BackTrack was the winner of our recent Hive Five for best Live CD, so we decided to take it for a test drive and show off a few of the features for everybody else. BackTrack can be installed to a regular boot cd, a USB drive, installed to the hard drive, or even downloaded as a VMware virtual machin...

Windows only: Tiny utility NoSleepHD stops external hard drives from powering down, bypassing the mandatory sleep mode built into many USB drives—and eliminating the delay while the drive powers back up. Using the utility just requires launching, selecting an external hard drive, and starting ...

Web application Wowbrary sends weekly emails (or RSS feeds) when new books, DVDs, or CDs show up at your local library—so you can snatch them before everybody else. Using the web application requires simply entering your zip code and either subscribing to the RSS feeds or signing up for the we...

Email notification webapp Crap, I Missed It! sends email notifications before a new episode of your favorite show comes back on TV, or when your favorite artist releases a new CD. Using the web application is easy—just pick one of the topic areas and either drill down or use the search box unt...

Windows only: Free space analyzer utility SpaceMonger visualizes hard drive usage with a drill-down treemap view of your file system so you can quickly identify wasted space. Using the application is easy—launch the executable, pick a drive to analyze, and then drill down through the treemap t...

Windows only: File space usage application Free Disk Analyzer quickly and easily finds the largest files that are wasting space on your drive. Once installed, you can locate the largest files by selecting a drive on the left-hand side, and then choosing the Largest Files tab on the bottom, which sor...

The CyberNet tech blog details how to create a set-it-and-forget-it scheduled task to automatically run Disk Cleanup every time your computer starts. The setup requires a few steps, starting with running Disk Cleanup from the command line with the /sageset:1 parameter to choose your settings, and th...

If you're on a Mac but want to know what the Windows 7 Beta fuss is about, the SimpleHelp weblog walks through installing Win7 using Boot Camp, Apple's solution for dual-booting Windows on a Mac. We've already covered how to dual-boot Windows 7 with XP or Vista, and the good news is that installing ...

Editor: Say hello to fellow tech writer and Lifehacker reader The How-To Geek, who was kind enough to pull together some of best Windows Vista power tweaks here on Lifehacker today. Whether it's the nagging prompts or the irritating notifications, Windows Vista's default settings can grate on your n...