Can you remember the last time you wiped your MacBook and reinstalled everything? I'd guess somewhere around "never," but there are plenty of reasons you might want to Exterminatus your system, ranging from the serious (a major error with macOS) to the so-so (your system feels sluggish after all the crap you've put on it over the last three years).

Hooray. You bought a brand-new Windows laptop and, for whatever reason, the manufacturer was nice enough to let you go through the installation process yourself instead of filling your new system full of crapware for you. Just kidding. It's rare when that happens, and buying a laptop that's full of junk is one -- but certainly not the only -- reason why you might want to reinstall your operating system from scratch.

Your wireless router broadcasts your Wi-Fi signal on channels ranging from 1 to 13.* As more routers broadcast on the same channel as yours, your router's performance generally decreases. The solution: scan for the least crowded channels and use one of those.

Windows: If you're looking for a way to shut down your Windows machine — or lock it, hibernate it and more — when certain triggers are activated such as CPU and memory usage, bandwidth saturation or at a specified time, Shutdown Timer can help.

Windows: Dual (or triple or quadruple) booters know how annoying it is to wait around for the boot manager when rebooting. Free system tray utility iReboot lets you pick your OS as you restart, so you can go make a sandwich instead.

Windows: StartupSelector is a simple application for saving your Windows startup configuration and swapping it with previous backups for customisable startup configurations on the fly.

Windows 7 (beta) only: Even the earliest leaked Windows 7 betas haven't been around long enough for multi-purpose tweaking tools to come around. SetteMaxer, though, offers a few of the tweaks familiar to the customisation crowd. The screenshot above is exactly what SetteMaxer is—just a handful of check boxes and an "Apply" button. It's definitely worth reading at the project page below what specifically each feature does when applied, though most are familiar fixes like User Account Control/Defender disablers, menu speed options, and program crash controls. Still, with any tweaking utility of this type, be absolutely sure you want to make a change before you do so—some options, like "disable task scheduler," can have some serious, system-endangering punch to them. If you see anything worth enacting in the list above, grab the executable, run it, apply the change, and you can delete it if you want, as SetteMaxer is a stand-alone file. It's a free download for Windows 7 beta systems only. SetteMaxer for Windows 7

Linux only: Any Linux user clutching a mouse with more than the standard two buttons and a scroll wheel doesn't have it easy trying to match the same kind of configuration options given by the manufacturer's setup software, which is almost always Windows or Mac-only. The Flow of Consciousness blog walks through installing btnx, a program that can assign nearly any mouse click to a huge variety of actions. Got a Logitech with left and right buttons? Feel free to set them to switch workspaces or even rotate a four-sided desktop cube. The tutorial requires a fair bit of command line work, as the package isn't available in most respositories, but the Ubuntu-related instructions can be adapted to most any distribution. btnx is a free download for Linux systems only. HOWTO Install btnx for better mouse control in Ubuntu Hardy