How long is pi? The world may never know! But with the advancement of computers, you can now calculate pi to the millionths place. How do you do that? You can use Super Pi, It will let you choose the decimal places as a way to benchmark your computer's processor. The less time, the "faster" the processor. The software is somewhat obsolete with the advent of dual core processors and the latest supported operating system which is Windows XP, but I tried it under Windows 7 and it works! I used CPU-Z to probe for system info and Super Pi for the benchmark.
Free software is awesome, but sometimes paid software has its kicks. What if you could get paid software for free? Introduce Microsoft DreamSpark. DreamSpark is an attempt by Microsoft to give away its software for people to develop new software using Visual Studio 2010, test out there server operating system, develop games and applications for Windows 7 mobile. Pretty awesome right? The only catch is that you need to be a college student or have an e-mail with "edu" (of course there is ways around the verification system)! So if you qualify, I recommend giving it a try!