Knowing what's going on inside your OS is critical to keeping it running smoothly. Sure, task manager and msconfig are built-in to Windows, but they're pretty minimalistic. For something with a little more punch, give Winpatrol a shot - we first looked at it in 2005, and it's bigger and better than ever.

Winpatrol offers a software "Swiss-army knife" of features for protecting and tuning your Windows system. Scotty (the app's mascot) keeps a watchful eye on process, services, startup programs, IE helpers, lmhosts, and a slew of others. It'll even lock your file associations and alert you to attempted changes to your hosts file. If you're interested in paying for the plus version, you'll get more detailed information on processes and tasks via a connection to an online database.

You can also use Winpatrol to help speed your Windows boot time a la msconfig - but not just by enabling and removing unwated startups. You can move and startup item to a delayed group, which allows apps that you want to give priority a little more elbow room when you boot your rig.

Anyone who's looking for tighter control over Windows performance or who wants a little extra virus or malware protection would do well to download Winpatrol. Scotty's definitely a nice addition to any Windows (32 and 64-bit) perimeter defense.

Power users on Windows will be very well acquainted with the Task Manager. This is the utility that can tell you how hard your CPU is working, what it's working on, what your memory usage is, or even how much network traffic your computer is currently using. But did you know that it has a "no titlebar" view?

If you want to leave your Task Manager showing on your desktop for a period of time, it can be nice to hide the title bar and gain that space for displaying more information. To do this, simply double-click on the empty area to the right of the tabs. Once it has switched views, you can switch back quickly by double-clicking anywhere on the border.

One bonus tip: If you're new to the Task Manager, you may not know that you can set it to minimize down to your system tray area. This is a really nice way to keep an eye on how hard your CPU is working at any time. Simply open Task Manager (Start > Run > type "taskman" and press Enter), and in the Options menu, check "Hide when minimized". Now when you minimize it, the Task Manager will show as a tiny bar graph in your system tray near your system time.

One of the most annoying things about Windows Mobile devices is that by default you can only close an application by clicking on the start menu, settings, system, memory, and then running programs tabs. Then you highlight an item and click stop. Whew. That's a 7 click solution.

While there are a number of programs out there that let you convert the X button in the upper right corner from "minimize" to "close," or give you a list of running programs to close, sometimes you just want more information. A whole lot more.

That's where Task Manager comes in. This program gives you pretty much everything you can get from the Windows task manager, and then some. Running processes, check. System devices, got it. Sort system process by CPU usage or RAM, check your IP configuration or you know, close active programs. There's also a registry editor packed in there.

Oh yeah, and did I mention that this is a free download? The only downside is you have to register for the buzzdev forums if you want to use the download link.

Lifehacker brings us a nugget from Davo, one of their avid readers, called What To Do Next. The idea behind the little application is extremely simple; it's written in javascript, and therefore will run on any platform. All it does is act as a front-end to a list of tasks that you would like to accomplish. Clicking on the button for one of the tasks starts a ten minute countdown timer (the time is configurable), after which an alarm sounds. The idea here is that ten minutes is short enough to feel approachable, so you may find that you can get started on a task that otherwise felt too large to tackle. Once the alarm goes off, if you're feeling like you're making good progress, just continue. But if you feel stuck or like you're spinning your wheels, the alarm is your escape - just choose a different task from your list and get to work.

I really enjoy the idea behind this application, but don't need yet another task manager to maintain. But that's okay, since really all I need is a 10 minute countdown timer and the resolve to actually tackle some of the items on my ever-growing task list in Outlook. But downloading and installing What To Do Next takes mere seconds, and if you don't have a to-do list, or aren't particularly fond of the one you're using, this might be a nice alternative.

Note that the source file containing the actual list of tasks is well laid-out and easy to follow, but if you're averse to editing text configuration files, you might want to give this one a pass.

For the uninitiated, Mac OS X has a cool feature called Exposé whereby a particularly keyboard shortcut makes all of your windows arrange themselves into small versions of themselves displayed all at once for easy task-switching. In the past we've covered a couple of Exposé clones for Windows, but neither was free. SmallWindows is another Exposé clone, but this one is free and, even better, open source. It works pretty well, too. You activate SmallWindows by pressing Win-F12 or holding the mouse at the top-center of the screen. It pops up quickly and smoothly, and rolling the mouse over any of the "mini" windows shown will zoom in on it a bit. It's not seamless, nor does it have much in the way of frills, but it works as advertised and is fast and fun to use. It could use a snappier name, though.