There were several things I was really looking forward to in Vista that are simply missing in action or broken. These are features I'd really hope would improve my productivity and make life a little easier.

Okay, so you’ll probably still forget them. But with GPass, you can find them again in an instant.

The Arch Linux project was started by Judd Vinet in his attempt to create his own ideal distribution. He wanted to make a lightweight and simple system aimed at power users.

Years ago when I switched to using Freebsd and KDE full time, I was in need of a file manager. However, I found that Konqueror did not do as good a job as a file manager as I had hoped. I stumbled onto Krusader, a file manager that really does things right. But don't take my word for it. Let's go look at all the great things it offers.

There are many ways to take screenshots and most KDE and Gnome users will be familiar with the GUI tools bundled with them: Ksnapshot for KDE and Take Screenshot for Gnome. They are good at what they do. However, sometimes you just need to take screenshots quick and dirty without the overheads (especially if you are using a lightweight windows manager on a relatively low-spec machine).

Cheese is a relatively new open source webcam application for Linux that supports image and video capture and allows users to apply visual effects.

Linux users: Not only can desktop decorator Compiz Fusion add eye candy to your system that leaves Windows and Mac users drooling on their keyboards, it can seriously boost your productivity.

Last year, while running Ubuntu, I decided I wanted to watch a video, so I opened it up in the built-in Totem player. What happened next took me back to the dark era of codecs and computing. The XviD video I was watching became pixelated, the video became out of sync; within a few minutes it was unwatchable.