Windows 7 Upgrade Chart

If you’ve ever looked for details of your system, AIDA32 is a wonderful system utility that fetches all you ever wanted to know out of the depths of your PC. UPDATED: A more recent version is available.

There is plenty of documentation available on the internet to do your own shell scripting , and more than a few scripts you can freely use or modify.

Explore&Burn is a freeware app which integrates into Windows to make burning a CD/DVD drop-dead easy.