The final step in rebuilding my system was installing those utilities that I use to enhance my productivity. Over the years, I have tested hundreds of utility programs and have a select few that I simply can not work without. These are time-tested favorites that add so much value to my computing experience that they have become part of my standard PC buildout.

ActiveWords - I don't think I can say too much about this program. I've written about it a number of times in the past and have marveled on a continous basis about how much "smarter" it makes my PC. ActiveWords allows you to associate a key word with an action on your computer. That sounds simple (and it in practice it really is pretty easy and intuitive) but it's something of an oversimplification. In it's most basic use, ActiveWords lets me launch an application, open a web page or document, or perform other tasks by entering a key word.

If I want to launch Outlook, for example, I press Control+Space (the ActiveWords trigger) and type "ol". Presto! Outlook is running. I have an ActiveWord for every application on my system. I also have ActiveWords for my most frequently visited web pages and documents that I open all the time (like a project tracking spreadsheet and my ResultManager dashboard maps). But ActiveWords also allows me to generate ready-to-send e-mail messages to common queries I receive (or send), initiate the creation of Outlook tasks associated with a particular contact, perform system changes that would normally require a lot of mousing and clicking, and more.

ActiveWords also provides an elegant, powerful, and easy-to-learn scripting interface that allows me to string together an unlimited number of actions that can be invoked with a single word. For the Tablet, the folks at ActiveWords are working on a Tablet Input Panel add-on that, based on the pre-release version I've been using, extends this power to the pen.

ClipMate - this utility captures everything I copy and allows me to perform sophisticated editing, pasting, and searching capabilities on my collection. ClipMate turns the standard Windows Clipboard into a power user's dream - an archive that is always ready and available with the click of the mouse or tap of the pen. I stor all of my passwords in an encrypted ClipMate collection and can, with a couple of keystrokes, authenticate myself to any web page or account I need to access.

Anagram - If you use Outlook or the Palm Desktop, you need Anagram. This gem intelligently parses what ever text you have selected and determines with uncanny accuracy whether your selection should be used to generate a new contact, appointment, or task in your information manager. It enters the appropriate information into each field in the destination application and, on the rare occasion when it "guesses" incorrectly, provides a one-click mechanism for redirecting the data to the appropriate new object. The lates version extends this capability to the Salesforce.com CRM system. It has saved me thousands of keystrokes.

Knockout - This free utility addresses the number one complaint I hear about Outlook - it's tendency to leave "orphan" processes running in the background. When this happens, Outlook behaves badly. Add-ins refuse to load properly, your system slows down, and some pretty bizarre things can start happening. Lookout puts an icon int he system tray that monitors whether Outlook (as well as Word which apparently has similar tendencies although I rarely experience them) is running and provides the ability to force Outllok processes to terminate. From the context menu of this tray icon, you can also create new e-mail messages, contacts, appointments, tasks, and notes.

After completing the installation of these utilities and restoring my core data from my backup, the system was ready for the final step - creating a Norton Ghost drive image so that I can avoid the tedium and cost (in terms of my time) that this exercise can consume. I used Ghost to create a compressed image of my system onto my backup hard drive (it can also create images spanning a set of CD-R or DVD disks) and I can now easily restore my system to this ready-to-go state in a matter of minutes, rather than hours, the next time Windows get a little crufty and starts giving me trouble.