I love getting things done. That sense of accomplishment is one of the most satisfying feelings you can experience, bested only by the feeling one gets when something is done for less money than usual. My favourite brag is that I did something 'on time and under budget'.
Accordingly, I am always on the lookout for utilities that are (a) useful and (b) free for my Macintosh computer. This quest is not always fruitful. I have explored hundreds of utilities that sound useful, only to discover that they just add to the clutter and are not very practical to use. Nonetheless, there are treasures out there.
Tiger, the latest version of Apple Computer's operating system, introduced Dashboard, a layer of mini-applications (widgets) that can be viewed with the press of a key. Some of these widgets immediately hook you. Still, the Dashboard experience has one failing - it is terribly slow the first time you use it after restarting your Mac. This is because most of the widgets have to go online and get updated information. But they do not go looking until you call them up.
My next two favourite widgets are Unit Converter and the Language Translator. I use the first of these widgets four or five times a week to convert metric figures. Occasionally, I will discover comments on a bulletin board in a language I do not understand. I copy a message in any of the 13 available languages into the Translator widget and voila - it is revealed in English. Some people use these widgets as a secret code, so only Mac users with Dashboard's Translator can decipher their comments.