WinPython is a free open-source portable distribution of the Python programming language for Windows 8/10 and scientific and educational usage.

It is a full-featured Python-based scientific environment:

    - Designed for scientists, data-scientists, and education (thanks to NumPy, SciPy, Sympy, Matplotlib, Pandas, pyqtgraph, etc.):
        - interactive data processing and visualization using Python with Spyder and Jupyter/IPython, Pyzo, IDLEX or IDLE
        - fully integrated Cython and Numba! See included example
        - connectors (cffi, odbc, rpy2, scilab2py, requests, ...) for advanced users
    - Portable:
        - Runs out of the box(*) on any Windows 8+ with 2GB Ram (Jupyter Notebook will require a recent browser)
        - The WinPython folder can be moved to any location (**) (local, network, USB drive) with most of the application settings
    - Flexible:
        - You can install as many WinPython distributions as you want on the same machine: each one is isolated and self-consistent
        - These installations can be of different versions of Python (3.7/3.8/3.9...)
    - Customizable:
        - The integrated WinPython Package Manager (WPPM) helps installing, uninstalling or upgrading Python packages
        - It's also possible to install or upgrade packages using pip from the WinPython command prompt
        - A configuration file allows you to set environment variables at runtime

WinPython is something different from other Python Distributions (see historic motivation and concept):

    - non-invasive: WinPython lives entirely in its own directory, without any OS installation
    - customizable: add your missing packages, zip the WinPython directory and give it to your students
    - do your own version: a winpython-creator kit is made available for you

This tip is really great:

"You’re going to find this hard to believe, but that built-in Windows app that will split-print an image for you is none other than Microsoft’s much-maligned Paint application!!"


   1. Open the image you’d like to print in Paint
   2. Select: Print -> Page Setup (Vista and 7), or File -> Page Setup (in XP)
   3. Under Scaling, select Fit to and change the setting to something like “2 by 2 page(s)”
   4. Click OK
   5. Print the image from Paint, and make sure to select “All Pages”

Microsoft has gone to great lengths to get users of Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 to upgrade to Windows 10- by hook or by crook. While Microsoft has published very little technical information about their systems for encouraging and pushing Windows 10 upgrades to users of earlier operating systems, some of the published information that does exist is actually wrong or incomplete...

I put together a video that explains some of the well-known Windows settings related to Windows 10 upgrades. It also demonstrates how some of the background tasks that Microsoft installs along with its Windows 10 program files actively reset system settings that you might have changed.

You can view the video here, and the full transcript appears below.

Syncthing replaces proprietary sync and cloud services with something open, trustworthy and decentralized. Your data is your data alone and you deserve to choose where it is stored, if it is shared with some third party and how it's transmitted over the Internet.

This page provides 32- and 64-bit Windows binaries of many scientific open-source extension packages for the official CPython distribution of the Python programming language.

zpaq is a free and open source (GPL v3) incremental, journaling command-line archiver for Windows, Linux and Mac OS/X

Make Excel fly with Python!

Replace your VBA code with Python, a powerful yet easy-to-use programming language that is highly suited for numerical analysis. Supports Windows & Mac!

- Easy deployment: The receiver of an xlwings-powered spreadsheets only needs Python with minimal dependencies — or nothing at all when shipped with the Python
- Cross-Platform: xlwings works with Microsoft Excel on Windows and Mac.
- Plug-and-Play: No cumbersome installation of Excel add-ins or license keys.
- Flexible: Works with pretty much every combination of Excel and Python.
- Two way communication: Call Python from Excel or interact with Excel from Python.
- Free and open-source: xlwings is released under a permissive BSD-License.

Unchecky automatically unchecks unrelated offers, both saving you mouse clicks and making it less likely to miss a checkbox of an unwanted offer.
Installers often try to sneak additional programs as a natural part of the installation. Unchecky warns you when you try to accept a potentially unwanted offer, which makes it less likely to be accepted accidentally.

Very dirty trick... but it works.