FreeCommander is an alternative to the standard Windows explorer with a dual-pane view. It has quite a few functions and some are very handy like the built in file viewer for hex or binary files, built in archive handling, file splitting and wiping, MD5 support and folder comparison/synchronization. And there are quite a few more.

According to the author you can copy the content of the installation directory to your usb stick and use it anywhere. He even talks about a floppy, but the installation directory is 2.8 MB big, so you’ll have to weed it out first.

www.freecommander.com

With FileMenu Tools you can customize the context menu of windows explorer (the right click menu).

You can add some really useful commands that makes everything just a little bit faster, like ‘move to’, ‘delete and no move to recycle bin’, ‘copy name’, ‘copy path’, ‘delete locked file’, ‘advanced renamer’ etc etc.

A really nice one is ‘move to’. It opens a screen where you can select the destination, but in the same screen you can also create a new folder and add folders to your favorites for future ‘move to’ actions.

You can enable and disable items from other applications, which of course is a useful option, but you can’t reorder them. That was actually the kind of thing I was looking for.

www.lopesoft.com/en/fmtools/

FreeMind is a premier free mind-mapping software written in Java.

Wikipedia: A mind map is a diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks or other items linked to and arranged radially around a central key word or idea. It is used to generate, visualize, structure and classify ideas, and as an aid in study, organization, problem solving, and decision making.

freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/

CrossHair displays two full-screen lines intersecting your mouse cursor when you press a hot key. As you move the mouse cursor, the lines follow over  any program or window. The program is tiny, and runs completely transparently until you call up the crosshairs. It’s useful for eyeballing any kind of chart or tabular data on screen, and for aligning objects in graphics or design applications.

From the same author as the very handy Startup Control Panel.

mlin.net/CrossHair.shtml