Best free monitor calibration
Make your screen colors more accurate
Calibrize is a free utility that allows you to adjust your monitor to show colors (and monochrome) more accurately. It's a simple three step process that takes less than a minute. A lot of fancier programs are available, but they're geared more to the needs of photographers and pre-press publication personnel than to average users. For most folks this program is all they need. Freeware, Windows 98 and later, 1.15MB.
http://www.calibrize.com/index.html
How to identify and fix dead pixels
Subscriber "David in Mississippi" writes "Gizmo, here's a small program that allows you to check your LCD screen for dead pixels. A dead pixel can be black, white, or stuck on any color. It can be caused by a mote of dust in the manufacturing process or a small bump on the screen. And many LCD manufacturers will replace one under warranty if it has a certain number of dead pixels. However, before you can claim on your warranty you need to know if you have any. Because dead pixels can be any color, you need to look for them against several different colors on screen. This 288KB utility [1] allows you to do just that. This program runs directly from the .exe file, requiring no installation, making it perfect for thumb drive utility sets. Also, while the website lists it as working on Windows 98/Me/2000/XP, I just tried it on Vista and it works fine."
Thanks for that, David. Subscribers may be interested in knowing that it is possible to "un-stick" dead pixels. This site [2] shows you how. The claimed success rate is around 60%.
[1] http://www.laptopshowcase.co.uk/downloads.php?id=1
[2] http://www.psp-vault.com/Article168.psp
A simple and cheap way to get a multi-monitor setup
Imagine working on a spreadsheet and you want more width to see the whole spreadsheet. Wouldn't it be nice if you could drag the right hand side of the spreadsheet window all the way to the right onto a second monitor alongside your main monitor? Well that's exactly what you can do with a neat shareware program called MaxiVista [1]. Regular contributor Lex Davidson has prepared an excellent review and this now available online [2]. He's really impressed and so am I. I use a multi-monitor / multi-PC setup all the time and can attest that it really improves my productivity. If you have an old PC lying around this could be the perfect use for it. Commercial software, from $29.95, free 14 day limited feature trial, Windows 2000, XP, 1.81MB
[1] http://www.maxivista.com/
[2] http://www.techsupportalert.com/review-maxvista.htm