Manage Your Network with Spiceworks

A glaring omission in yesterday's 15 fabulous business freebies roundup: Spiceworks IT Desktop. Designed for small and medium businesses, this impressive tool offers network inventory, monitoring, reporting, and troubleshooting, along with a complete IT help desk. Similarly equipped commercial packages can easily cost hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars.

The browser-based program provides tracking for up to 250 networked devices (PCs, servers, routers, printers, etc.). It inventories not just the hardware, but also any installed software. In short, it's an extremely well-rounded application, one that should be on the shortlist for any new or expanding SMB.

Okay, so what's the catch? There are two, and they're both fairly minor. First, Spiceworks has to turn a profit somehow: Ads span the right side of the browser window. Second, the developers provide no support to speak of, though you can tap into community-based support. Spiceworks is available free of charge. It's compatible with Windows 2000 and later (including Vista).