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Spring is our favorite season and we happen to love butterflies, so we were excited about trying Free 3D Butterfly Screensaver. Unfortunately, the program did not live up to our expectations. Functional problems and poor graphics plague this disappointing program.

Our first beef with Free 3D Butterfly Screensaver was that it didn't automatically install itself in the proper directory for screensavers as most similar programs do. We had to move the file to its proper place in order to get it to show up among the options in our Display Properties menu. We were also able to access it … Read more

There are a lot of fish-related screensavers out there, and we tend to like them; they're generally calming and nice to look at. So we were rather taken aback when we launched Aquarium Fantasia Screensaver, which may be the ugliest screensaver we've ever encountered. It's impressive, but for all the wrong reasons.

Frankly, Aquarium Fantasia Screensaver looks like the final project of someone taking--and failing--an introductory interactive design course. Where do we even begin? What we suppose is meant to be sand in the bottom of the aquarium looks more like beige Berber carpet. The "stones&… Read more

Context menus, often called pop-up menus, keep functionality high and clutter low in operating systems like Windows. RBSoft's Right Click Enhancer bundles five free tools for customizing context menus. My Computer Manager adds nondeleting files or folders to My Computer or the Control Panel, while Right Click Tweaker adds up to 10 entries to context menus. Send To Manager let us add new destinations to the Send To command, and Right Click Shortcuts Creator adds shortcuts to files and folders to context menus. The Right Click Cascading Menu Creator is a little bit more sophisticated than the other tools. … Read more

One of the great things about the Internet is that our music choices are no longer limited to the radio stations that we can pick up with our receivers. Thanks to the Web, we can listen to radio stations from around the country and around the world, as well as stations that exist only online. ALOT Radio App is an add-on for Internet Explorer that provides easy access to a plethora of music. It comes with a lot of other stuff too, which may or may not be a good thing.

The extension appears as a toolbar in Internet Explorer, … Read more

Vertex42's Paycheck Calculator for Excel is a free spreadsheet template that lets users calculate where their paycheck goes every month. It calculates deductions, withholdings, and allowances, including state and local taxes, FICA, 401(k) contributions, and more. It requires Microsoft Excel 2002 or later; we also recommend having the necessary financial records on hand, such as pay stubs or tax forms.

We extracted Paycheck Calculator's zipped download and clicked it, which opened it inside Excel. It's a cleanly configured Excel spreadsheet with a variety of simple fields for entering data, which were filled with helpful example entries. … Read more

Windows7Theme offers a variety of free themes and desktop backgrounds for Windows 7 in self-installing theme packs. The high-resolution images are presented in a wide-screen format (1,920x1,200 pixels) and can be scaled, shuffled, and selected via the standard Windows Personalization page. We took a look at Windows 7 Colorful Theme, which emphasizes vivid colors.

As with other theme packs we've tried, the download unpacked and installed automatically, replacing our previous wallpaper with the first image in the series, an abstract image of pastel layers that strongly suggested lemon and raspberry sherbet (a good start, by the way). … Read more

Perpetual Calendar from Vertex42 is an Excel spreadsheet that creates calendars for any year from 1900 to 9999, beginning with any month you like, holidays included. It's extremely easy to use: Simply enter the year, tweak any fields, and click Save or Print. It behaves like any Excel template.

Perpetual Calendar downloads as a compressed file but opens normally in Excel when extracted. The spreadsheet is clearly configured, with a large year display above a 12-month calendar. To the right is a list titled Events or Holidays; it included not only traditional holidays but also tax day and equinoxes … Read more

VivSoft's Video Wallpaper promises to install video clips as desktop wallpaper. It requires Microsoft .NET Framework, Windows Media Player, and up-to-date codecs, which some XP users may lack. Windows Vista 32-bit has the required codecs, and the program worked in that operating system and version. However, it created different problems in 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows 7.

Video Wallpaper downloads as a zipped file and installs normally. It has an extremely simple interface with four buttons--Set, Reset, About, and OK--and a check box for muting the video's sound. The program is very easy to use, too. We … Read more

Movie collections--either digital or DVD--can get a little unwieldy if you don't have a way to manage them. My Movie Library is an easy-to-use program that makes keeping track of your films quite simple. It doesn't have as many features as some similar programs we've seen, but its simplicity more than makes up for it.

The program's interface is sleek and attractive, with a set of icons across the top that give access to the program's major features. Using the Add Movie dialog, you can simply enter the title of a film and have the … Read more