Okay Microsoft, you are doing a good job of evangelizing Windows 7 and more importantly, this time around you are getting a lot of help from the consumers of the operating system.  People love the operating system and they are willing to spread the news for you – or maybe for themselves since everyone likes to bear good news.  You should be proud of that but you should also remember that everyone is going to find out about your new OS pretty much whether you advertise or not.  It’s really hard to miss when you come into work and have it on your desktop or when you order your new computer and it is comes pre-installed.

What is a little easier to miss are some of the free tools, applications, and services that you offer very quietly.  I don’t know why these products and services are well kept secrets and I won’t make any guesses as to the reason here.  I will say that every time I visit a customer and talk with them about these products and services the customers are unaware and excited.

What I want to do here is start a list of some of the cool products and services out there (some are more hidden than others).  It’ll mostly focus on free products but where it seems like a good deal for the price, we’ll make exceptions.  Of course I can only imagine that there will be many, many products and services that I’ll miss so if you have any to add to the list please reply in the comments and I’ll add them in.  Thanks in advance!

For Anyone

• Security Essentials – Live OneCare is dead.  now microsoft provides the free antivirus application, security essentials to protect your machine.  not sure if it is good enough for your machine?  security essentials uses the same engine in ForeFront, Microsoft’s enterprise-class antivirus.  the front end is stripped down a little but the protection is there.  start protecting your machine without the performance hit from Symantec or McAfee.
• Sync (FolderShare)  – access your important files from any PC or Mac
• LiveMesh – expand that file sharing and device access to your mobile phone and the web.  LiveMesh not only allows you to sync data between your enlisted devices but it also allows you to remotely access these machines – even over the Internet.  never be away from your data again.
• Office Live – Small Business – okay, you are starting a new business but you don’t want the IT overhead.  that makes sense.  what doesn’t make sense is how microsoft is able to offer this service which helps you to register your domain, build your website, create a sharepoint site, and have hosted email.  the cost?  free (except for the domain name registration).
• Live Spaces – this is your own personal SharePoint with 5 GB of storage.
• SkyDrive – 25 GB of free online data storage.  one note, though the cumulative cap on space is 25 GB, individual files are capped at 50 MB each.
• Microsoft Worldwide Telescope – microsoft worked with nasa and a few other organizations to create this explorable map of the universe.  dig into some black holes or take a pre-built tour from an expert.  careful though, you can burn hours in this virtual universe.
• SharedView – the free, lightweight version of LiveMeeting (or WebEx for those of you that are more familiar with that product).  now you can get computer help from your nerdy son (or daughter) and he doesn’t even have to get dressed.
• XP Mode – run your applications which refuse to install or run directly on Win7 in a guest XP operating system.  the applications installed on the XP machine will be presented to the Win7 machine as if they were installed directly on the Win7 box.
• AutoCollage – using facial recognition technology, autocollage will combine multiple photos into a final collaged image and the great part – the faces in each image are included in the collage.
• Live Photo Gallery – view, organize, and edit your photos no matter where they are.  photo gallery also offers the ability to stitch multiple standard photos together to create panoramic images.
• Windows 7 Easy Transfer – capturing your data and configuration settings just got a whole lot easier with Easy Transfer in Windows 7.  Planning to upgrade from XP to Win 7?  This utility will help you make that experience as seamless as possible.  Make sure you download the right version for your operating system and architecture.
• OneNote [not free] – this is probably the best microsoft office application ever (except maybe excel) and while i want to tell you all of the great features, i’d probably have to create a whole new blog site to do it.  give it a try and you’ll see what i mean.  if you have a tablet, then don’t waste any time, go get this right now.
• Home Server [not free, but worth it] – what isn’t home server?  a media server, document and data management solution, data recovery device, and remote access server, this thing does just about everything.  there’s a large variety to choose from so spend some time researching the right one for you before you take the leap.  once you do, you won’t be disappointed.
• Mozy Online Backup [not free] – for a little over $50 annually, you can backup an unlimited amount of data to mozy’s online backup service.  i’d pay a lot more than $50 to get back some of the data that i have lost or misplaced over the years.
• TinyURL – I wasn’t sure if this should go in this section or under the ‘Technology Enthusiasts’ section.  This is such a good idea though that I thought everyone should at least take a look at it and decide for themselves if it’s at their speed.  Take those really, really long links (like those links for directions to your house) and turn them into something much, much, much smaller.  You can even create your own custom URL.  Pretty cool.

Technology Enthusiasts

• Map Cruncher – this is a really cool tool that is best described by the Microsoft research team themselves.
• Image Composite Editor – you may have seen the stitching function in Windows Live Photo Gallery which allows you to combine multiple standard photos to create a panoramic photo.  Image Composite Editor provides the ultimate level of control for this stitching process.
• HD View – View extremely high-definition photos with HD View.  These high-def images can also be viewed with Silverlight’s Deep Zoom.
• Deep Zoom Composer – This utility will help you to create Deep Zoom images for consumption by Silverlight 3.0.

IT Pros

• Visual Round Trip Analyzer – Utility for web administrators to identify best practices and optimization opportunities for speeding up web sites.
• TCP Analyzer – When passed a network trace of TCP traffic, TCP analyzer will evaluate the data and provide a visual representation of performance statistics.
• IPSec Diagnostic Tool – For those of you that are new to IPSec or troubleshooting IPSec, this tool will help identify common problems and provide suggestions for how to approach resolution.
• Active Directory Topology Diagrammer – This tool will dynamically evaluate and draw your Active Directory domains and sites as well as your Exchange organization.  In the future, look for the tool to be able to create a map of your DFS infrastructure.
• Disk2VHD – Microsoft’s P2V utility for turning physical volumes into virtual hard disks (VHDs) for consumption by Virtual PC, Virtual Server, or Hyper-V
• ZoomIt – If you are giving presentations or teaching classes, this utility is a must!  zoomit magnifies the screen and provides the ability to create notations and other markings directly on the screen image.
• Let Me Google That For You – Ever get those questions from your peers like, “How do I <insert something obvious>?”  You know before they are even done asking that if they had entered that same question into Google, they would have found their answer in the first hit.  This website will capture your Google search and create a URL for you that you can pass on to your peer.  When your peer opens the link, the Google search will be replayed and their answer will come back from the Google search.  It’s not exactly subtle but it gets the point across.  There’s also a pretty funny loop that you can create by searching for cache:lmgtfy.com.  You can see that here.
• Let Me Bing That For You – Not to be left out, there is a Bing version as well.  The URL that it provides leverages TinyURL.  The loop doesn’t work on this site though.