Here's one that I've used several times in the past.  Microsoft has a virtual CD Control Panel that let's you mount an ISO image as a drive letter.  This is really handy if you have an MSDN subscription and are constantly downloading ISO's from the MSDN site.  Instead of burning each ISO to a CD you can keep it on a local or network drive and simply mount it as needed.  This will save the cost of a CD and the clutter of having a bunch of CD's laying around.

I've tested this only under Windows XP.

Here's the link:
Virtual CD-ROM Control Panel

This one is destined for the Pragmatic SDK.

A new contender for the Pragmatic Toolkit is PDFCreator, a SourceForge project which allows you to print to a pdf file much like you would a normal printer.  This is useful if you want to need to capture output to a platform inpependant format.  For example, you have a web page that shows a reciept from an online purchase.  Use PDFCreator to print it to a PDF so you have a nice record of the purchase.  This also works for screen prints or any other capture operations where you have an applications that can print (basically any editor program like Word, StarOffice, PaintShop Pro, Photo Shop, etc). 

I use it to screen capture protected web pages (on sites where you need to sign in) and send it to someone who doesn't have access to the site, like my wife.  It's useful if you are going for a paperless office as you could scan your paper items and then print them to PDF (if your scanning software doesn't support it natively).  You can also create product documentation by creating the document in Word and then printing it to PDF to create a manual for distribution to customers.

Here is the link:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/

This is a multipart series on backing up your computer (at home or the office). 

Part 1 - Decide what needs to be backed up.

First you need to figure out what actually needs to be backed up.  This may be an easy step if everything you work on goes in your "My Documents" folder.  However, if you have stuff scattered across your hardrive it may be a bit more of a chore.  Many programs store your files in default locations.  Let's look at each type of application and see where the files we need to back up are located.

Email
Email is probably one of the most important applications.  Some people (for better or worse) store everything in their email box.  I use Outlook at home and the office.  At the office your information is probably backed up by your server administrator so you shouldn't have to worry.  You may want to double check just in case.  Let's concentrate on the none corporate environment, i.e. home, home office and small office.  You either have a dedicated email client like Outlook, Outlook Express, Thunderbird, etc or you use a hosted service like Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, Google Mail, etc.  If you use the hosted service this should be fairly safe.  Let's focus on the email clients. 

Email Clients
So you use Outlook or another email reader.  These typically download messages from the email server to your local desktop and store them in a file.  In the case of Outlook these are stored in a file ending with a .pst extension.  You can find this file by clicking the file menu then Data File Management.  The dialog box that comes up will display the path to your Outlook data file.  You may have more then one.

You can either leave the file where it is or move it to a more convenient spot.  I will talk about this in Part 2.  So now that we have found our data file we need to make a note of the location and include it in our backup plans. 

Your Documents
A large number of people store their documents in the "My Documents" folder simply because it is the default save folder in many applications.  If all your documents are here then you are in luck.  Otherwise you need to find all of your documents and either organize them or keep track of them.  More about this in Part 2.

Personal Finance Files
Do you use Microsoft Money or Quicken?  If so you have a file that contains all of your financial information lurking on your computer somewhere.  You need to find this.  In Microsoft Money you can click the File menu and then Backup and this should open up in the default backup folder.  Money is smart enough to make a backup of of it's data file.  So you should see a file with the extensions .mny and some files with the extension .mbf.  Make a note of this location as you need to back these up.  You can also change this location.  More about this in Part 2.

Media
Here's where it gets messy.  Media files are photographs, movies, audio files, etc.  In other words these are your vacation photos, your wedding videos and your Itunes music files.  So these files are one of a kind so they should be backed up.  The problem?  They are usually gi-normous (really big).  You need to find all of your media files and these can be difficult to track down because your camera stores photos in one directory, your video software in another and your mp3 collection is in another location.  You need to find all of these files and note the location (more on this in Part 2). 

Money is the water of life for a small business.

This is so obvious as to almost not need mentioning.  The point I want to make is that many people want to start businesses yet have no control over their personal finances.  I strongly believe that the two (business and personal finances) are linked very closely and furthermore that you money handling is a reflection on you in general.  I believe if you don't handle money well you also don't handle your life well; i.e. you don't exercise, you don't eat right etc. 

You lack discipline and if you lack discipline all is lost…

I've decided to attempt a paperless revolution. 

I'm going to scan most of my paper doc's and store them on my pc and then shred the originals.  Of course I will keep the originals where necessary.  I then plan on archiving to CD or even DVD on a regular basis and storing a copy off site, maybe in my desk at work.

The Equipment:

HP Officejet 6210 All-in-One

This seems to be working ok but I still need to figure out how to scan multiple documents and then split the scan into multiple files.

The Files:

Searchable PDF's created with the OCR features of the HP 6210 and the HP Director software. 

The System:

Sort the files into folders as appropriate and use Google desktop to search for relevant information.  This is the big benefit.  I can search through all of the text of my documents with the power of Google.