Free Up Office Space With Free Programs

Immortalize Web pages, share your sticky notes, and find the measure of many things.

Laura Blackwell, PC World

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A PC alone doesn't always suffice: Most computers have several peripherals in their orbit. And as advanced as technology is, we still fall back on the tools we used in elementary school: rulers, conversion tables, and passed notes, to name a few. But there's software out there that can give you a more mature perspective on getting work done. This month, we look at four programs that make your PC more useful and clear clutter from your real-life desk.

Don't Print Out Web Pages

In these days of oft-updated, hard-to-search Web sites--blogs, news, daily comics and the like--it's hard to decide whether to bookmark a page that might be gone tomorrow or to create a hard copy and spend a fortune on printer ink. AskSam Systems' SurfSaver lets you save Web pages in searchable folders; the latest version, SurfSaver 6.0, adds a search toolbar to help you locate desired items more easily. If you've ever been frustrated by a mile-long jumble in a Favorites list, this comes in handy.

Another pleasant feature is the program's ability to save not just one page, but an entire site, or even a section of a page. After all, there's no reason to sign over your own hard drive space to ads and other unwanted Web page fragments.

SurfSaver offers two versions: one for Windows 2000 and XP; the other for 95, 98, Me and NT. Thirty-day trial versions are available for each one; should you opt to keep the program, it'll set you back $30.

Improving a Sticky Situation

Many of us have toyed with using PC-based sticky notes--perhaps even building our own--but since paper works just fine, it doesn't seem urgent.

The free Stickies program makes a case for the switch, offering features that paper simply can't match. For instance, you can type or paste URLs into the program's virtual sticky notes and click the links to open a browser window. The notes are easy to customize: You can hide them, set individual notes to pop up at a time you specify, or mark one to stay on top. One particularly nice feature is the ability to send sticky notes embedded in e-mail--try that with a scrawled note.

Just like their paper counterparts, the sticky notes can accept bullet points and different styles of writing (bold, italic, strikethrough, and so forth). The only thing they can't do is stay on your bezel once you've powered down the computer.

The Stickies program is free, but author Tom Revell accepts PayPal donations through his Zhorn Software Web site.

This Program Rules, Literally

Desktop Ruler (shown smaller than actual size) can measure pixels as well as centimeters.

Even if a coworker hasn't permanently borrowed your primitive measuring device, you don't want to risk scratching your monitor with a ruler's edge. Desktop Ruler, a freebie from Coder Ltd. Split, puts a centimeter ruler on your screen. With features like 90-degree rotation, transparency, and the ability to stick to the mouse cursor, it's much more versatile (and easier to use) than the ruler in a word processing program. It can even measure pixels in units of ten; this is very useful for working with graphics.

It's Made a Convert of Me

U.S. readers might like Desktop Ruler better if it had a scale for inches.

Another free program, Convert from author Joshua F. Madison, handles conversions between all sorts of units of measurement. Convert saves you from searching for Web pages to find conversions, or worse yet, resorting to conversion tables and a calculator.

The program converts units of distance, computer memory, density, mass, power, torque, volume--pretty much everything but straw to gold.

PC World Senior Downloads Producer Max Green contributed to this story.