Often we discover by accident a few incredibly timesaving tools, which we could have been using for years in our computer and realty work, had we known about them.

1. Google Desktop: How many times have you misfiled something in your computer and wasted time looking for it? Did you ever need to find an old email of something a client said, but had no idea where you stored it? Ever need the last name of your college classmate's new husband to send them a card, but cannot find where she wrote it in a Word document story recounting her honeymoon?

Search no more. Okay, well just one search. Free Google Desktop searches everything in your computer the same way it searches the Internet to find things you ask for. Moreover, if it can search the whole Internet accurately in seconds, imagine how fast it finds stuff inside your little batch of files and folders.

Google describes Google Desktop this way: "It's a desktop search application that provides full text search over your email, files, music, photos, chats, Gmail, web pages that you've viewed, and more. By making your computer searchable, Desktop puts your information easily within your reach and frees you from having to manually organize your files, emails and bookmarks ... ."

You download Google Desktop tool by clicking here.

2. Microsoft Image Resizer: Ever have recipients (even clients!) of your emailed property photos gripe that your whopper 5, 6, or 7 MB images took too long to download. Or, they said your pics were so big that they were hard to view?

Chances are that you have no idea how to make photos are formatted for sending to clients, friends or relatives, or texting to their cell and smart phones.

Enter the Image Resizer. This free software download from Microsoft merges perfectly with Windows XP and lets you copy into a smaller size format any image that you have, into your choice of four sizes.

Small (Fits a 640 x 480 screen)

Medium (Fits a 600 x 800 screen)

Large (Fits a 1084 x 768 screen)

Handheld PC (Fits a 240 x 320 screen)

Your original photo is not altered in any way by the resizing; Image Resizer creates a duplicate file in the same folder as your original and resizes only the duplicate which is automatically labeled with the name you originally gave it, say, "Betty Cheers--2," plus a text designation of the new size, "Betty Cheers--2 (Small)."

Multiple image resizing saves HUGE amounts of time. You can resize all the images in a single folder, or, cherry-pick ones for resizing. What a time saver!

Operation is ultra-simple: Once Image Resizer is installed, you just right click on the thumbnail of any saved image and you will see the Resize Images option appear in the menu.

There are also some nifty advanced features (click on an "Advanced" button) for the more savvy users. They include:

• Custom lets you manually set the size you want for your photos.

• Make pictures smaller but not larger constrains resizing to only sizes smaller than the original photo.

• Resize the original pictures (don't create copies) permanently applies resizing to your original photo.

The Image Resizer is one of the new lines of PowerToys for Windows XP from Microsoft. The Resizer program adds its function to the windows explorer context menu and is therefore only one click away.