Close Every Open Window in a Hurry

It's not as awesome as the war stories your Uncle Ben used to tell, but here goes anyway. "There I was, working late and trying to get out of the office before the sushi place closed. I was ready to shut down my PC, but I had like 25 windows open -- Outlook, all sorts of browsers, a couple of Word and Excel windows, some folders... even Windows Media Player. I wanted to close them all in a hurry. My odds looked slim."

Thankfully, I was able to close all those windows and programs with a single click.

It was with a program called CloseAll, which does exactly what it sounds like. Run this app, and CloseAll will tell every running program on your desktop to close.

You can pin CloseAll to your Quick Launch Bar (in Windows XP) or the taskbar (in Windows 7) for instant, one-click access to the shut-them-all-down express.

And don't worry: CloseAll won't make you lose your data. The program mimics clicking the X in the title bar of all your windows, so if you have any unsaved work, your apps will prompt you. Pretty cool. [via AddictiveTips]