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Screen capture is a fundamental part of Windows dating back to the earliest days of the operating system. You can capture everything on your screen simply by pressing the PrtSc key, or single out the window you are currently viewing by using the Alt+PrtSc key combination. Both of these keyboard actions grab a bitmap image of the screen and make it available to the clipboard. You can then paste your screen capture into a Word document, Evernote Note, or open Paint and create an editable graphics file by pasting the contents of your clipboard. You can repurpose that image data in just about anything that accepts bitmap input. If this powerful functionality is built in, why would you ever spend money on screen capture software?

I frequently rely on my Gmail inbox as a backup for any attachments I send or receive via email. Gmail and most alternatives offer virtually unlimited storage, so deleting those messages simply isn't necessary. What if you want to download a bunch of those email attachments all at once? It isn't practical to click and download repeatedly. Mail Attachment Downloader solves this problem by offering the ability to download attachments from Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, or AOL, without impacting other aspects of your inbox.

For years, I've used PuTTY as my SSH client on various versions of Windows. While PuTTY has a tiny footprint, it lacks some ease of use I'd prefer when working with things like SSH key management and more effectively handling things like copy and paste between my local machine and the remote computer I connected to. Enter Private Shell, a better Windows SSH client by virtually any measure. Possibly the best reason to use Private Shell is easy of key management, I've never found it easy to manage key pairing on a Windows computer, but with Private Shell I never have to think about it, the steps are right there easy to follow. Copy and paste between the remote computer and your local Windows computer are greatly simplified, making it a snap to store frequently used commands in a text file or clipboard manager for ready use. You can securely store connections for later use, including stored connections to most popular databases including MySQL, Postgres, and Oracle, as well as CVS or SVN repository access. Should you want to connect using VNC or a secure connection to an email server, Private Shell handles those too.

Power management in Windows has worked fairly well since Windows Vista shipped. You can control far more variables about when and how things turn on and off. Even in Windows 7, the hibernation and sleep features aren't as smart as I'd like them to be. Most laptops include a solution from the laptop manufacturer meant to further enhance power management, but they still don't nail it.

I have a fair number of background processes I want to complete before my computer shuts down for the night. I have backup operations I want to run at times when I'm guaranteed to be sleeping these are things that benefit from a more granular control over the power management features. For instance, if I'm uploading a video, I may want to call it a night before the upload completes. There's no good way to be sure you can upload a video and shut your computer down. Or at least there's no good way without installing SmartPower.

Remote access to my computers is something I can't live without. I travel frequently and discover I've left files behind on a computer at the office or at my house. My home and office are separated by a ferry ride, so if I happen to forget something in one location or the other, there's a 90-120 minute round trip to get the forgotten file. While there are a ton of remote desktop solutions to choose from, the one I find easiest to use is LogMeIn. The software installs on each computer you want to enable for remote access and runs in the background. You can connect from any other computer, securely connecting through the Web to the computer you left behind. All your data is encrypted in the connection, so there's no chance you are risking exposing your data to hackers, although it's always a good idea to be cautious regardless.

We all have tasks that accumulate throughout the day from work, family obligations, and life. Keeping tasks organized can help prevent that feeling of life slipping into an unmanagable chaos. Enter Task Coach, a desktop task manager for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. With Task Coach, you cna create, edit, and delete tasks and subtasks. Each task can have as much or as little detail as you need to get it on your list and stop worry about whether you will remember to do it. Entering tasks can be as easy as dragging an email message into the Task Coach task viewer, which saves time in typing things more than once. Grouping tasks makes it possible to segment your responsibilities into the various buckets that make up your life.

Being able to document the geographic location of your photos is great for putting together a story about a trip or simply for jogging your memory at some point in the future. GeoSetter makes the process of geotagging your photos easier by allowing you to search for a location in Google Maps and setting EXIF data in the photo file with the latitude and longitude of the location. Once you tag the photos, GeoSetter can show you a route map for related photos, or multiple routes if you have several clusters of photos, creating a sort of online photo walk that recreates your trip. GeoSetter is compatible with the LOCR geotagging photo community, so you can share your photos with other people who have a common interest in geotagging.

One of the few artistic manipulations I like in the digital photography world is the ability to make a photo look like a drawing or watercolor. Maybe it's I'm simply not artistic enough to draw the pictures myself. While apps like Photoshop include features for converting digital files to digital drawings, apps like FotoSketcher are nice to have because they focus on doing this one feature really well. Convert your favorite portrait photography and still live scenes to line drawings, water colors, or oil paintings using FotoSketcher to fine tune all the elements of your composition. Whether you want to create a framable sketch to send as a gift or simply make an artistic image to use on a website, FotoSketcher includes enough versatility to tweak all the image settings to get the digital likeness you are looking for. You can also use

60% Off Paint Shop Pro photo editing software
Paint Shop Pro is the only photo editor I am willing to use not called Photoshop. For a long time, Paint Shop Pro offered far better automatic background removal than Photoshop. At $39.99 during this sale, Paint Shop Pro is a bargain for editing everything from Web-ready images to your personal photo collection. Corel, the company behind Paint Shop Pro has several other promotions, but this one is by far the best of the season for photo editing. Offer expires end of day on November 26, 2010.

30% Off Mixcraft - the "GarageBand for Windows"
Mixcraft is the closest thing Windows users have to Apple's music making app GarageBand. I highly recommend Mixcraft if you want an easy solution for making music. I've never seen it discounted more than 10%, so this really is a great find. Use coupon code BF2010 before this offer expires at the end of the day on November 26, 2010.

Convert Vinyl LPs and Cassettes to CD with 30% off on Spin it Again
Spin it Again is the only solution that reliably splits album sides into individual tracks for easy export to iTunes or Windows Media Player. Whether you use the turntable from your home theater or an Ion turnturntable, this is the app you want to use to convert your LP collection to digital music files. Coupon code BF2010 expires at the end of the day on November 26, 2010.

76% Discount on Pinnacle Studio Ultimate HD creative bundle
Pinnacle Studio Ultimate is the app I frequently use for editing high definition movies. Version 14 is definitely worth the upgrade if you have a previous version because many of the encoding features have improved dramatically. This is the best deal I've seen on Studio Ultimate and far less than I paid when I upgraded. Creative Pack 1, Creative Pack 2, and the Winter Pack included in this bundle are worth the bonus features for creating DVDs and adding effects. There's also a tutorial DVD included, which helps make editing video with Pinnacle Studio easier. This one is good into Decemeber with no coupon code required, but if you are in the market for video editig software, you won't find a better bargain.

50% Discount on Cucusoft Ultimate DVD Ripper + Video Converter
Rip DVDs and convert videos to play on any device in your house. You will be hard pressed to find a DVD Ripping and video conversion combo at a better price than this. Cucusoft makes it easy to convert your movies, remove menus from DVD titles, and get your movies to play on the device of your choice. I'm not currently in the market for a video converter, but if I was, this deal is currently the best one I can find. Expires November 30, 2010.

Master Mind Mapping with 70% off Mind Pad
Mind Mapping is an incredibly effective way to organize your thoughts, outline ideas, and maximize your productivity. In addition to mapping out your ideas, Mind Pad is also a handy way to organize business processes and visualize concepts around an idea. Mind Pad makes mind mapping easy and affordable with this 70% off special pricing. Pricing is good through November 30, 2010.

ScreenCamera streams video to your favorite programs for $13.99
Stream your desktop screen along with your webcam on free video chatting programs and websites. ScreenCamera supports multiple applications simultaneously and works perfectly with MSN Messenger, Skype, Yahoo Messenger, ICQ, AOL Messenger, Live Messenger, PalTalk, Camfrog, AIM, Stickam, AnyWebcam, or any other live video chatting program or website. This link gets you 72% off the regular price of ScreenCamera and is good through the end of 2010.

SuperTintin MSN Recorder 30% discount
Record both sides of MSN video chat either separately or as a complete movie file with picture-in-picture. SuperTintin offers better quality recording of video chat because it records the original file, not a screen capture of the video stream. There's also a version that does Skype recording. Both the MSN and Skype recorders are available for 30% off the normal price. If you do video chat interviews or want to record your friends when you chat, this is the app to use.Coupon code BLACKFRIDAY2010 expires November 30, 2010.

MovieSherlock for Mac OS X for $12.50
Find movies on YouTube. Download and convert YouTube movies with MovieSherlock. Software easily downloads and organizes movies from YouTube, automatically converting them to Mac compatible files you can move to your iPod or iPad. Discount of 50% off is good through the end of November 2010.

50% Off MessageExport for Outlook
If you need to share the contents of an Outlook email message with a group, forwarding it via email may not be practical. MessageExport is designed to make it easy and efficient to extract a message from Outlook and share it in many popular formats, including PDF, GIF, JPG, and TIF. MessageExport makes sharing email to a SharePoint a breeze, while also enabling many of the same features an app like Acrobat would charge several times more for. The 50% discount is good through November 30, 2010.

A text editor is something I can't live without. Notepad just doesn't cut it. WordPad adds too much extra stuff. I was using Notepad++ as the best free text editor, but lately it exhibits strange errors on even a clean Windows 7 install. After reviewing the best text editors as chosen by a past reader survey, I realized it's time to seek out something new. So far RJ TextEd looks to be among the best. The app includes syntax highlighting for most programming languages. If you use TopStyle Lite for CSS, it will automatically use TopStyle for CSS editing. There's a built-in Firefox and IE browser preview for testing HTML. Search and replace works across the current document or an entire folder of documents. A number of text transformations are included. Uploading via SFTP is supported. Overall RJ TextEd does everything I need a text editor to do. I'm still not sure I'm ready to give up on Notepad++, but if I do RJ TextEd is the front runner. [Windows $0.00]