64-bit versions of Windows 7, Vista, Ubuntu 9.04 and 9.10 fight it out for the fastest boot time on identical hardware.

Windows 7 is drawing raves from pretty much everywhere these days–many of which are the result of direct comparisons to its oft-derided predecessor, Vista. Windows 7 definitely seems to have Vista beat as far features, security, and ease of use go, but what about speed concerns?

We’ve seen some conflicting reports, in terms of system boot time, so these two guys decided to put the two OSes to the test. They loaded Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit and Vista Ultimate 64-bit on two otherwise identical Lenovo Thinkpad T400s. Which system booted up faster?

The above video captures the second boot for both systems. They rebooted both computers a handful more times, and retried the test later in the day. You can see the decidedly different results below.

Want to turn your Windows installation DVD into an installation flash drive? WinToFlash can do that and more.

WinToFlash can transfer Windows XP, Vista, and 7 onto a flash drive as well as Server 2003 and 2008. WinToFlash can also transfer Windows Preinstallation Environments to flash drive.

The process is simple and mostly obvious. You tell WinToFlash where the installation files you want to transfer are located and either let the transfer wizard take care of things, or specify settings like what kind of format the flash drive will undergo. In our test using a USB 2.0 generic flash drive it took about 12 minutes to turn a Windows 7 installation DVD into a USB-based installer.

WinToFlash is freeware, Windows only.

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It is not easy as it sounds to transfer a Windows installation DVD to a flash drive. The whole process can be divided into two manual steps. Files from the Windows installation DVD have to be transferred to the USB drive which has to be made bootable as well. Beginners might prefer an easier solution to the manual approach.

WinToFlash has been designed to make the process as straightforward as possible. The portable software program comes with a wizard that helps users transfer files from a Windows installation DVD to an USB flash drive. The software supports the transfer of various Windows installation DVDs, namely transferring Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003 and 2008 or Windows 7 installations to an USB flash drive.

The program can also transfer Windows PE installations to USB flash drive. All it basically takes to transfer the files is to specify the path of the Windows installation DVD and the path of the USB flash drive. The program will handle the rest. It will transfer the installation DVD to the USB flash drive and make the flash drive bootable so that users can boot from it and install the Windows operating system from USB flash drive.

[ Download WinToFlash ]

LicenseCrawler is a portable and free tool for retrieving serial numbers and product keys from your computer. A simple scan with LicenseCrawler ensures you’ll never be left trying to reinstall software without the proper key.

LicenseCrawler doesn’t do anything you couldn’t do yourself, it just does it much faster and without you actually having to open up your registry editor. The application scans over your Windows registry file, without altering it, and looks for instances of serial numbers, license keys, and other identifying bits of information.

It found a number of licenses on our test system, but it if the application in question doesn’t store its product key in the registry—instead in the program or application data folder—LicenseCrawler will miss it.

Have a handy tool for keeping track of and searching out product keys? Lets hear about it in the comments. LicenseCrawler is freeware, Windows only.

[ Download LicenseCrawler ]