Here is a list of some good freeware proggies to suit even the tightest of pockets as they are free and a lot i use myself found them listed on a site in a convenient list
hth some folks
Best Free Anti-Virus Software
I normally recommend the Norton Anti-virus suite but I'm fully aware that some folks simply can't afford to buy it. If you fall into this category then you should check out AVG Antivirus 6.0 Free Edition. This product has been continuously refined since it was first released in 1991 and now offers very impressive protection capabilities. Additionally, it's relatively small, light on resources, has regular automatic updates and handles email scanning. There is a free and a pro version, the only difference being that the free version has a few non-critical features disabled and has no technical support. Even so, it's an impressive package and a offers the financially challenged a real alternative to the major anti-virus suites.(5MB)
http://www.grisoft.com
Best Free Browser Accelerator
There are dozens of products that claim to speed up your surfing
but most have little effect. NaviScope is different - it actually works! Not only does it speed up your surfing it also offers optional ad, pop-up, cookie and JavaScript blocking, an extensive set of diagnostic tools and more bells and whistles than you can imagine. My only beef is that the tool bar is very
obtrusive so once you set up NaviScope, you should select the option to turn off the toolbar. If you need it, you can always bring it up again though the quick launch icon. (614KB)
http://www.naviscope.com/
Best Free File Manager
Windows Explorer is fine for simple file management activities but when you have some serious work to do, you need a two pane file manager. I use Directory Opus which is excellent but costs $59. Recently I discovered 2X Explorer. It offers most of the functionality of Directory Opus and is totally free. As a bonus, its user interface is very similar to Windows Explorer, so most users will find this tool easy to learn and use.(392KB)
http://netez.com/2xExplorer/intro.html.
Best Free Anonymous Surfing Service
There are lots of reasons folks have for wanting to surf anonymously, ranging from simple paranoia to possibly being murdered by a malevolent foreign government. Whatever the reasons, commercial services that offer anonymity are doing real well. However one of the best services, JAP, is totally free and it's level of secrecy is better than many commercial systems. However expect your surfing to slow down as you'll be relayed through a chain of servers. You'll also need to change your browser settings to work through a proxy.
http://anon.inf.tu-dresden.de/index_en.html
Best Free Software Suite
GNUWin II is a free software compilation for Windows. This huge suite features dozens of programs including free alternatives to many expensive commercial products. There is Abi Word as an alternative for MS Word, OpenOffice for MS Office XP, The Gimp for Adobe Photoshop, Gzip for WinZIP are dozens more. Taken collectively this suite provides more than enough software to completely set up a PC without spending a cent on applications or utilities. The suite is available or CD or you download the
CD image and cut your own.
http://gnuwin.epfl.ch/en/index.html
Best Free Notepad Replacement
There are lots of text editors and Notepad replacements. Some of these aspire to be programming editors while others try to be word processors. What I love about EditPad is that, unlike the others, it concentrates on simply being a better plain text editor and it succeeds brilliantly. It has a Notepad like interface combined with tabbed document windows and the ability to open as many documents as you like with no file size limitations. I use it every day for tasks as diverse as writing Support Alert Newsletter to examining my web log files. Some of the latter can be up to 100MB, yet EditPad handles these huge files with ease. (849KB). http://www.editpadlite.com/editpadlite.html
Best Free Hotkey Utility
Hotkeycontrol XP is a free utility that allows you to define your own hotkeys so that a single key press can launch an application, insert commonly used text, change your volume, or just about anything else. Hotkeycontrol works with all versions of Windows from 98 onwards, though some features will only work with Win2K or XP. (0.91KB)
http://www.digital-miner.com/hkcontrol.html
Best Free Registry Cleaner
To keep the registries on my PCs in top running order I use Fix-It utilities and Norton Utilities as well. Both of these are commercial products so I was delighted when subscriber Robert McMahon suggested the freeware product; JV16 Power Tools. This offers a powerful set of registry maintenance tools, too powerful in fact for inexperienced users. However if you are technically savvy, go grab this free program now. Stop press: from mid July 2003, this product is now shareware. Until I re-review the products in this category, I suggest ToniArts Easy Cleaner or download the JV16 free trial version. http://www.toniarts.com/ecleane.htm
http://www.vtoy.fi/jv16/shtml/jv16powertools.shtml
The Best Bookmark Cleaner
Check&Get scans your bookmark file for dead links or for changed content. When I tried it on my huge favorites file I discovered 17% of my links were dead. I've now got a much leaner set of favorites and the comfort of knowing that the links actually work. Check&Get is available on free license but you need to register.
http://activeurls.com/
Best Free Route Tracer
3D Traceroute graphically displays Internet route information. 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. (996KB)
http://www.hlembke.de/prod/3dtraceroute/
The Best Free Screen Capture Utility
I've used over half a dozen screen-capture utilities and none of them has really satisfied. Until now. Gadwin screen capture does exactly what I want in the way I want. Further, it avoids the trap of providing lots of useless and confusing features. It's the little things that count like making the hot key PrtSc so I don't have to remember it, and automatically sequentially naming the output files for multiple screen shots. Gadwin will stay on my PC permanently. (976KB)
http://www.gadwin.com/printscreen/?prnscr
The Best Free Search Bar
Dave’s Quick Search Bar is a free utility that gives you the same easy access to Google searches as Google's own search bar but wait, there’s more. It also provides access to the excellent Teoma, FAST and other search engines. Because it resides in your task bar, it's accessible from any application. Comes with a host of other features such as dictionary/thesaurus access and even a calculator. If that's not enough for you, it's totally customizable. One cool product. (380KB)
http://www.dqsd.net/
Best Free Web Site Ripper
Whether you call it a web site explorer or offline browsing facilitator, this utility is really a web site ripper. It will speedily download non-password sites in whole or in part to your hard drive. There are many web rippers but WebReaper is amongst the best and yet it's free. (966kB)
http://www.webreaper.net/
Best Free DLL Cleaner
Over time most PCs become cluttered up with the unwanted remainders of long deleted programs. DLL Archive is a free utility that will scan your PC for DLLs that are no longer referenced. You can then archive the unwanted programs away or delete them entirely. Archived items can easily be restored to their original location if any problems arise. (227KB)
http://www.analogx.com/contents/download/s...tem/dllarch.htm
Best Free File Cleaner
I've tried quite a few commercial products designed to clean unneeded temporary files off your hard disk but must say that the free utility "Empty Temp Folders" ranks with the best. It takes a few minutes to set up but after that, all you need do is press a button to recover many megabytes of disk space. (667KB)
http://www.danish-shareware.dk/soft/emptemp
Best Free Resource Meter
This is cute. TinyResMeter is an itsy-bitsy system monitor. Unlike many other monitors, it doesn't consume a lot of CPU utilization in order to tell you your CPU utilization. In addition to CPU usage you can optionally monitor cache, RAM, page file and swap file usage, running processes and threads, disk space utilization and a number of other parameters as well.
Also built-in, is a screen grabber that saves the current screen to disk when you press PrintScreen. How they fit all this into 96KB beats me.
http://pesoft.fr.st/
Best Free Spam Filter for the Average User
Mailwasher is for most folk, the easiest way of dealing with Spam. It's a free email preview utility that allows you to check your email on your mail server before you download it to your PC. The advantage of this approach is that you can kill unwanted messages including spam, viruses and large attachments before they get anywhere near your computer. But Mailwasher does more. It automatically flags for you any messages containing viruses and possible spam which makes for quick and easy identification. It also will send a message back to the spam mail sender saying that their message could not be delivered. Hopefully this will encourage some spammers to take your name off their mailing list. MailWasher works with any POP email account and any email client and will also check your Hotmail accounts. ( 1.35MB)
http://www.mailwasher.net
Thank if found useful
hth some folks
Best Free Anti-Virus Software
I normally recommend the Norton Anti-virus suite but I'm fully aware that some folks simply can't afford to buy it. If you fall into this category then you should check out AVG Antivirus 6.0 Free Edition. This product has been continuously refined since it was first released in 1991 and now offers very impressive protection capabilities. Additionally, it's relatively small, light on resources, has regular automatic updates and handles email scanning. There is a free and a pro version, the only difference being that the free version has a few non-critical features disabled and has no technical support. Even so, it's an impressive package and a offers the financially challenged a real alternative to the major anti-virus suites.(5MB)
http://www.grisoft.com
Best Free Browser Accelerator
There are dozens of products that claim to speed up your surfing
but most have little effect. NaviScope is different - it actually works! Not only does it speed up your surfing it also offers optional ad, pop-up, cookie and JavaScript blocking, an extensive set of diagnostic tools and more bells and whistles than you can imagine. My only beef is that the tool bar is very
obtrusive so once you set up NaviScope, you should select the option to turn off the toolbar. If you need it, you can always bring it up again though the quick launch icon. (614KB)
http://www.naviscope.com/
Best Free File Manager
Windows Explorer is fine for simple file management activities but when you have some serious work to do, you need a two pane file manager. I use Directory Opus which is excellent but costs $59. Recently I discovered 2X Explorer. It offers most of the functionality of Directory Opus and is totally free. As a bonus, its user interface is very similar to Windows Explorer, so most users will find this tool easy to learn and use.(392KB)
http://netez.com/2xExplorer/intro.html.
Best Free Anonymous Surfing Service
There are lots of reasons folks have for wanting to surf anonymously, ranging from simple paranoia to possibly being murdered by a malevolent foreign government. Whatever the reasons, commercial services that offer anonymity are doing real well. However one of the best services, JAP, is totally free and it's level of secrecy is better than many commercial systems. However expect your surfing to slow down as you'll be relayed through a chain of servers. You'll also need to change your browser settings to work through a proxy.
http://anon.inf.tu-dresden.de/index_en.html
Best Free Software Suite
GNUWin II is a free software compilation for Windows. This huge suite features dozens of programs including free alternatives to many expensive commercial products. There is Abi Word as an alternative for MS Word, OpenOffice for MS Office XP, The Gimp for Adobe Photoshop, Gzip for WinZIP are dozens more. Taken collectively this suite provides more than enough software to completely set up a PC without spending a cent on applications or utilities. The suite is available or CD or you download the
CD image and cut your own.
http://gnuwin.epfl.ch/en/index.html
Best Free Notepad Replacement
There are lots of text editors and Notepad replacements. Some of these aspire to be programming editors while others try to be word processors. What I love about EditPad is that, unlike the others, it concentrates on simply being a better plain text editor and it succeeds brilliantly. It has a Notepad like interface combined with tabbed document windows and the ability to open as many documents as you like with no file size limitations. I use it every day for tasks as diverse as writing Support Alert Newsletter to examining my web log files. Some of the latter can be up to 100MB, yet EditPad handles these huge files with ease. (849KB). http://www.editpadlite.com/editpadlite.html
Best Free Hotkey Utility
Hotkeycontrol XP is a free utility that allows you to define your own hotkeys so that a single key press can launch an application, insert commonly used text, change your volume, or just about anything else. Hotkeycontrol works with all versions of Windows from 98 onwards, though some features will only work with Win2K or XP. (0.91KB)
http://www.digital-miner.com/hkcontrol.html
Best Free Registry Cleaner
To keep the registries on my PCs in top running order I use Fix-It utilities and Norton Utilities as well. Both of these are commercial products so I was delighted when subscriber Robert McMahon suggested the freeware product; JV16 Power Tools. This offers a powerful set of registry maintenance tools, too powerful in fact for inexperienced users. However if you are technically savvy, go grab this free program now. Stop press: from mid July 2003, this product is now shareware. Until I re-review the products in this category, I suggest ToniArts Easy Cleaner or download the JV16 free trial version. http://www.toniarts.com/ecleane.htm
http://www.vtoy.fi/jv16/shtml/jv16powertools.shtml
The Best Bookmark Cleaner
Check&Get scans your bookmark file for dead links or for changed content. When I tried it on my huge favorites file I discovered 17% of my links were dead. I've now got a much leaner set of favorites and the comfort of knowing that the links actually work. Check&Get is available on free license but you need to register.
http://activeurls.com/
Best Free Route Tracer
3D Traceroute graphically displays Internet route information. 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. (996KB)
http://www.hlembke.de/prod/3dtraceroute/
The Best Free Screen Capture Utility
I've used over half a dozen screen-capture utilities and none of them has really satisfied. Until now. Gadwin screen capture does exactly what I want in the way I want. Further, it avoids the trap of providing lots of useless and confusing features. It's the little things that count like making the hot key PrtSc so I don't have to remember it, and automatically sequentially naming the output files for multiple screen shots. Gadwin will stay on my PC permanently. (976KB)
http://www.gadwin.com/printscreen/?prnscr
The Best Free Search Bar
Dave’s Quick Search Bar is a free utility that gives you the same easy access to Google searches as Google's own search bar but wait, there’s more. It also provides access to the excellent Teoma, FAST and other search engines. Because it resides in your task bar, it's accessible from any application. Comes with a host of other features such as dictionary/thesaurus access and even a calculator. If that's not enough for you, it's totally customizable. One cool product. (380KB)
http://www.dqsd.net/
Best Free Web Site Ripper
Whether you call it a web site explorer or offline browsing facilitator, this utility is really a web site ripper. It will speedily download non-password sites in whole or in part to your hard drive. There are many web rippers but WebReaper is amongst the best and yet it's free. (966kB)
http://www.webreaper.net/
Best Free DLL Cleaner
Over time most PCs become cluttered up with the unwanted remainders of long deleted programs. DLL Archive is a free utility that will scan your PC for DLLs that are no longer referenced. You can then archive the unwanted programs away or delete them entirely. Archived items can easily be restored to their original location if any problems arise. (227KB)
http://www.analogx.com/contents/download/s...tem/dllarch.htm
Best Free File Cleaner
I've tried quite a few commercial products designed to clean unneeded temporary files off your hard disk but must say that the free utility "Empty Temp Folders" ranks with the best. It takes a few minutes to set up but after that, all you need do is press a button to recover many megabytes of disk space. (667KB)
http://www.danish-shareware.dk/soft/emptemp
Best Free Resource Meter
This is cute. TinyResMeter is an itsy-bitsy system monitor. Unlike many other monitors, it doesn't consume a lot of CPU utilization in order to tell you your CPU utilization. In addition to CPU usage you can optionally monitor cache, RAM, page file and swap file usage, running processes and threads, disk space utilization and a number of other parameters as well.
Also built-in, is a screen grabber that saves the current screen to disk when you press PrintScreen. How they fit all this into 96KB beats me.
http://pesoft.fr.st/
Best Free Spam Filter for the Average User
Mailwasher is for most folk, the easiest way of dealing with Spam. It's a free email preview utility that allows you to check your email on your mail server before you download it to your PC. The advantage of this approach is that you can kill unwanted messages including spam, viruses and large attachments before they get anywhere near your computer. But Mailwasher does more. It automatically flags for you any messages containing viruses and possible spam which makes for quick and easy identification. It also will send a message back to the spam mail sender saying that their message could not be delivered. Hopefully this will encourage some spammers to take your name off their mailing list. MailWasher works with any POP email account and any email client and will also check your Hotmail accounts. ( 1.35MB)
http://www.mailwasher.net
Thank if found useful
