New legal music download service We7 offers free, non-DRM MP3 downloads from a number of popular artists. The catch? Each track has a 10-second advertisement tacked on to the start. A month after downloading an ad-supported track, you are able to go back to the We7 site and download a version with the advert removed. However, I downloaded two test tracks and found that the advert can be removed easily through the use of simple audio editing software. A very interesting business model indeed… only time will tell whether it is ultimately successful.

This cheesy Microsoft promo video from 1991 explains why you should upgrade to MS-DOS 5. Ah, the good old days…

Free Firefox extension FlashBlock replaces all embedded Flash objects with a placeholder that can be clicked to reveal the blocked element. This can improve performance and reduce memory usage. The extension also has a whitelist feature which enables you to define sites on which you don’t want the block to apply, for example YouTube.

There’s an awful lot that can be accomplished using only free software, and web design is no exception. All you really need is Kompozer (to create and edit web pages), Paint.NET (to create and edit images) and FileZilla (client version – to upload pages and images to a Web server).

JkDefrag is an open-source disk optimisation utility (or “defragger”) for Windows operating systems. As well as the standard GUI, it also comes with a command line version for scripting and scheduling, and there’s even a screensaver version installed for defragmenting your disks while your machine is idle.