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SourceForge http://sourceforge.net/: "The world's largest development and download repository of open-source code and applications; providing free services to open-source developers." Thousands of open-source freeware projects, some just for Windows and some cross-plaform: see the software map. Sourceforge projects have a project page with download links, RSS feeds, and standardized project information, and usually also an author homepage which may or may not be in the Sourceforge domain.
Computer recycling http://earth911.com/electronics/computers/: Key in your zip code and see a list of local places you can recycle your old computer. Some of them sell recycled and wiped computers that were replaced by businesses.
Printer.com http://www.printer.com/: A Dutch site that evaluates printers and offers recommended models. They suggest that one can save on toner or ink cartridge costs by setting the default font to Century Gothic. Because that font uses less toner but is wider, and therefore tends to use more paper, a Yahoo article suggested Times New Roman as a reasonable compromise for conserving both paper and toner. For non-Windows users, it was suggested that fonts with "narrow" or "light" in the name are likely to use less toner than others with "bold" or "black," and that serif fonts tend to have narrower strokes than sans serif fonts.
Ecofont http://www.ecofont.com/ Wikipedia: Another Dutch company brings us fonts with tiny, mostly imperceptible holes in letter strokes to save toner and ink. You can buy Ecofont software that apparently puts holes in any font, or Ecofont Vera Sans is available to download free.
The Register http://www.theregister.co.uk/ Wikipedia: A British technology news and opinion website, often using satire, sarcasm, and iconoclasm. An enjoyable site for computer, Internet, and technology skeptics.
Computer History Museum (Mountain View CA) http://www.computerhistory.org/ Wikipedia: Everything from a Difference Engine mechanical calculator, as designed by Charles Babbage in the 1840's, to Cray supercomputers. There are tours if you're in the area.
Anthro Corporation (Tualatin OR) http://www.anthro.com/: This line of modular ergonomic workstation furniture is hard to beat for versatility, quality, and strength, if you can afford them. A few years ago I specified a basic AnthroCart for a client here who wanted the best, and she was a little skeptical, at least until it arrived. After that there were no more doubts.
Biomorph (New York NY) http://biomorphdesk.com/: Another line of ergonomic computer funiture, also not cheap.
7-Zip home page http://www.7-zip.org/ 7-Zip project page http://sourceforge.net/projects/sevenzip/: Open-source freeware compressed-file utility. Windows XP, Mac OS X, and recent Linux versions all have basic native support for the ZIP-format compressed files which are common on the Internet. 7-Zip has nice OS-shell integration, an included command-line version you can run from a DOS prompt, and support for multiple archive formats. If you're going to do anything with open-source free software, you should probably get 7-Zip. Because it exists and supports multiple formats, some people in the open-source world think it's okay to release files for Windows users in TAR/GZIP formats, and even in 7-Zip's native *.7z format.
PDFCreator home page http://www.pdfcreator.de.vu/
PDFCreator project page http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/: Utility installs like a printer driver, creates PDF files; great for PCs without a physical printer attached. You can "print" from any program to Acrobat PDF files on disk, which you can print later if you need to, on any PC with a printer and free Adobe Reader. Especially useful for documenting online purchases and other significant Web transactions.
SETI@home http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/ Wikipedia: " ... a scientific experiment that uses Internet-connected computers in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). You can participate by running a free program that downloads and analyzes radio telescope data." There are several voluntary distributed computing projects like this now. The analysis program runs like a screensaver, when your PC is running but otherwise idle. Work units upload/download once every 24 hours. You can participate using a dialup (modem) account.
PawSense™ http://www.bitboost.com/pawsense/: You can cat-proof your computer. PawSense discriminates between "cat-like typing" and human typing, and can play your choice of annoying sounds to help influence your furry friend to stay away.
The Jargon File http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/ Wikipedia: Formerly published in print by MIT Press as The New Hacker's Dictionary: often hilarious definitions of ancient and modern hacker jargon or "Hackish." Here's an alternate Jargon File site in case the first one doesn't work.
Random Jargon File quote http://jargon.juanjoconti.com.ar/
whatis?com http://whatis.techtarget.com/: Interesting glossary of IT terminology. More focused on serious definitions of terms in current use (the Jargon File includes more humor and ancient mainframe jargon).
Fractint home page http://www.nahee.com/spanky/www/fractint/fractint.htmlp Wikipedia: Fractint is an outrageously sophisticated, copyrighted freeware, fractal graphics viewer that supports dozens of fractal types, deep "zooming," rotation, mapping, color cycling, palette switching, and lots of other wierd stuff. Fractint has been in continuous development by multiple contributors since at least 1988. Fractal graphics viewers have no functional usefulness whatsoever, except demonstrating fractal mathematics, making pretty pictures, causing your PC to break a sweat,* and proving how good the contributors are at efficient number-crunching. Fractint is a DOS program with a keystroke-only interface that runs on Windows.
XaoS home page http://xaos.sourceforge.net/ Wikipedia XaoS project page http://sourceforge.net/projects/xaos/: An open-source freeware fractal graphics viewer more sophisticated than Fractint, that lets you zoom in and out of fractal images in real time, by means of the Hubička algorithm. Interactive real-time zooming was previously impossible without powerful computers; FractInt jumps rather than zooms. XaoS runs cross-platform including Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X.

Wikipedia: Mandelbrot set http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandelbrot_set: The best-known fractal set, pictured at right; some people call it "the thumbprint of God." This fractal is the graph of a set of points in the complex plane whose boundary is literally infinitely complicated. You can click the image to see a 4K larger version. The first two GIF files I used here are really small and transmit fast because they are monochrome, with only two colors. Fractal programs running in full color are much more spectacular; here's a 180K GIF example (1024×768 pixels).
Open Directory Project: Chaos and Fractals http://www.dmoz.org/Science/Math/Chaos_and_Fractals/

* Generating fractal graphics is computation-intensive. Normally your CPU chip, with its millions of transistors, spends most of its time waiting for something: your hard disk, your Internet connection, or, of course, you. Sometime, try running Windows Performance Monitor (System Monitor on Windows 9x) while Fractint is doing its thing, and compare with the effect of other programs. Ever heard the phrase "put the pedal to the metal"? If Performance Monitor is installed you should find it at Programs, Accessories, System Tools. If not, you'll need to install it from your Windows CD. In Ubuntu Linux (Jaunty) go to System, Administration, System Monitor, Resources tab, and look at the CPU History graph.

In the late 80's, a magazine article about fractals was one reason I got interested in PCs. A friend had a Commodore 64, using a small TV set for a low-resolution display, and just for the heck of it, we wrote a BASIC program for it to plot the Mandelbrot set in monochrome. The iterated math is simple enough (see the Wikipedia article above if you're curious) and it seemed to work. Based on the rate at which it was plotting pixels, we estimated it would have finished plotting the whole M-set in about a week. A modern PC will do that in high resolution and full color in a few seconds at most.

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