The computer applications are free to use. Some programs may have restrictions of usage. Before using any software on a corporate or business computer check the restrictions of the product and check your company policy. All of the software listed here is free for use by home users. Graphics: Infranview Paint.net - Paint.NET is free image and photo editing software for computers that run Windows. It features an intuitive and innovative user interface with 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.
Gimp Shop - GIMPshop is a modification of the free/open source GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP), intended to replicate the feel of Adobe Photoshop. Its primary purpose is to make users of Photoshop feel comfortable using GIMP.
- Link: http://www.gimpshop.com/download.shtml go to GIMPshop 2.2.4 for Windows then to alternate download
Audio/Video
VLC Media Player Classic
- Media Player Classic looks like the old Windows Media Player v6.4, but that's where the similarity ends. Under the hood, this program packs a lot of features, including codecs for viewing DVD discs, MPEG1, MPEG2, and MPEG 4 video files, MP3 and Ogg files. MPC can also use the QuickTime and the RealPlayer architectures (if installed on the computer) to play their native files.
- Download Link: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=205650
Additional software to enhance Media Player Classic can be found here: Audacity Tools: Revo Uninstaller CCleaner Glary Utilities - Featuring disk space analysis, a disk and privacy cleaner removal of broken shortcuts, duplicate files and empty folders erasing, recovery, encryption/decryption and splitting/joining of files registry cleaning and defraga memory optimizera process, startup, uninstall and context menu managermanagement of Internet Explorer add-ons access to some Windows tools
- Link: Website: http://glaryutilities.com/gu.html Download link: http://www.download.com/Glary-Utilities/3000-2094_4-10508531.html
Lupas Rename 2000 Defraggler UltraVNC Remote Software
- UltraVNC is a client/server package that allows remote control of another PC using any TCP/IP connection. The stable release works with Windows W9x/NT/2K/XP, while a recently-released beta version provides greater support for Vista. UltraVNC offers all the features you need, including auto-configuration, easy user interface, extensive hotkeys and embedded file transfer. Add to that the fact that it's free, secure, reliable and reasonably speedy and you have a winner.
- Link: http://www.uvnc.com/
Office/Home: Bullzip PDF Writer The Bullzip PDF Printer works as a Microsoft Windows printer and allows you to write PDF documents from virtually any Microsoft Windows application. This program is FREEWARE with limitations, which means that it is FREE for personal and commercial use up to 10 users. Link: http://www.bullzip.com/products/pdf/info.php
OpenOffice.org - OpenOffice.org. The basics of office document creation are well covered with an excellent module for each; word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, a desktop database, and some other gimmicks are all well worth exploring. All of the modules are easy to learn and if you've ever used any other office software, it's a doddle. With the exception of the very new MS document format for which free translators are available, it handles all the same document types and you'll have no problem exchanging documents with MS Office.
- Link: http://www.openoffice.org
Jarte
- If you don't write novels, reports and documentations all the time, but like to use a Word Processor for letters, memos and how-to's, you will love
 - It's lightweight so loads in a jiffy, and deserves the word "courageous" for its clean fresh looks. Task oriented is in; and menus are out. “Even Microsoft eventually felt the same need and Office 2007's "ribbon" interface was the result.” (Bob Flora, Carolina Road Software)
- In “compact layout” you're not more than one click away from everything you want to do. That is if you've activated 'clickless operations', meaning that when you hover over a button, the options pop up and await your command (if necessary in a nifty tool bar).
- There's also a 'classic layout', and a 'minimal layout', with all the nice menus I am so used to. With just a tiny little bit of very easy editing (“settings.ini”), you can chose another 'minimal layout'.
- There is a wealth of options. All the formatting you want: fonts, paragraphs, page, header and footer, there's an outline function, indenting, outdenting, the format brush to easily transfer formatting, and only one feature I miss: format styles.
- Some solutions are as simple as clever, e.g. when you mark a word and click the 'Encyclopedia' button, Jarte looks that word up in the Wikipedia. Correspondingly 'Dictionary' and 'Thesaurus' take you online, unless of course, you installed WordWeb, a free thesaurus that fits in seamlessly.
- "Word is a great word processor and may always be the tool of choice for large projects that require elaborate formatting, but for many tasks Word's size and complexity can it feel like you're driving a tank to the grocery store.” (Bob Flora, Carolina Road Software)
- Nevertheless Jarte indulges with templates, tables, you can insert pictures and documents, manage files and folders without ever leaving Jarte. There's the 'Recents' menu and there's 'Favorites', which you define yourself to easily access your documents. Jarte remembers your clipboard, let's you take screen shots, offers statistics on the number of pages, lines, words and characters, lot's of ways to customize the software.
- If collaboration is your concern, don't be concerned. Jarte reads Rich Text Files (rtf) Word documents (doc) and even Word 2007 (docx). You can print all that, but even more intriguing and laudable is that you can export your document as a PDF-file. This feature depends on utilities like PDFCreator which you can downoad from here.
- You can install it on an USB-stick and take it with you, have it on stand-by, minimize it to your system tray, it takes less than 10 MB RAM, and it is there, when you need it. The price is priceless, and if you feel like supporting the crew, buy a license but be aware because “rather than attempting coerce users into purchasing Jarte Plus by leaving some important features out of Jarte, the idea is to make Jarte very capable and then add only "would be nice" type features to Jarte Plus. In that sense, Jarte Plus' extra features are a reward for people who enjoy using Jarte regularly and wish to support the project.” (Bob Flora, Carolina Road Software) To put it differently: Jarte Plus, the commercial version, adds some extra features but Jarte Free is really sufficient for most.
Security: Eraser To be as safe as possible, you must overwrite (erase) both slack space and free space. Also, the Windows swap file (a.k.a page file) could contain private data that you wouldn’t want to have fall into the wrong hands. Eraser will securely erase selected files and folders, or even whole disks, located on your hard drive (it works with any drive, including IDE, SCSI and RAID, and CD-RWs). - Link: Download the latest version on top. http://www.heidi.ie/node/14
Avast! 4 Home Free Edition - Avast is the least restricted product out of the three, with anti-rootkit and anti-spyware capabilities. It also has full real-time capabilities, including a web scanner, an e-mail scanner and IM and P2P protection.
- Download link: www.download.com/Avast-Home-Edition/3000-2239_4-10019223.html
- Note: You'll have to register (free) on the publisher site to be able to continue using this program after 60 days.
SuperAntiSpyware
Panda Anti Rootkit MISC
Personal Ancestral File - Personal Ancestral File is top choice in terms of power and simple usability. This application is a Windows based, GUI, relational database with few if any limitations in size. The database input mechanism is hierarchical, showing the family relationships in a way that you can easily navigate to younger, or older generations simply by clicking links to the right or left.
- Link: http://www.familysearch.org/eng/default.asp
e-Sword - Well designed and truly beneficial bible study software is hard to find, so it's unusual, and an outstanding value, to find such software for free. e-Sword is just that. A fast and effective way to study the Bible, e-Sword is feature rich and user friendly, with more capabilities than you would expect in a free software package: And much more.
- All available Bibles, commentaries and dictionaries are readily viewed without having to "tile windows".
- Integrated editor for creating your own commentaries or study notes, complete with Spell Checking and a Thesaurus!
- Comprehensive print capabilities, including print preview, allow you to create impressive Bible study handouts from the Study Notes Editor.
- Strong's definitions and scripture references in the Commentary and Dictionary views are displayed as ToolTips! Just place the mouse pointer over the reference and the passage will then be displayed. To go to the passage, just click it!
- Link: http://www.e-sword.net/downloads.html
QBrew
- For an excellent freeware homebrew recipe program, QBrew is the only, but very deserving, choice. It has an intuitive and simple interface and is excellent for formulating recipes quickly (about half the time as BeerSmith). Recipe entry and ingredient database management is extremely simple. Each recipe is stored in a separate file and can be exported in BeerXML format for sharing and/or importing into other BeerXML-enabled applications such as BeerSmith. The summary pane also lists the maximum and minimum gravity, bitterness, and color levels according to standardized style definitions published by the Beer Judge Certification Program. This is useful if you're brewing for a competition, or targetting a particular style.
- Link: http://www.usermode.org/code.html
TClock Lite....Tray Clock Replacement
- TClock Lite is a vastly improved replacement for the standard Windows tray clock. It provides all the benefits of the original as well as many enhancements and a number of useful additional features. It achieves this with a tiny footprint and doesn't even require installation. Given the tiny size, the power of this program is most impressive. Less impressive is the help file which is brief and not particularly helpful. However the program is so well laid-out and simple to use that it's not really an issue. You might get a warning from your security software that TClock is potential spyware. It's not. It's just picking up the fact that it modifies explorer.exe to display the clock. The 2nd link below is to the Japanese author's site. You'll see some strange characters displayed but the "donwload" (sic) link is clear enough.
LClock - LClock pops up its own calendar with a single click on the tray clock, which you can use it for reminders and to-dos. It all works marvelously well and you get a clock display that looks like the one in Vista. LClock is based on TClock lite but doesn't allow a simultaneous time and date display.
- Link: Direct Download http://fileforum.betanews.com/download/LClock/1092761816/1
World Clock - World clock has a small memory requirement at just 7Mb, is easy to use and gives me exactly what I want - a choice of virtually any number of time zones with customizable text to suit the cities or countries selected. Everything fits nicely in one small window and is quick and easy to change and view. Options are a little sparse, but that is what makes this such a simple and easy to use application.
- Configuring new cities is easy using either a drop down list of names and GMT offsets, or using a little world map and clicking the location which then displays the GMT offset and time zone name. The city name can be customized to be anything you choose so that you can add smaller
MAC Top ten free applications for Mac. Note that they aren’t in any particular order, i.e. the first is not necessarily better than the last. Thanks to http://www.appleare.com for this list. AppleJack - Homepage Our top choice of maintenance application. Every Mac user should have AppleJack installed. It’s simple, quick and does a very good job at cleaning up your system. Boot up in single user mode, run “applejack auto”, wait a few minutes, and you’ve got a clean and stable system. QuickSilver - Homepage Man, install QuickSilver and you’ll never go back. It’s a bit hard to explain what it actually does because it does so damn much. It’s most basically used as an application starter, kind of like Spotlight, but it’s potential is huge. You can do almost anything with this baby. Use it for a week and you’ll feel handicapped without it. VLC Media Player - Homepage THE media player for any platform. Handles anything you throw at it, including DVD media, and it’s fast. I’ve personally been using it for years and nothing even comes close to competing with it. Screw those codec packs, here’s the world famous VLC. Adium - Homepage The instant messenger client for everything. MSN, Yahoo, AIM, it’s all supported. And boy is it customizable. You can put a skin on anything and theme it any way you like. Another application that every Mac should have installed. Skype - Homepage Another awesome instant messenger. Text, video, audio, this one has it all; cross platform. You can even use it to make and receive regular and mobile phone calls. Skype offers cheap rates to anywhere in the world and of course free computer-to-computer calls. I used it when I was studying in the US to call from Mac to PC and computer to landline. Carbon Copy Cloner - Homepage You might not use this one as often as the others, but is does a damn good job when you do. Carbon Copy Cloner is a backup and cloning utility that is very easy to use. I’ve personally used it to copy my Mac OS installation to a new hard drive. Firefox - Homepage Firefox is the most overrated web browser on the internet. Compared to Safari, it looks like garbage and render in slow-motion. So why is it on the list? Because sometimes Safari doesn’t work. E.g. Safari can’t handle certain blog editors but Firefox can. Safari can’t use StumbleUpon, Firefox can. So even though I’d pick Safari or Opera any day of the week, sometimes Firefox is necessary. Transmission - Homepage The hand-down best Torrent client for Mac. It might be missing some features, like the ability to choose which files to download, but nothing beats it. It’s simple, stable, fast and lightweight. And it looks good in the dock, too. The Unarchiver - Homepage The built-in decompresser doesn’t cut it and StuffIt Expander is slow, buggy and bloated. The Unarchiver is the solution. It’s fast, lightweight, and handles almost anything. The whole GUI basically consists of a progress bar, which is the only thing you need to unpack some files. Cyberduck - Homepage Cyberduck is definitely the best free FTP client you can find for the Mac platform. It’s fast and has an easy to use GUI. If you’ve got a few dollar to spare, then you can buy the best of the best; Transmit. However, Cyberduck does a great job for no dollars at all. Internet LiveZilla - LiveZilla, the Next Generation Live Help / Live Support System connects you to your website visitors. Use LiveZilla to provide Live Chats and monitor your website visitors in real-time. Convert visitors to customers - with LiveZilla!
- Link:http://www.livezilla.net/downloads/
Firefox Filezilla FTP FireFTP
UltraVNC - UltraVNC is a client/server package that allows remote control of another PC using any TCP/IP connection. The stable release works with Windows W9x/NT/2K/XP, while a recently-released beta version provides greater support for Vista. UltraVNC offers all the features you need, including auto-configuration, easy user interface, extensive hotkeys and embedded file transfer. Add to that the fact that it's free, secure, reliable and reasonably speedy and you have a winner. Just the thing for accessing your home PC while traveling, off-site troubleshooting, or general network administration. UltraVNC can run as an attended or unattended remote access system.
- Link: http://www.uvnc.com/
3D Traceroute - 3D Traceroute is a good example of a traceroute tool. Just type in the address or IP of a remote server and it displays the route taken between you and the server in an easy to an understand graphical format. Full details are provided including the time taken for each link in the chain and full details of all servers en-route. Sometimes the full route information cannot be resolved, however, the resolved points in between can usually provide enough information to "get close" to the source. You can use it for technical tasks such as diagnosing slow connections or for general purpose snooping like determining the location and owner of a web site or tracing spammers.
- Link:http://www.d3tr.de/download.html
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