ICSI Netalyzr is a service maintained by the Networking Group at the International Computer Science Institute, an affiliate with the University of California, Berkeley  and funded by the National Science Foundation. The service got some publicity and found importance after late 2007 when Comcast was sued for throttling Internet traffic which Comcast later admitted to be true.

[Editor’s note: this review was written by Freewaregenius contributor Jason H. Check out his tech blog: 404techsupport.com].

Netalyzr is not the traditional freeware covered here at Freewaregenius, but it is a free service that allows you to test and find out more information about the Internet connection you’re paying for. With no real established metrics for what an ISP must provide, Netalyzr gives you the inside scoop in a convenient report. By running the test, not only will you find out information about your connection and its capabilities, but you’ll also share information with researchers that may improve the Internet infrastructure and provide data to the Net Neutrality argument.

Another day, another free utility that puts nifty function in the right click context menu. And although it may seem that we’ve seen a lot of the functions that Lammer Context menu offers before, a closer look will reveal some very interesting and noteworthy functions on here, such as mounting folders as virtual drives, search and replace file contents, batch file-and-folder renaming, select all similar files by type, and path operations (copy/move/list/delete) using regular expressions. Supports 32 bit and 64 bit operating systems both.

JDcontextmenu is a free app that installs a wide range of commands in Windows’ right click context menu. You’ve seen many of these before; here’s a list: "copy full path", ""copy name", CMD line here, MD5 checksum, FileDateTime Stamp, Create new folder(s), send fullname by email as a link, add file to startup folder, clear folders and a favorites folder function; conveniently, however JDcontextmenu allows you to pick and choose the configuration you want and the order in which they appear.

Do not mistake this program with the previously mentioned MP3 merging app from the same author. MakeItOne FileBrowser 32 is a free program that installs a right-click shell extension in your 64-bit Windows environment that launch a 32-bit browser set to the current path/folder, enabling the user to quickly access any installed Windows extensions that may be installed in the 32 bit environment and that would not appear in the 64 bit Windows explorer.

This free app allows you to use your monitors more effectively by dividing your screen into custom sections. It mimics the Windows 7 snap feature but goes further by allowing you to place your windows into any of two, three, or four sections on the screen through drag and drop. It also works with all versions of Windows and even works well alongside the Windows 7 snap feature (you can have both working together simultaneously).

Acer GridVista supports a custom configuration for each monitor, and provides a great user experience. It also offers a handful of other functions, such as transparency and stay-on-top options.

Prism HUD (heads up display) is a free, lightweight performance and resource monitoring software. It provides a wealth of information in real-time right on the desktop. Although there are many free system monitoring tools out there, what is unique about Prism HUD is the way it displays information: it does not display continuous chart; rather, colorful icons appear on the desktop in a designated area of the screen only when events are taking place, and disappear altogether when the event has passed.

The five performance areas include CPU (total usage and each core’s load); Memory (total usage and hard faults); Disk (used space, utilization and transfer rate for each drive); Network (each interface’s transfer rate); and Process (the CPU usage, memory usage, page faults and IO transfer rate for each process). If you only care for a subset of these metrics you can customize the program to show exactly the ones you want.

I just made to switch from Windows XP to Windows 7. One interesting security feature in both Windows 7 and Vista is the Windows UAC (User Account Control), which is designed to prevent basic users and malicious programs from changing system critical settings. This results in a lot of prompts popping up when launching many apps or performing some operations asking whether you wanted to allow these processes (that may make changes to your system) to proceed.

This post will outline how to get rid of these security prompts without switching off the UAC altogether, by using a free app called TweakUAC to switch the UAC to "quiet mode".

Ever wanted to temporarily change the association of a file type or extension? Coffee is a small, free tool that can change the default applications used for opening any file type and allows for defining a primary as well as a secondary alternate program (the latter activated when launching a file and simultaneously pressing ALT).

Coffee was originally designed to enable changing file associations to portable apps but will work with installed apps as well. It will allow you to store your file type configurations and carry these portably in order to instantly switch the default handlers of selected file types to apps on your USB in any new environment. Coffee can be disabled at any time to revert back to the system’s default applications.

[Editor’s note: this post was written by Freewaregenius contributor EngineerHead. Check out his tech blog here].

DefaultPrograms is a small, free utility that can manage and edit the way windows works with filetypes, such as editing their context menu items, their icons, description, and the associated file type for an extension. For Vista and Windows Seven it can also manage and edit autoplay handlers, as well as edit, add, or remove the default registered programs associated with file types.

Windows Surface Scanner is a free, fast utility that scans your hard drive(s) for physical errors. It will examine each sector on your hard drive for read errors and reports them if found. It is purely diagnostic and will not fix or “mark” bad sectors or recover data.

JumpTo is a free menu-based launcher that provides access to favorite folders, files, apps, or URLs in the form of a hotkey-enabled context menu. It can be accessed on the fly at any time on the desktop or via the system tray icon. In addition it provides on-the-fly note taking functionality as well as a few other functions such as hiding and showing windows, stripping formatting from the clipboard, and others.

DragTargets is a free app designed to make it easy to drag and drop your files into frequently used folders. Shortcuts to favorite folders (including folders on external drives) can be placed as buttons on a semi-transparent floating widget, and can be used to quickly move or copy files or access these folders.