The Mysticgeek blog at the How-To Geek's site has a clever series of posts up that use free software tools to give Windows Vista Home Premium—the version that most often ships with standard laptops—the same kind of super-user powers you get with a copy of Ultimate. Mysticgeek uses FileHamster to replicate Ultimate's "Shadow Copy" function, installing a DreamScene power toy to get moving backgrounds, and DriveIMage XML to create sturdy backups (as Gina once detailed). Hit the link below for the FileHamster tutelage; and check out part 1 and part 2 for the other tweaks. What other tweaks do you use to add Ultimate-like features to your copy of Vista? Share them in the comments.

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With the version count sitting at 3.8 for Windows, Internet telephony giant Skype isn't shy about rolling out the updates. That's great when they work, but my recent experiences trying to upgrade to 3.8 have been painful: no sound at all for a week, then -- just as technical support were starting to take me seriously -- basic sound returned, but with 10 seconds silence every minute or so. Not good enough.

The best solution in this case would seem to be rolling back to an earlier working package, but Skype doesn't make that easy: its installation routine comprehensively ditches the previous version, and only the latest release is ever available at its site. Thank goodness for Filehippo, which maintains a comprehensive archive of Skype releases. I wouldn't want to guarantee they'll all work with the current infrastructure, but if an upgrade starts playing nasty and stuff was working fine before, this is the first place to check in (after taking a deep breath, of course).

If you're using a consumer grade point-and-shoot Canon digital camera, you've got hardware in hand that can support advanced features way beyond what shipped in the box. With the help of a free, open source project called CHDK, you can get features like RAW shooting mode, live RGB histograms, motion-detection, time-lapse, and even games on your existing camera. Let's transform your point-and-shoot into a super camera just by adding a little special sauce to its firmware.

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