Copying a few documents from your hard drive to your flash drive doesn't stress out the default copier too much. If you're dumping gigabytes of data from one drive to another, however, you'll quickly find that the default copier is sluggish and unreliable. The pinnacle of frustration: When Microsoft's default copier putters out while you're transferring tons of files and you're left with no indication what was copied and what wasn't, leaving you to pick through the file lists on each end or starting from scratch to ensure a clean copy. The five excellent alternatives below all succeed at alleviating the many shortcomings of the default copier.
FastCopy (Windows, Free)
RichCopy (Windows, Free)
SuperCopier (Windows, Free)
TeraCopy (Windows, Basic: Free / Pro: $21)
CopyHandler (Windows, Free)
This week's honorable mention goes to RoboCopy a powerful command line utility originally offered as part of the Windows Resource Kit and now included in Windows Vista and Server 2008. Even with the GUI add-on it's not pretty or remotely easy to use but it's quite a powerhouse if you love the command line.
Whether it's your first time trying out an alternative copier or you've long since swapped out the old and busted for the new and streamlined, we want to hear about it in the comments below.
Twitter has become a nationwide phenomenon, and like any phenom, all the Twitter talk grows quickly tiresome. But despite what you may think, Twitter isn't just for narcissists; it's actually insanely useful.
Search is hands down the most useful 
Virtually every company has a Twitter account these days, which means if there's a product you really care about, following them on Twitter is often the easiest way to stay up to date with the latest developments. But more often than not (in the context of Twitter, at least), the thing we care about most is ourselves. We've already shown you how to create an ego search to monitor what's being said about you on the web, but now Twitter is another must-use tool for getting your ego fix.
We've been using newsreaders to subscribe to RSS feeds for years now, but newsreaders still haven't completely caught on with the world at large. It seems less manageable to us, but many people are perfectly happy using Twitter as a tool to keep up with the latest news—which is partly why CNN has over 1 million followers. Likewise, re-tweeting (the process of copying and re-posting someone else's tweet) spreads news like wildfire—so breaking news can reach you on Twitter a million times faster than through any of the old methods. (For what it's worth, here at Lifehacker we have our own Twitter feed that pushes out all of our top stories.)
This is closer to what people think about when they think Twitter. But, as I said above, Twitter communication doesn't have to be a cesspool of "what I ate this morning" and "just flushed the toilet." You can choose whose updates you want to be notified of and how you get those updates. Upshot: If you and your pals use Twitter well, it can be a fantastic communication tool. If not, of course it's useless—but that's not really Twitter's fault. Also, if privacy is a concern, you can always protect your updates.
Whether you want to add a new event to Google Calendar, a new to-do to Remember the Milk, or a new note to Evernote, you can do it all via Twitter. It took us a while to warm up to Twitter from a productivity angle, but this kind of integration made us admit that Twitter may yet boost your productivity, too.
Provided you have enough followers (with enough knowledge), Twitter is also a powerful place to ask questions and get answers. Before I started writing this post, for example, I asked my followers what they think Twitter's best uses are—the answers to which helped inform this entire post.
