talk. Imagine the possibilities if it did.

Gadget lovers all want the newest, fastest, most feature-rich gadgets they can afford. Those of us who surf the bleeding edge usually end up with a bunch of cell phones, Blackberries, computers, and music players, that have a lot of life left in them after we’ve done using them. The question is, what is the best way to get rid of these devices?

The vast majority of people don’t want to throw working electronics away. It is an ecological nightmare, and you could be depriving someone of the joy of a gadget that will be new to them. If you have friends or family members that are technologically inclined, handing gadgets down to them is usually a good thing. Unfortunately, you may also become the default tech support person for that device if it’s kept in the family. You can donate these devices to charity. The Body Shop (which is in the U.S., U.K., and Canada, as well as online), has collected cell phones for a charity that distributes them to women in danger of domestic violence. There are a myriad of organizations that will provide your old cell phone to individuals in need or recycle your phone for you.

If you decide to sell your device, there are a few ways to go about doing it. If you feel comfortable selling on eBay, and can create a compelling auction or fixed-price sale, you will likely maximize your profits there. Amazon also has a high traffic Marketplace where you can sell your devices. There is a cost associated with either of these services, and with eBay, if you fail to sell your item the first few times you post it, the costs can really add up. There are other auction sites all over the Internet, but they will not rival eBay or Amazon in traffic, so it could take some time to sell your device.

There are some sites that specialize in gadget trade-ins. PodSwap is a site devoted to buying, selling, and trading old iPods. They buy both working and broken iPods, so depending on the model, you will still get some money for your iPod. FlipSwap allows you to either trade in your old cell phone, or donate it to charity. SecondRotation will buy cell phones, mp3 players, digital cameras, camcorders, laptops, and gaming consoles among other things. These services all essentially work the same way. You choose your device, describe the condition (if they don’t provide you with guidelines, you can ask them for their guidelines), and depending on the age, condition, and demand for the device, they will offer you appropriate compensation. If you choose not to buy another device through them, they will pay you cash. If you’re not auction savvy, or if you have a lot of gadgets to get rid of, you may want to investigate these sites, because they can potentially provide you with the quickest payment.

A little over a year ago, people lined up for hours (or even days) to get the original iPhone. After an enormous amount of hype, and a lot of media buzz, the first iPhone owners finally got their hands on their new devices. During this launch, customers were allowed to take their iPhones home, and activate them over the Internet. Needless to say, the first wave of activations were plagued by well documented problems. Since customers were essentially forced to pay the full price of the device, going home to activate your iPhone was a small concession. These problems simply foreshadowed more serious launch problems to come.

The way Apple and AT&T agreed to handle the iPhone 3G has essentially made the purchase and activation process more difficult. This time around, AT&T is subsidizing the cost of the iPhone, which has resulted in much lower prices for consumers. By reducing the price by $200, and allowing other international carriers to sell the device, Apple is set to pull in a substantial amount of new customers and raise its market share significantly. In order to remain profitable, AT&T had to change the price and terms of the data plan for the iPhone 3G. The data plan is now $10 more a month, and includes no text messages, while the original data plan included 200 texts. Essentially, the new iPhone will cost approximately $160 more over 2 years for the average customer, if they add $5 per month for 200 text messages. Furthermore, Apple and AT&T require in-store activation, a 2 year contract, and you cannot have any discounts on your AT&T account. This means that everyone who gets a discount for AT&T through their business, or possibly through their university, must remove the Foundation Account Number (FAN) that flags their account for an automatic billing discount. This was all designed to keep people tethered to AT&T for the duration of their 2 year contract, and allow the carrier to turn a profit.

Unfortunately, all of these precautions taken by Apple and AT&T to keep people tied to their device and services have once again resulted in activation problems. Not only did activations slow to a crawl and ultimately fail for many people in the stores, but Apple launched the iPhone 2.0 software update simultaneously, and people attempting to upgrade first generation iPhones from home bricked their phones when the updates stopped in mid stream. This series of unfortunate events could have been avoided by staggering the iPhone release, and by delaying the iPhone 2.0 software update for a few days to reduce server traffic. Overall, the experience of purchasing the iPhone and activating it is a disappointing one for new iPhone users, and extremely disappointing for customers who are going through it for the second time.

It seems that every few months, a new web-based office suite is born. Since I spend a good deal of my time writing, having a reliable word processor is paramount. Over time, I’ve found myself increasingly frustrated with the size, cost, and inexplicable changes to Microsoft Office. Combined with the failure of Windows Vista, the massive changes to Office 2007 has caused a lot of people to reconsider spending so much on future Microsoft Office releases.

In the past 3-4 years, a lot of companies have introduced web-based office suites to compete directly with Microsoft’s offerings. A little over a year ago, I was just learning my way around Think Free Office, and hitting a point of frustration with Google Docs. Microsoft has recently felt the pressure to bring their office products to the web via Microsoft Office Live. The public has embraced these tools, and it has created stiff competition among these companies. They are all scrambling to bring the public the features they need and want, without the enormous overhead of a desktop office suite. Recently Adobe has taken the plunge into this arena.

Adobe’s office suite currently consists of the following applications:

• Buzzword, a robust wysiwyg word processor
• ConnectNow, a web conferencing application
• Acrobat for PDF creation
• File upload, sharing, and management tools
• An Adobe AIR desktop application

Although this suite was just launched, it has great potential. The file management tools were launched at the beginning, and are not an after thought like they were when Google Docs launched. File upload, sharing, and editing are painless. Everything loads extremely quickly in Firefox and from the desktop AIR application. ConnectNow is an ambitious addition to an Office Suite. None of the competing suites have an application to compete with it. The AIR application also provides a degree of comfort for people who still prefer desktop applications.

I am sure that Adobe plans to add a spreadsheet application and a presentation application in the future. Once these additional applications are added, this suite will force the competition to continue to innovate. Adobe definitely has the edge on the competition from a design perspective, and as these applications are further developed, Google Docs, Think Free Office, Microsoft, and Zoho will have to recognize that this suite is a viable, easy-to-use, aesthetically pleasing, and functional alternative to their offerings.