Windows/Mac: Unfortunately the iPhone and iPod touch lack the ability older iPods had to run in Disk Mode. That's where iPhone Explorer steps in, allowing you manually manage files on your device, or just use it as a flash drive, without jailbreaking.

iPhone browser is a lightweight application that has an easy drag-and-drop interface that lets you browse the contents on your iPhone. You can manually transfer your photos, music or movies from your device back to your computer, or just add files to the iPhone and fill up the unused space as extra storage. There's even an image preview for transferring photos. The best part about the whole thing, though, is that you don't need to jailbreak to use it. If you do have a jailbroken device, though, iPhone Explorer becomes even more useful—It can access the root of jailbroken phones and browse the files inside, with no need for complicated SSH setups.

The only issue I had was that multiple selection didn't work so well—whether I was trying to transfer files to or from my iPod touch, doing it one file at a time worked much better than trying to do more. So if you need to transfer large batches of files, you may be better off putting them in a folder beforehand to avoid crashes.

iPhone Explorer is a free download for Windows and Mac OS X 1.5+, requires iTunes 8 or 9 to use.

Windows only: LookInMyPC generates a complete report of what's going on in a computer—from hardware to software, and everything in between. After playing around with it, this writer wouldn't start troubleshooting a PC without it. I'm not kidding.

Whether you're a tech guru who knows your way around your computer better than the company that built it, or a novice just getting acquainted with your system, LookInMyPC is a free app you'll want to download and run at least once, even before you need its diagnostic help. It's like a big verbal X-Ray of your PC, detailing everything from the brand of network adapter you have to the number of user accounts on your system.

Everything that a LookInMyPC report generates can already be found in your computer's accessible files if you know where to look, but this utility makes it so much easier. Just open the system inspector and tick the boxes to select all or some of the more than 40 diagnostic checks you want it to perform. Seconds later, you'll have a long report outlining every detail LookInMyPC ferreted out for you. Stash it in a drawer with your computer's owner's manual for a fast and handy reference sheet the next time you need to know what brand sound card you have or what the specs are on your processor.

LookInMyPC is also a great tool for diagnosing computer issues, especially if you're troubleshooting an unfamiliar computer. Instead of spending time poking around your uncle's PC to figure out basic system information, just generate a general report with memory and operating system information, then get down to business. Once you have a feel for what issues you're trying to correct, you can generate more specific reports like Registry Run Entries or Firewall Info. LookInMyPC even gives you data on Windows updates, recent System Restores, and the default email client.

The utility won't make any changes to your system at all, no matter what issues it identifies. The reports open up in a browser window and many of the results—like system hardware vendors and application names—are hyperlinked so you can quickly Google-search things you don't recognize.

One really nice touch that's included in this app is the ability to generate a report that automatically turns itself into a ZIP file and emails it to the address of the user's choice. That's a huge help when you get a distress call from a relative who wants you to troubleshoot his computer remotely.

LookInMyPC is designed to work with Windows 2000, 2003, XP, and Vista, but we ran it on Windows 7 with no issues. Pair this app with screencasting webapp ShowMeWhatsWrong and you'll be the neighborhood PC go-to person in record time. What apps and tools are already in your troubleshooting toolkit? Know of a similar solution, like previously mentioned SIW? Tell us in the comments.

Most of us remember Windows System Restore as a lame-duck feature from Windows XP; when it seemed we might benefit from using it, it never quite worked how we expected. That's no longer the case.

Windows System Restore is an awesome system recovery tool, and it's included with Windows for free. It's the ideal solution for rolling back bad drivers, fixing when buggy software breaks your PC, or simply rolling you back to a previous point in time. If you've still got a bad taste in your mouth from the lackluster XP version of System Restore, it's time to take a look at it again if you've upgraded to Windows 7 or Vista.

System Restore in Windows 7 Is Better than XP

If you've ever tried the XP variety of System Restore, the uselessness of it probably left a bad taste in your mouth. Setting a system restore point was often agonizingly slow, and when it came time to actually attempt a system restore, it rarely did what you wanted it to do. But if you've upgraded to Vista or Windows 7, you should really give System Restore another chance.

Back in the XP days, system restore simply used a file filter and copied files around, but since Vista, it uses the Shadow Copy features built into Windows—essentially, Windows can create a snapshot of your drive as of a certain point in time, which can then be used later to restore your PC should anything go wrong. The Shadow Copy feature is also used by backup software to take snapshots of files even while they are in use, and it powers the Previous Versions feature built into the Professional and Ultimate version of Windows. Using Shadow Copy instead of simple file copying makes System Restore much more effective and comprehensive—while the XP version could only really roll back from certain Windows changes and generally didn't work that well, System Restore in Vista or Windows 7 can actually roll back to a previous version of an installed application.

System Restore snapshots are automatically created on a periodic basis using a Task Scheduler job, triggered at system startup and at midnight each day. Before you start to think it's a contributing factor to your system boot speeds, the Conditions tab specifies that it won't actually start until the PC has been idle for more than 10 minutes—and if you don't like the schedule, you can tweak the Task Scheduler job to run more (or less) often. When you install (or uninstall) a piece of software, a new System Restore point is also triggered, or snapshots can be created manually if you're about to make a change and want to be sure that you can roll back.

Create a Manual System Restore Snapshot

If you're going to be making changes to your system, like upgrading drivers or tweaking settings, you should create a snapshot before you do anything, so if it all goes horribly awry, you can roll it back to normal. If you're using Windows 7, just use the System Protection tab in the System Properties window—or you can search for "create restore point" to get there directly. Once you're there, click the Create button, type in a descriptive name for the restore point, and then let it run—it shouldn't take longer than a few seconds. If you're a fan of the step-by-step walk-through, we've written up a quick guide to manually creating a System Restore point over at How-To Geek.

If the manual method is too many steps for you, you can make a shortcut that creates a system restore snapshot in a single step without having to go through any other steps. Regardless of the method you choose, you should make a point of creating system restore snapshots before you start doing any major tweaking on your PC.

Restoring from a System Restore Snapshot

All these snapshots don't do you much good if you don't know how to restore your PC using them, and it's just as easy as creating a snapshot. While you can restore from a snapshot by simply finding the System Restore screen in Control Panel, you're not going to have a lot of luck actually using the snapshot unless you've restarted your PC into Safe Mode. Normally, you can just restart your PC and hit the F8 key really quickly right when Windows is starting up, which will show you the boot menu and allow you to choose to boot into Safe Mode, but if you have problems triggering this, I've previously written up a guide to force Windows to boot into Safe Mode using the msconfig utility.

Once you're in Safe Mode, head into System Properties –> System Restore or just search through the Control Panel to pull up the wizard, choose the restore point that you'd like to roll back to, and then choose Next to start the restore process. If you're not sure which one to choose, however, you can select a restore point and click the Scan for Affected Programs button, which will analyze the restore point to figure out what applications will be rolled back if you choose that restore point.

You should note that System Restore isn't going to roll back your documents, it's just going to operate on internal operating system files, program files, and system settings. If you had a document on your desktop, it shouldn't be removed, but if you roll back to before you install an application, the shortcut to that application would probably go away.

If your PC won't even boot, you should also note that you can access the System Restore features from the Windows installation disc, which can be very helpful when you've completely broken your PC.

There's No Performance Drain From System Restore

One of the most common performance-tweaking myths that you'll find on all the amateur tweaking sites says that you should disable System Restore for maximum performance, but that's just ridiculous. We've already shown you that System Restore only kicks in once a day, and only runs when the system is idle—so the only drain on your resources is a little bit of extra drive space being used, not to mention that snapshots take virtually no time to create.

If you're really worried about the use of your drive space, you can easily tweak System Restore to use less space in Windows 7—just head into System Properties –> System Protection –> Configure and drag the slider to choose exactly how much space you want to use. For Windows Vista, it's a lot more difficult—you'll need to use a command-line hack to force Windows Vista to use less space.

The much better solution, however, is to simply clear out all restore points but the most frequent one whenever you're in need of some extra drive space using the Disk Cleanup utility. Just run it as administrator by right-clicking on the utility in the start menu and choosing the Run as Administrator option, or you can open it normally and click the "Clean up system files" button—once you've done so, you can choose the More Options tab where you'll find a Clean up button to remove all the old restore points except for the most recent one. This keeps you safe just in case you need to restore, but doesn't keep the older, more unnecessary restore points around.

At this point hopefully you can see the benefit and learn to love how System Restore can fix your PC easily, but if you really insist, you can disable System Restore easily from the System Protection tab.

The How-To Geek deleted his system32\drivers folder for fun, and used System Restore to easily get the PC running again. His geeky articles can be found daily here on Lifehacker, How-To Geek, and Twitter.

Windows only: Spyware removal tool SUPERAntiSpyware has finally released an official portable version of their application, and, just like the installed version, it easily removes most infections on your PC in a single swipe.

Once you've downloaded the application, the first thing you'll probably notice is the weird filename—each time you download it you'll be given a random filename, because most of the worst malware will prevent you from opening or installing any known malware removal tools. You'll be prompted for the language and a start screen, and then you can scan the infected PC immediately—the latest definition updates come with the download.

We've featured SUPERAntiSpyware before as one of the best malware removal tools, but the addition of a portable version makes it well worth a look for anybody with a machine infected with spyware. I've personally used this tool a dozen times to remove many different fake antivirus infections like Antivirus Live, and it's never let me down.

SUPERAntiSpyware Portable is a free download for Windows users. Click the link for the download, or check out the full screenshot tour over at How-To Geek.

Windows only: The newest version of the popular Avast Antivirus is finally available for download. It's lighter, faster, and more feature-filled than ever, bringing a new behavior shield, heuristics engine, and code emulator to keep you protected at all times.

Apart from its far easier-to-navigate interface, Avast has a few new features that make it hard to turn down. Its new code emulator can emulate a suspicious executable's code, isolated, for use in its new heuristics engine, designed to detect malware that would otherwise be undetectable with normal definitions—in other words, spotting malware by learning what the code does. If you use the pro version, you also get their new sandboxing feature for even further protection.

Apart from the new features, Avast has also lowered scanning times as well as the resources necessary to scan and update—a common issue with antivirus programs that are always running in the background. If you're already an Avast lover (and many of you are), you can either wait for the program to update itself in the near future or go download 5.0 straight from Avast. If you've tried Avast and turned it down before, it may be worth another look—you may find that its former cons (such as the difficult-to-use GUI and resource use) are now more up to your standards.

Avast Antivirus is a free download, Windows only.

Windows only: The newest version of the popular Avast Antivirus is finally available for download. It's lighter, faster, and more feature-filled than ever, bringing a new behavior shield, heuristics engine, and code emulator to keep you protected at all times.

Apart from its far easier-to-navigate interface, Avast has a few new features that make it hard to turn down. Its new code emulator can emulate a suspicious executable's code, isolated, for use in its new heuristics engine, designed to detect malware that would otherwise be undetectable with normal definitions—in other words, spotting malware by learning what the code does. If you use the pro version, you also get their new sandboxing feature for even further protection.

Apart from the new features, Avast has also lowered scanning times as well as the resources necessary to scan and update—a common issue with antivirus programs that are always running in the background. If you're already an Avast lover (and many of you are), you can either wait for the program to update itself in the near future or go download 5.0 straight from Avast. If you've tried Avast and turned it down before, it may be worth another look—you may find that its former cons (such as the difficult-to-use GUI and resource use) are now more up to your standards.

Avast Antivirus is a free download, Windows only.

The shiny new Boxee Beta is out for every platform except Apple TV, the platform we first used to cut out a cable bill. Some intrepid hackers have, however, created an unofficial installation method for that shiny, slim box.

Following the guide isn't a beginner's task—you'll need SFTP access to your Apple TV, an SSH-capable terminal to work through, and be comfortable enough with either of them to navigate to your /Users/frontrow directory to do the installation work. That said, the process itself is just a step-by-step process for any Apple TV that was already opened up by a previous Boxee installation, and it doesn't wipe out any media that you've got stored on your box at the moment.

Hit the link for the full walkthrough of a Boxee Beta installation on Apple TV. Need motivation? Check out our screenshot tour of the Beta to see what you could be streaming and exploring from your couch.

If you sync your Google contacts between multiple devices or pull from multiple email accounts, you've probably got quite a few duplicate entries. Now your Google and Gmail contacts let you kill those dupes en masse with a single button.

Hit up your contacts from Gmail, or head to google.com/contacts, and hit the "Find duplicates" button in the lower-right area. You'll be provided with the list of contacts with at least 2 entries each, which you can view in expanded form, and then either merge together or kill off. Not that this is some new-fangled tool or an advanced feature, but I know at least a few Google users' primary annoyances with contacts can be salved, if not cured, with this little button.

Firefox with Windows only: While traveling the internet, sometimes we don't realize how much memory our browser is hogging until it starts acting sluggish, hangs, or crashes altogether. Firefox extension Memory Fox optimizes your memory so you can surf without slowing down.

Memory Fox keeps an eye on your browser's memory usage and notices when Firefox starts edging toward user-preset resource limits. When it does, the extension springs into action, automatically flushing your memory to recover space and keep your browser from slowing down.

To use the add-on, you need two things: A Windows operating system and Firefox 3. Once you download the tool, restart your browser then activate Memory Fox from the Tools button in the toolbar. Now the add-on is all set up to flush the memory every time you open or close a tab, or switch between tabs.

Memory Fox may not make a noticeable difference in your browsing speed if you've got a souped up computer, but it's a terrific add-on for machines without a lot of extra RAM to sacrifice to the 'fox. It's an experimental extension, Windows only. If you give it a try on your memory-hungry Firefox installation, let's hear how it works out for you in the comments.

Google today launched a new, free DNS service—called Google Public DNS—aimed at making your web browsing experience even faster. Here's how it works:

For those of you who are unfamiliar with DNS (and it's cool if you are—as long as DNS is working, most people never need to know what's going on), Google offers an explanation:

Most of us aren't familiar with DNS because it's often handled automatically by our Internet Service Provider (ISP), but it provides an essential function for the web. You could think of it as the switchboard of the Internet, converting easy-to-remember domain names - e.g., www.google.com - into the unique Internet Protocol (IP) numbers - e.g., 74.125.45.100 - that computers use to communicate with one another.

Google Public DNS, then, aims to replace your ISP's default DNS with a (hopefully) faster, safer, and more reliable alternative. Google Public DNS isn't the first freely available alternate DNS we've seen. Previously mentioned OpenDNS is an excellent DNS alternative (it boasts keyboard shortcuts, parental filters, and more), but—for better or worse—we're guessing that even more people may be interested in Google's offering.

To set up your computer or router to use Google Public DNS, hit up Google's instructions (they've got specific instructions for Windows, Mac, Linux, or your router).

I swapped my DNS to Google's service earlier today and so far my page loading seems to have a spring it its step, but you know how these things go. If you give it a try, let's hear whether things are feeling snappier for you in the comments.

Update: Reader Manu writes in to share the results of his Google Public DNS testing, and Google's DNS looks pretty blazing—particularly for international users. For folks in the U.S., OpenDNS looks like it may still be a touch faster—at least according to Manu's results.