FREEWARE SPOTLIGHT By Deanna McElveen Zipping around the sky in my car with the new Windows 27 running on my brain implant, I will enjoy my music, weather forecasts, system info, calendars, and my everyday tools and settings. They will be displayed in a single panel that appears when I need it and goes away […]

FREEWARE SPOTLIGHT By Deanna McElveen You’ve been there: Windows adds another suggestion, button, ad, or pop-up, and figuring out how to turn the darned thing off can feel like looking for a Necco wafer in a button jar. NixThis by Builtbybel takes a different approach. You just point it at the thing that’s bugging you, […]

FREEWARE SPOTLIGHT By Deanna McElveen All I wanted was a free program to adjust the brightness of my two computer screens. Bright screens are pretty irritating on my old eyes at five a.m. I could have tried to figure out the monitor buttons, but those things must be designed by the same folks who design […]

FREEWARE SPOTLIGHT By Deanna McElveen Every now and then, I come across a free utility that does one useful thing so well that I wonder why the ability isn’t already built into Windows. This is one of those programs. Nyrna is a free, open-source utility that lets you suspend a running game or application and […]

FREEWARE SPOTLIGHT By Deanna McElveen Attacks on your computer usually try to get you to do something that you know you probably shouldn’t do — such as opening an email attachment, downloading a cute elf game, or clicking a 100%-off coupon link. I’ve been warning people about this stuff for years. You’re AskWoody readers, so […]

FREEWARE SPOTLIGHT By Deanna McElveen • Comment about this article Before we get into today’s freeware, it might be helpful to talk about the service behind it. That service is VirusTotal. Even if you use VirusTotal regularly, as I do, you might be surprised that VirusTotal has been around for 22 years! It launched on […]

FREEWARE SPOTLIGHT By Deanna McElveen I think my goal in life is to sit back in my easy chair, eat cherry cordials, and do all my computer work with one hand. RightClickTools by our good friend Les Ferch is getting me a little closer to that goal. If you’ve been reading my articles for a […]

ISSUE 23.30 • 2026-07-27 FREEWARE SPOTLIGHT By Deanna McElveen I was never a big fan of Microsoft’s built-in Sticky Notes nor its forced “upgrade” to the bloated and slow Sticky Notes New. I don’t want integrations with other programs. Stop mushing everything together, Microsoft. I don’t like my food to touch! Note: Thank you, Rick, […]