Although your Windows installation disc may say "Home Premium Edition," it still contains the other versions (such as Pro or Ultimate) on the disc—it just has a very small file called ei.cfg that tells the disc what version to install. The ei.cfg Removal Utility creates a new ISO of your install disc that ignores this file, thus letting you choose what edition you want when you start the installer.

While this tool is especially useful for computer technicians who have to install Windows a lot, it's also nice to have for those of us that tend to lose discs often—especially in this day and age of emailed product keys. Now, if you need to reinstall Windows but can't find your disc, you can just borrow a friend's—even if it's an edition that's different than yours. You just need let the installer know which edition matches your product key (Note: Your disc still needs to be the same kernel as your key (i.e. 32 or 64-bit).

The ei.cfg Removal Utility is a free download, Windows only, and requires a Windows 7 install disc to use. Thanks, Cody Ryan Harrod!

After you download and fire up namebench, just click the Start Benchmark button to test out a handful of free public DNS services, from Google Public DNS to OpenDNS to UltraDNS. Once started, the test took about 12 minutes to complete using the default settings. When it's done, you'll be presented with a handful of handy charts displaying the results of the tests.

(Click the image above for a closer look.)

You can see the results to my test in the screenshots above and below. From the looks of things, UltraDNS is the DNS that's going to do the most to speed up my connection. In fact, it claims UltraDNS will be 46% faster than Google Public DNS (the DNS server my computer was using when I ran the test)—so it looks like I may just be switching yet again.

(Click the image above for a closer look.)

Namebench is a free, open-source download, works with Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. If you give it a try, let's hear what DNS server scores highest for you in the comments.

It allows you to bulk install up to 58 popular Windows apps without having to sit there and click through those annoying pop up questions. Obviously, you want to keep the install time down—because things can go downhill while you wait. [Ninite via Lifehacker]

Using the application is easy enough—just launch it and drag a picture onto the interface, or open a new image from the File -> Open menu. Once you've pulled up the image, use the Edit -> Drawing parameters menu item to choose the filter you'd like to use, tweak the filter settings, and click the Draw it button to render the final drawing.

Readers will note that you can do the same thing from your fully licensed, totally legal copy of Photoshop, but for people without hundreds of dollars to spend, FotoSketcher produces some impressive results, easily, and for free. FotoSketcher is a free download for Windows only.