Impact Software have been distributing their products as shareware since 1988 and they have three superb 30-day programs you can download directly from their site: Almanac (407-437K), a first-rate Calendar/PIM application for Windows 3.x/95/NT which recognises up to 50 different time zones (perfect if you travel a lot) and incorporates daily/monthly/yearly calendars, a to-do list, appointment scheduler, phone and address book, notepad and search tool; Microangelo (640K), a comprehensive icon and cursor editor for Win95/NT 4.0 (nominated as the Best Shareware Utility for 1996 by Ziff-Davis and the Best Graphics application at the 1996 Shareware Industry Awards); and Icon Manager/Icon Studio (285-340K), which carry out much the same functions as Microangelo for those of us still using Windows 3.x or NT versions earlier than NT 4.0 Impact Software also make free overlays for Almanac available on their site (eg: Famous Birthdays or NBA season fixtures) and several very attractive icon collections too. Registration for Impact's products generally costs between $US30 and $US60, depending on the registration level selected. If you need a time-zone sensitive PIM with a vast array of features or you've been searching for an icon/cursor editor that will allow you to customise your PC to the nth degree, it's very hard to go past this site - our Top Pick Of The Week

If you use Windows95 or a Macintosh, you have the ability to select the wallpapers you'd like to use, as well as your startup and shutdown screens. So why put up with the defaults when you can download a huge variety of very, very funny wallpapers from this site? Joke Wallpapers provide an enormous range of parody wallpapers to add a touch of humour to your computer. For example, their send-up of the well-known Microsoft logo ("Microsoft - Where The Hell Do You Want To Go Today?") or the Win95 Start screen ("START To Get Frustrated" or "START To Spend Money" or even "START Ctrl + Alt + Del"). You can also get "101 Dalai Lamas", "Born To Run Unix", "Born To Run Linux" and a small but very clever selection of Bill Gates wallpapers (the Bill Gates Playboy cover will amuse almost anyone). There's also send-ups of Nike, Mac screens (for Windows users), Windows screens (for Mac users) and a whole lot more. Yes, yes, it's not software per se. But if you need some cheer on your beige box - and more than 9,000 people a week who visit Joke Wallpapers certainly do - this collection is definitely worth your time. Most images are between 10K and 80K so viewing and downloading them is a snap too.

Our final selection this week is here because it should be in our archives and we've been waiting for a good reason to add it for the last few months. Trumpet Software are the small Tasmanian company whose Winsock software has become as fundamental to the Web as your browser. A few weeks ago Trumpet released version 3.0 of Trumpet Winsock to facilitate 32-bit Net connections and a small patch has just been released in the last few days. True, this isn't software to get overly excited about - but if you've been experiencing any problems with your Net connections since upgrading to Win95 or NT4.0 or if you have any difficulties with your Winsock and/or need to read the FAQs, register your copy, obtain the latest version or collar some technical support, this is the site to go to. Trumpet provide download sites in both Australia and the USA and if you like you can also obtain copies of the Trumpet Newsreader for DOS or Windows here as well (the Windows version is currently undergoing a major overhaul and an improved version will be released later this year or early in 1997).