Gadgetopia

Microsoft PowerToys for Windows XP: I know that Power Toys are old hat, but there are some real winners on this page. Clear Type Tuner:

This PowerToy lets you use ClearType technology to make it easier to read text on your screen, and installs in the Control Panel for easy access.

This one really helped me make my ClearType better. It’s like an eye doctor — it shows you a bunch of options, lets you compare them side-by-side and pick the best one.

This one is good too — Image Resizer:

This PowerToy enables you to resize one or many image files with a right-click.

It this displays the Windows resize window (you see it sometimes when attaching images to Outlook emails). You can pick standard sizes, or pick “custom.” It seems to respect the height — if you set that, it resizes the width to maintain the aspect ratio.

This is kind of a drag since width is always the limiting factor for the Web (when was the last time you resized for height for an image destined for the Web?). This has, however, prompted me to work up something with ImageMagick to do the same thing. It’s too handy to let a little functionality flaw ruin it.