Bootable Live Windows CD

Build a BartPE -- Bart Preinstalled Environment -- bootable Windows CD-Rom or DVD from the original Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 installation/setup CD: very suitable for PC maintenance tasks. It will give you a complete Win32 environment with network support, a graphical user interface (800x600) and FAT/NTFS/CDFS filesystem support. Very handy for burn-in testing systems with no OS, rescuing files to a network share, virus scan and so on. This will replace any DOS bootdisk in no time.

http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/

Google Talk

We recommend this highly! Every Saturday for the last 6 weeks we've spent 4 or more hours on Google Talk with a friend in Australia working on a project. No lost connections, great sound quality, and it beats every other Internet phone service we've seen.

http://www.google.com/talk/