The Microsoft Windows Preinstallation Environment (Windows PE) makes IT professionals more productive by providing powerful preparation and installation tools for Microsoft Windows XP Professional and Microsoft Windows Server 2003. With Windows PE, IT staff can build custom solutions that speed deployment through automation, so they spend less time and effort keeping desktops updated.

Windows PE offers many features and advantages:

• Be more prepared: IT professionals can more easily prepare to deploy and support Windows desktops and servers, while making recovery efforts less time-consuming and more productive.

• Save time and focus on critical tasks: Engineers have the ability to inject mass-storage, networking, audio, video, and other types of device drivers directly into an existing copy of Windows PE, so IT professionals no longer need to customize MS-DOS-bootable disks.

• Streamline processes: IT professionals can format disks with NTFS without using third-party utilities. Also, the file-system utilities that Windows PE provides are scriptable, so your administrators can completely automate the hard disk preparation process.

• Maintain easy network access: Windows PE provides network access comparable to Windows XP. In fact, Windows PE provides the same network drivers that come with Windows XP, allowing your IT professionals to access the network quickly and easily.

• Customize easily: Because Windows PE is based on Windows XP Professional and Windows Server 2003, your IT professionals are already familiar with the techniques and tools used to customize Windows PE. They can customize it for a variety of scenarios including deployment, test and diagnostic, recovery, and other support-related tasks.

Download Windows XP SP2 PE

Visual Color Picker is very easy to use and powerful RGB-HSV-HSL-CMYK-HEX color selector. It contains predefined and custom color tables, RGB and HTML codes converter, and text and background color preview. Capture color from any position of screen. Easily capture color from any position of the screen by pressing CTRL button. It can be also integrated into a program.

• Supported color models: RGB, HSV(HSL), CMYK, HEX(HTML).
• Basic and custom color tables.
• Instant RGB-HSV-CMYK-HEX color conversion.
• Screen area color capture.
• Textual color formatting: unlimited text representation of color (VC++,VB,Delphi,etc).
• Several color preview samples: gradient, text.

Great useful freeware for web/graphic designers and developers

Link: http://www.linxexplorer.com/colorpicker.html
Download Link

Google’s released a new version of their Desktop Search tool which includes a controversial "access your data anywhere" feature that requires users store their personal files on Google’s servers.

* Computer A (say, a home PC) and computer B (the one at work) both download Google Desktop, which indexes all files on the hard drives and sends text copies of Office documents (Word, Excel) and other files to Google.

* Computer B signs into Google, searches for a file on Computer A and retrieves it. Google says it only keeps the data for 30 days and will delete the files if not accessed.

While Google says users want the convenience of cross-computer file access from anywhere, privacy advocates are understandably concerned.

For (EFF attorney Fred) Von Lohmann, the reality of what’s on your computer - and potentially on Google servers - outweighs convenience. "Unless you go to the trouble of configuring Google Desktop carefully, it will cough up your tax returns, medical and financial records, and any other text files you happen to have."

Oh yeah, and Desktop 3 also supports locking down your computer so others can’t search it while you’re away, and easy "share with a friend" Sidebar info capabilities.

Google Desktop Beta [Google]
Google’s newest search tool raises privacy concerns [USA Today]