With Firefox extensions, most users want to avoid adding more bulk to their toolbar and prefer browsing the Internet in a minimalist manner. However, for the frugal bargain hunter, Pricetrace.com makes the clutter worth it with a nifty Firefox add-on that helps users find the best shopping deals online. Simply install the toolbar, and use it to search for the best deal on any specific product that is readily sold at online retailers. You can also choose to have your search query displayed in the status bar at the bottom of the browser window.

Read on to find out more! 

Windows Desktop Gadgets was a feature first introduced in Windows Vista. They are widget engine gadgets calmly docked on either side of the screen for easy access and can performs tasks like displaying the time, updating you on the current weather conditions and showing you CPU usage. Windows already comes equipped with default gadgets and includes an online widget library for additional downloads.

However, the standard Windows sidebar can seem limiting at times. And even though Windows 7 hides the Sidebar in the background, it's still a resource hog and not very customizable. Why not free yourself from Microsoft’s shackles and venture forth to discover other sidebar alternatives that work just as well and enable you to do some really awesome customization.

Read on to find out more!

Start pages aren’t always everyone’s forte when it comes to reading their favorite daily sites all on one page. Thankfully, there’s a web app for that. Feedweaver allows you to simply choose the most relevant RSS feed links, mash it in with 19 others you’re passionate about, and view them all on one glorious page as if they’re all one entity.

Read on to find out more! 

It can be challenging to find a free hard disk backup utility that actually works well and doesn’t plague your computer with irritating nagware. Fortunately, the Paragon Software Group has released a consumer version of their popular Backup & Recovery software previously only available to IT technicians and professionals.

Hit the jump for more information! 

As your library of Firefox Add-ons continues to grow, so does the worry that a system crash will wipe out your carefully assembled collection of extensions. To quell this fear, all you have to do is download just one additional add-on that will ensure your extensions say safely backed up in a folder on your computer or portable storage device. FEBE (Firefox Environment Backup Extension) is a worry-free backup system that will preserve your highly-customized Firefox settings in the case of a crash.

Read on to find out more.

It’s been a while since we’ve posted a Parts and Price Guide on the site—okay, it’s been a long time. Now we’re back and better than ever, and so are the system specs we’re pairing you up with this month. We’re starting you off with a $1000 PC, which is a happy mid-way price point between the $700 recession special and $1500 budget surplus found in this year's Dream Machine roundup. $1000 may not seem like a steal for the truly frugal, but in a world of fluctuating economies and ever-changing technologies, getting the most “bang for your buck” is more important than getting rock bottom prices at the expense of performance. And in the time since we last posted a buyer's guide, new awesome technologies like Intel's Core i5 and ATI's Evergreen series of GPUs (which powers the Radeon 5870) have redefined our expectations of budget PC performance. With these computing advances in mind, we've carefully pieced together a sub-$1000 spec that doesn't break the bank or compromise performance.

Follow along for the secret to a hearty, healthy computer, for only a grand! 

Perhaps one of the most frustrating points of owning a printer comes down to what is actually getting printed. Driving directions always end up with a few extra pages barely containing even a sentence worth of ink, rendering the single sheet of paper practically useless. Fortunately, The Printliminator helps eradicate these exasperating situations by converting any webpage into an economical, simple to print document.

The Printliminator is a bookmarkable link that makes any webpage to print. Once you click the link, this simple tool shows up in the top right corner in your browser window with options to remove any extraneous elements from the page and irrelevant graphics for economical printing. You can select “Remove all Graphics” to quickly zap out any video previews and high-resolution color images.

 Read on for more details!

Every computer collects dust over time. When the computer is running, it creates a field of static electricity, which in turn attracts clumps of dust and hair. These cluttering particles can easily collect around your processor, power supply, and case fans, and can block airflow and lead to overheating. This is why an important part of taking care of a computer is making sure that it’s clean.

To that end, we’ve put together a comprehensive guide on how to clean your computer hardware and peripherals to make your rig look as good as new. We took a 4-year-old computer and thoroughly cleaned it using a few household supplies. All it took was a little bit of patience and a few hours and we managed to get some impressive results. Follow along below to achieve the same cleanliness Zen with your own machine.

Learn how to properly clean your PC after the jump.

Vectors marked the beginning of the evolution of graphics for the Web 2.0 generation. Almost every button and rendered image an Internet traveler sees on the web these days is a vector image drawn with expensive professional software like Adobe Illustrator or CorelDraw. For non-designers looking to venture into the vectorizing sphere of the World Wide Web, we suggest Inkscape, an open source vector graphics editor with the same tools and resources as other drawing applications.

Read on to learn more!

Frequent Flickr users who utilize the popular photo-sharing site for its social networking perks will appreciate the Better Flickr plug-in for Firefox. This add-on incorporates an assemblage of useful Greasemonkey scripts to super-power your Flickr experience with essential features like adding a link for replying with a user’s name, icon or both for easily replying to the appropriate person within a comment thread, tacking on a short URL link in the sidebar, and including links to view the photo in various other sizes.

 Read on for more info!

Microsoft fully resuscitated Paint in Windows 7 with a major facelift, adding the dreadful-to-some ribbon interface as the top menu bar and incorporating the ability to draw in different mediums, such as a crayon or a watercolor brush. There are also more shape selections available and a rulers and gridline overlay to allow you to draw precise whatever-it-is that you draw in Paint.  However, with all this newfound sense of worth, Microsoft’s Paint is still not a program we want to use for cropping and adjusting our digital photos. Thankfully, Paint.NET has been released to help quell the Windows handicap of not having a decent image editing application.

Read on for more.

If you haven’t figured it out already, folks, its Windows 7 week. This week, we’re featuring downloads and web apps that will enhance the novelty of having a brand new operating system (it’s really a great thing, isn’t it?). We wanted to include a sleek looking, crystallized browser skin for our Firefox add-on of the week to match Windows 7, but we figured you’re already satisfied with Personas, so why not something a little more utilitarian? In comes Tab Mix Plus, which enhances Firefox’s tab browsing capabilities and gives you more options when you’re working with tabs. 

Read on for more! 

We’ve decided to add on to our “of the Week” series by featuring a resourceful and easy-to-use web application at the end of the week. This week, we’d like to introduce you to BackupURL, a web service that allows you to create a copy of any text-heavy website you desire and share it without the fear that it will go offline.

 BackupURL stores a cached copy of your webpage and its text  to a ready-to-share page, which is accessible from an already shortened link. This service is great for students who are afraid their research material and resources will go offline, or professionals who want to hold on to those important blocks of text.

Read on for more!

Free software is great, but the nagware that comes with it is not. Though we understand the concept behind blaring pop-up windows reminding you that you’re using freeware, the occasional nag screen can be a bit much when you’re in the middle of your workflow. ClickOff is a great way of dealing with this irritating nagware -- simply launch the lightweight program, select a window, and press Ctrl + Alt + D to add it to the ClickOff list. This will ensure that the program’s pop-up windows will be "zapped" the minute they appear on screen.

Read on to find what else this program can do!

Minuscule software patches may seem like they contribute the most insignificant changes, but we’re intrinsically aware that these frequent updates are recommended not just for stability and bug fixes, but also for new features. And with Firefox, add-ons have exactly the same effect—with each new add-on, your browser increases in vitality. The Yet Another Smooth Scrolling plug-in has that desired effect; it’s a small addition to your already cluttered library of plug-ins that can do wonders for your Internet browsing experience.

Yet Another Smooth Scrolling customizes your scrolling behavior so that keyboard cursor key scroll stride is no longer short and choppy, and the default scrolling behavior is less sensitive and doesn’t act as if it’s lagging between lines. We installed the add-on to see if it really changed our browsers scrolling behavior, and to our delight, browsing through a web page felt to have more fluidity than previously before. Additionally, we noticed that when we flicked the scroll wheel, the page scrolled further than the trace of the wheel length.  You can also specify three different scroll settings for any particular web environment, like a full .pdf document versus a weblog.  

Read on to find out more. 

Welcome to the wonderful world of URL shorteners, where internet links hide behind abridged monikers to sheath their unwieldy length. You may have seen them fluttering about on the Internet; they’re currently infesting Twitter feeds, blog posts, Facebook status updates, and yes, even in print publications. Long winded web addresses, with tracking codes and web stats, have become so passé. Linking to one will make you seem like a Jurassic entity, which is why URL shorteners have shot up in popularity. The first of these services, TinyURL began rapidly proliferating when social networking and blogging stormed the web scene. Users everywhere needed a simple way to share their favorite links and ensure that their web friends and followers had an accessible way to navigate their content. With the advent of microblogging sites where every character counts, more of these services have emerged to become an essential part of internet life.

We take a look five popular URL shorteners, evaluate the merits of each, and ponder on the future of this link shrinking technology.

Desktop maintenance is perhaps the most frivolous form of organization, but it’s just as important as matching together pairs of socks in your clothes dresser. Fortunately, there are free applications like Fences to help aid the chronically disorganized and transform their desktops into grids of art. Previously in an beta, version 1.0 of Fences has just been released by Stardock, with improved compatibility for 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows. Even if you're already rocking Windows 7, we encourage you to give this utility a try.

Fences allows you to right-click and draw labeled shaded areas on your desktop in which to “fence” in your icons and files by custom categories. For example, if you have icons related specifically to your work, you can group them together and label them “work documents” for easy access. These fences effectively divide up your Desktop workspace so help you manage clutter and disorganization. 

Read on for more!

The history library of any browser can be the most convoluted maze to navigate, especially if you’re looking for a very specific URL. The interface is always austerely simple and clogged with duplicate links that seem to take up most of your history archive’s free space. If you oftentimes forget to bookmark important sites, or desire for a simpler way to sift through URL archives, then History Tree will make your Firefox history library easier to navigate by displaying it as a tree diagram.

 Read on for more!

For the conscientious computer owner, caring for your PC is always on top ten list of things to do. Well, why not make power management a priority as well? SetPower is a time-based power management utility that allows you to configure different profiles based on the time of day. For example, you can set up your system to wake up and finish downloading that live Daft Punk bootleg, and then go to sleep when it’s time for the both of you to get some shut eye. SetPower claims that you can save up to $10 a month on your energy bill from shutting off your computer when it's not in use.

 Read on for more!

We hate to sound like a sales(wo)man, but this Firefox extension is so handy, it deserves its own infomercial-like introduction. Thus, have you ever had one of those instances where you really needed to open up a Word document, but didn’t want to fire up Microsoft Office and waste precious memory? Open IT Online makes it so you don't have to! This extension for Firefox (and, if you prefer, Internet Explorer) enables you to open and edit your document in the browser window, as opposed to downloading the file and opening it via an external application.

 Read on for more!