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My Favourite Free Software for Windows

Here are some links for totally free software applications that I use regularly. It’s all “Freeware” and most are compatible with Windows 98-2000, NT, XP. The titles I've chosen are a matter of my own personal taste and experience. There is a lot of freeware available for all of the functions listed below, but these are my favourites.

"Must Have" applications for security

Mozilla Firefox

Web browser

My favourite! A stand-alone internet browser which is much more secure, feature rich, and faster than MS Internet Explorer. It is EXCELLENT. Clean, quick, easy privacy controls, pop-up blocking, tabbed browsing...  It can also be expanded and customized in limitless ways with extensions. Another excellent alternative is the Opera browser.

> Firefox Help Page (more info)

Mozilla Thunderbird

Email client

A stand-alone email client (with address book) also based on Mozilla above, but uses the Firefox "look". It has junk mail filtering, and other *Very nice privacy features* (ie - strips html code from email it suspects is junk mail) By default, Thunderbird will not allow viruses or scripts to execute. Extensions are also available for Thunderbird to expand its functionality.
A mature Calendar component can be added as an extension to Thunderbird or Firefox)

> Thunderbird Help Page (more info)

AVAST Home Edition

Anti-Virus

A complete and thorough anti-virus suite. A nice feature is it's ability to scan incoming and outgoing email in almost any software app that uses pop/smtp/imap, such as OE, Netscape, Mozilla (and Thunderbird), Incredimail, etc... (requires free registration)

A Good alternative is AVG AntiVirus Free Edition, however, it supports scanning IMAP email accounts only if you use Outlook, Eudora, or the Bat!

Kerio Personal Firewall

Internet Firewall

To keep your computer secure, you should have a firewall installed.  Kerio is a very secure and customizable solution. Another alternative is ZoneAlarm.  There are several editions on ZoneAlarm's website - look for the simplest, free edition.

Ad-Aware

spyware detection and removal

With the proliferation on malicious websites, bad free software, and Internet Explorer security flaws, spyware is prospering. Spyware is often install on your system without you knowing. It can be a major privacy concern as it logs your Internet activity and possibly your typed user names and passwords. Download Ad-Aware, update it and scan your system. Do this regularly.

> See my page on keeping your computer safe

Microsoft Windows Defender

anti-spyware

This was Giant Software's invention, but was recently bought by MS and was formerly call "Windows Antispyware". It works much like your anti-virus software. It runs all the time monitoring and protecting your computer from becoming infected in the first place. Ad-Aware above works only when you run it, and so, does not offer constant monitoring and protection.  Only works with Windows 2000, XP with IE 6.0+

If you use Firefox and Thunderbird, and are Internet saavy, you don't need this. I only recomend this if you download a lot, and have no issues with your computer being slow.

Home Office

OpenOffice.org

Office Suite

A true alternative to Microsoft Office. This is a complete and robust office suite with word processor, database, spreadsheet, presentation applications, and more. An important feature is its ability to read and write (open, edit, create, and save) Microsoft Office files. It is also good for diagram/flowchart projects.

Scribus

Desktop Publishing

This is a pretty good MS Publisher replacement. Freeware/opensource options for Desktop publishing programs are limited, but Scribus does a fine job if you work on projects that aren't too complex. It can do everything an average user would need. It can also publish to pdf format.

FreePDF

PDF file creator

FreePDF works just like a printer driver - print from any software application and choose FreePDF as the "printer." A PDF file is created in one step and fonts are handles very well. (FreePDF installs an application which always runs in the background. You can prevent it from running with Startup Control Panel below, but you will need to turn it back on before you print) The website is in German, but when installing, you can choose English as your language.

In the latest version, FreePDF XP adds the ability to print several files to one PDF document, or join multiple pre-existing PDF's into one.

An alternative is the open-source PDF Creator

Tip: A big tip! If you want your PDF's to be read on other computers with the fonts you've chosen, then you need to change some settings in the Advanced options when creating your PDFs. In the print dialog go to Properties-->Advanced... change the "Substitute with device font" to "Download as Softfont" This will guarantee the font(s) you used are embedded in the document and will appear the same on other computers. AND, if you want MAC computers to read it, you need to change an addition setting in the Properies-->Advanced box. Expand "PostScript Options" (click the little plus sign next to it). Change the PostScript Output Option to "Optimize for portability"

Both require the free software Ghostscript 7.05 or higher to be installed.

EZBack-it-up

Back-up software

This is a simple Back-up software which creates a 'mirror' of your specified files or folders in another location, or drive. You can schedule automatic backups to happen whenever you want (first thing every morning for me). Once the initial backup is created, it only updates the changed files, making it very quick - just a couple seconds on average for me. You can optionally tell it to delete files in the backup which no longer exist in the original - so if you move a file, the backup will not create a duplicate. Without even thinking about it, you will always have an up to date backup. (Note: This software simply copies files to another location on you're computer, not to removeable media such as CD-R, nor does it compress data. But once your backup is created, you can use your CD-R software to burn the back-up to CD.)

EZMoney

Personal Finance software

This is a simple Personal Finance application to keep track of your accounts, investments, and budget. It has pretty much everything the average home user would need including checkbook style transactions, purchase itemization, spending management, monthly bills monitoring, reporting tools, and support for importing data downloaded from you bank's online banking service (ofx and qfx files).

GnuCash

Personal/Small bisiness Finance Software

GnuCash is personal and small-business financial-accounting software which is a much more complete than EZMoney, but slightly less intuitive to use. It may be overkill for the average user. From its homepage: "Designed to be easy to use, yet powerful and flexible, GnuCash allows you to track bank accounts, stocks, income and expenses. As quick and intuitive to use as a checkbook register, it is based on professional accounting principles to ensure balanced books and accurate reports. Features include Double-Entry Accounting, Stock/Bond/Mutual Fund Accounts, Small-Business Accounting, Customers-Vendors-Jobs, Invoices (A/P, A/R), QIF/OFX/HBCI Import, Transaction Matching, Reports, Graphs, Scheduled Transactions, and Financial Calculations."

Internet

See my recommendation for a web-browser and email client under the "Must Have" software heading.

NVU

html/webpage editor

An easy, what-you-see-is-what-you-get html editor. Based on the Mozilla applications above, it is developing quickly to become a "Dreamweaver alternative"

FileZilla

FTP client

A fast and reliable FTP program with a nice, friendly user interface. Another option is Whisper FTP Surfer

Get It

Internet utility

A great and simple download manager.

Star Downloader

Internet utility

A more feature-rich download manager than Get It. It supports automatic capture in IE, Opera, and Mozilla.

0spam.com

Service: Spam blocker

This is not software, but a free online service. It uses a very flexible white-list/blacklist and an optional challenge-response method of filtering your email. This makes it virtually 100% effective against SPAM. There is no software to download and install, so it's transparent to you as a user (you still get to use your regular email software/settings/etc). It requires some setting up, so it may not be for everyone. The Spam filtering functions included in the Mozilla Suite and Thunderbird are usually enough on their own, but if you get a LOTS of spam, check out OSpam.com for details (also works with Yahoo and Hotmail).

PopOops

Internet utility

A tiny application that blocks ALL pop-up windows in MS Internet Explorer. (holding the Ctrl key temporarily disables it). Mozilla/Firebird already has this function built in.

Graphics

See my recommendation for a diagram/flowchart program (OpenOffice.org) under the Home Office software heading.

GIMP

Graphic editor

Graphics editing, manipulation, and creation comparable to Photoshop. You can even get a version that looks and acts almost exactly like Photoshop. Its called Gimpshop.

Paint.NET

Graphic editor

Paint.NET is free image editing and photo manipulation software. It requires you have Microsoft's DotNet 2.0 Framework installed, but it has a very nice and sleek interface with many features, including support for layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools. An active and growing online community provides friendly help,  tutorials, and plugins.

Google SketchUp

3D/graphic utility

A very cool application for creating 3D models and plans. It can be used to create a model of an entire building, with textures, shapes, and even shading.

IrfanView

Image/graphic utility

An image browser and utility (like ACDSee) that can create slide-shows too. It can also generate webpages with thumbnails linked to images.

Picasa

Image/graphic utility

Very interesting software, also from Google. Picasa creates an environment for sorting and organizing photos, adding captions, and editing - without actually affecting the original images (unless you want it to). It has a different focus than IrfanView. I suggest you try both.

JPEG resizer

Image utility

Automatically resizes multiple digital photos in one step. Great if you have a digital camera and a pile of images too big to use for a web page or to send by email.

System Utilities

7-Zip

ZIP/compression utility

The best compression utility. Handles most compression formats, and introduces its own archival format, ".7z" which creates compressed files 30-50% smaller than zip files. Nice simple interface.

If you also install the free IZArc, then you can pretty much open any compressed format.

Startup Control Panel

System utility

Very nice! A very small utility that sits in your Windows Control Panel which allows you to see, enable, disable what programs start when your computer in booted up. It's handy for disabling annoying programs that startup at boot and don't have an option to turn that "feature" off.

DiskKeeper Lite

System utility

A Defragmentation program that works faster and more thoroughly than the built in Windows tool (direct download link). O&O Defrag Freeware Edition is another Good alternative. Both work with WinXP even though it's not mentioned.

CCleaner

System utility

Cleans all junk from your hard drive. Can delete temp files, internet files, history, etc. It is also quite customizable and thorough. Note: after doing a full cleaning, run  System Restore to see if you have restore points. CCleaner *may* delete previous system restore points.

Adobe Reader Speedup

PDF utility

Adobe's Acrobat Reader is famous for taking a long time to start up. The main reason for this is it loads a ton of plugins you'll never use as it starts. Adobe Reader Speedup changes some settings that can drastically increase the start-up speed by not loading the plugins. Works with many versions of Adobe Reader.

Lupas Rename

System utility

A little utility that can rename multiple files at once. e.g: Rename and auto-number all photos in a directory from F0120021.jpg to My_party_01.jpg, etc.

Synergy

System utility

Very cool!! If you have two or more computers, this application lets you use one computer as a primary control for the other computers. In other words, if the computers are networked together, you can use the keyboard and mouse of the primary computer to control other computers. In my case, I have my laptop placed to the right of my desktop computer monitor.  Using the keyboard and mouse of my desktop, I simply move my mouse cursor off the right side of the screen, and it appears on my laptop. I can then control my laptop as if the keyboard an mouse were connected to it. Just move the mouse back off the left side of the laptop screen back onto the desktop screen. Very cool!

Object Dock

System utility

Now for a little fun. This software creates that Mac OS X-like bar at the bottom of your screen with icons that expand as youy mouse floats over them. You can download all sorts of icons and docklets (mini programs that run inside the dock bar).  I use it, and removed all other icons from my desktop, and then with a simple Mac wallpaper made my computer look like this screen shot. My windows menu is set to "auto-hide" and is at the top of the screen. When I put my mouse against the top, the Windows bar appears as in this screenshot. Not that useful, but kind of fun.

Stickies

System utility

I love this little app. It floats little post-it notes on your desktop with can contain any text you want, and "Once on screen, stickies will remain where placed until closed, even through reboots." I use it to keep a semi-transparent "To do" list floating on the upper right on the screen. The notes can look like actual post-it notes, or you can customize it, as I have, to look more like a MAC application. The look, shape, font, transparency, etc, is all customizable. The app is very low on system resourses, which I appreciate.

CD's & DVD's

CD Burner XP Pro

CD/DVD burning software

Freeware CD/DVD burning software. If your CD or DVD Writer didn't come with descent software, this has a nice interface and good features. However, if your CD-Writer did come with software (Nero or Easy CD Creator), it's best to use that. (read the FAQ page at the website).

ISO Buster

System utility

Data recovery for CDs. If you have an unreadable or damaged CD, IsoBuster bypasses the operating system to access data on the CD that the OS can't.

Music & audio

Audacity

Audio editor

A very nice, fast multitrack audio editor and recorder for Windows (or Linux or Mac). Supports WAV, AIFF, Ogg, and MP3 formats. Features include envelope editing, mixing, built-in effects and plug-ins with preview function, VST plug-ins, noise removal, etc., all with unlimited undo. Supports 24-32 bit recording! (as of version 1.2)

Dart Timer Recorder

audio VCR

This freebie works much like your old VCR. You set up a time for it to start recording a sound source, and a time to stop. Great if you want to record your radio interview when you can't be home...

Quartz AudioMaster

Audio/MIDI sequencer

4 audio, 16 MIDI tracks, one stereo in/out, Quartz plugins, 16/24 bits 44.1 Khz sample rate. Very basic.

LilyPond

music notation

This is script based music engraving software. For advanced users only as its quite complexto use.

Finale Notepad

music notation/music file viewer

This free version of the ubiquitous "Finale" may be quite lame, but it allows you view and print files from the "full" version.  Also, with it you can create VERY basic music scores. I think Sibelius has a similar tool for viewing, but I'm not sure about basic file creation. If you want "real" notation software for free, check out Lilypond above.

Kristal

audio sequencer

A free multi-track audio sequencer: 16 tracks, 32 bits, 192 kHz support, ASIO support, VST inserts, and more. I have not used this myself, but it has received favourable reviews.

CDex

CD ripper/audio converter

CDex can covert between many audio formats including mp3. It can read files directly from CD or files already on your harddrive.

Other Stuff