Useful Free Software

Posted on: September 27th, 2010

The Internet is an amazing resource, not just of information, but useful and free software. I have been using quite a few of these and find new ones from time to time. So here’s Laszlo’s picks of the best free software:

A frequent question I get when I mention free software is: “Why do they offer it for free?” implying that there’s some kind of catch. Unfortunately, the word “free” has been abused by bad marketing so it has became usual that people are cautious with things that are “free”.

Fortunately, in the software world there are many actually free things. To answer the above question, here’s what I found:

- They are offered free because of the goodwill of the author or authors. There’s a whole movement called Open Source where software is developed as a community effort and offered with full documentation, including the source code. These are always free to use, and usually have little or no restrictions on using them for personal or business. Other reason could be that a programmer might just have a passion for something and does it on the side just to keep busy.

- Many free software are offered as a marketing piece. Software development companies often create a “light” (also spelled “lite”) version of their products which has fewer features but still usable. This practice allows them to spread their name and if the free version works well for someone he will probably decide to get the full version later, or some other products from the same company.

Freeware and Shareware

The software that I will list here comes under the Freeware category, which is the truly free software. One will run into eventually “Shareware” which is the “free to try” software. These have considerable limitation, either in features or length of usable time that urges the user to pay for the software to have these limitation removed.

Important Things to Watch for When Downloading and/or Installing

Please read this section carefully.

Many of the download sites have considerable amount of advertisements on them. Many times the advertisements are more noticeable than the download link. Unless you have an effective ad-blocking software (Such as Firefox with “adblock plus” plugin) you’ll need to pay attention not to download something else than the intended software. Many of the links in this list will take you to FileHippo.com where the download link is a green box with a down-arrow saying “download latest version”. If you getting any messages that you’d need to pay, or register, etc for the software you downloaded then you most likely clicked on an advertisement!

Some of the software comes bundled with other software such as toolbars, links to eBay, etc. During the install process make sure to read the options and uncheck anything that you don’t want. Don’t just click “Next” on every screen!

To the best of our knowledge these programs do not interfere with other programs or cause trouble but it’s always advisable to make a backup of your important files and make sure your system restore works (http://www.computerwizardindy.com/making-sure-that-the-system-restore-works/) before you install any software on your machine.

The List

Ok, now you know what to expect. Here’s my favorite freeware applications. It’s not a full list, just the most useful ones.

CCleaner
This is one of the best little programs to have. It does an excellent job of cleaning up temporary files and cookies, unused or broken registry entries. It also help you to uninstall programs and control what starts up when you turn the computer on. I’d highly recommend this to use this on a regular basis. It might come bundled with a Toolbar so make sure to look at the options when installing.
Download link: http://filehippo.com/download_ccleaner/
MyDefrag
After cleaning up I recommend people defragment their hard drives. It helps eliminating the fragmentation (breaking up of) new files. While Windows have a built-in Defrag software but, unfortunately, it got dumber and dumber with each new Windows version. This little gem offers several methods of defragmentation from the quick one to the most thorough. And it shows you how the hard drive looks as it goes. The newest version has a toolbar bundled with. Make sure to uncheck that.
Download link: http://filehippo.com/download_mydefrag/
AVG
This is probably the best security software that you can get for free (home users). It has been very wide widely used and according to our experience it does give a good protection.
Download link: http://filehippo.com/download_avg_antivirus/
MalwareBytes AntiMalware
While antiviruses give a good protection against the worst kind of unwanted software there are some that are either not recognized by them, or recognized only partially. Many of the advertisements software falls under this category. We found Malwarebytes to be very effective in eliminating them from your computer. It’s a scanner type of software so it does not run all the time, only when you launch it. It also require running a manual check for updated malware definitions. If you want to do a quick check on your machine then run CCleaner first on the temporary files then run the Quick Check of Malwarebytes.
Download link: http://filehippo.com/download_malwarebytes_anti_malware/
CrystalDiskInfo
Your hard drive is probably the most crucial part of your computer because it stores all your data. Each hard drive has a diagnostic that can alert to impending failure. With this little program you can check on your hard drive and take action before it’s too late! It comes up in Japanese first time but you can switch the language in the menu easily. Our experience shows that it predicts troubled hard drive with great accuracy.
Download link: http://download.cnet.com/CrystalDiskInfo/3000-2086_4-10832082.html
WinDirStat
What’s taking up all that space on my hard drive? To answer that question just run this little program. It will tell you what’s hogging the hard drive space and then you can take action.
Download link: http://windirstat.info/download.php
Firefox
This is a web browser that got very popular as a replacement for Internet Explorer. I use it almost always when visiting websites. My reasons for it are:
- It has a better security. Every security weakness gets fixed very quickly and the browser updates itself – not relying on Windows updates (which is not always very reliable, nor quick).
- It has a superior ad-blocking plug-in called “adblock plus”. With that I hardly ever see those annoying ads on webpages and the pages load faster.
- I can add tags to the bookmarks and find them later very easily later (I have hundreds of bookmarked pages which I couldn’t handle well without this).
Download links: http://filehippo.com/download_firefox/ or http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/
Open Office
It’s probably the biggest money saver, if you don’t have Microsoft Office on your computer. OpenOffice is the closest substitute for Microsoft Office’s Word, Excel and Powerpoint. It’s user interface is close to the 2003 version of MS Office. So if you are at odds at the 2007 and 2010 Office versions’ user interface then you can just use this. It also comes with a graphics editor and a database application but these are not used by most people. If you are only using the basic features of Microsoft Office then it’d be a perfect substitute. By default, it saves new files in its own format by it can be easily changed to use MS Office’s format so that when you are sending files to other people they will be able to open them.
Download link: http://filehippo.com/download_openoffice/ or http://www.openoffice.org/
VLC Media Player
This media player can play almost any media format, both music and video. It also has the necessary components to play DVDs (usually you need to pay for that, unless it comes with your computer). It has a very large array of options so you can tweak it, if you wish.
Download link: http://filehippo.com/download_vlc/
Launchy
Are you working with a large number of different software? If you do then this program is for you. Instead of having a desktop cluttered with icons, or searching through the All Programs menu, you can just let Launchy launch the program that you need. It runs in the background and you can call it up with a simple key combination, then just type a few letter from the name of the program that you want to launch and Launchy will find the most like candidates. It also learns from your choices. It also has a built in calculator and you can launch a web search from it as well. A great time saver.
Download link: http://filehippo.com/download_launchy/
Thunderbird
This is an email client. I have been using it for years with satisfaction. It’s not a complete replacement for Outlook, mainly because of not having a calendar and syncing with various devices is not as easy. However it’s excellent for keeping your emails organized. It does not suffer from Outlook’s malady of data corruption because Thunderbird does not keep everything in one file but organizes them by folders. Also migrating a TB email setup from one computer to another is way easier than doing the same thing with Outlook. It also has a fairly good spam filter built-in. The new version also indexes all your emails and searching for a particular email becomes real easy, even if you don’t know where you filed it.
Download link: http://filehippo.com/download_thunderbird/
PhotoFiltre
Do you sometimes need to do a little touch up of your digital photos? This little program does that with a very easy to use user interface and because its small size it loads quickly (as opposed to Photoshop and other giants).
Download link: http://photofiltre.free.fr/download_en.htm (note: it has a bundled toolbar)
GIMP
If you are a more serious photo editor then this program is for you. It’s on the level with Adobe’s Photoshop but without the hefty price. It can handle multiple layers, transparencies, etc with a large toolset, filters and effects. You can also find tons of tutorials for it on YouTube.
Download link: http://filehippo.com/download_the_gimp/
InkScape
Do you like drawing, or putting together logos and other graphics? This program is a great tool for that. I love it personally. I use it to work on my company logo, or to make promotional pieces. I can very easily change things around because it handles the graphics as a collection of shapes (triangles, circles, curves, etc) – it’s a so called “vector graphics” editor. Vector graphics enables one to create a graphics that can be made to any size without getting “pixellized”. It can handle a lot of different formats and you can combine them to your heart’s content. It’s a lot of fun and useful too.
Download link: http://filehippo.com/download_inkscape/
Google Sketchup
If you want to venture into the world of three dimensional design then this is a perfect software. It’s the easiest to use out of all 3D modeling software and has excellent video tutorials. You can have a lot of fun with it. You can use it to test out a new furniture arrangement in your living room, or to design your garden, or to make a model of desk you want to build, etc. It also has a huge library of pre-made models that you can incorporate into your design.
Download link: http://filehippo.com/download_google_sketchup/
SyncBack
It’s one of the most versatile backup programs that I’ve seen. Fairly easy to use and has a lot of features and options. You can set up automatic or manual backups with it.
Download link: http://filehippo.com/download_syncback/
NotePad++
If you are handling plain text files, mainly if you write software or scripts, then this little program can make your life a little easier. It has syntax highlighting for most programming and scripting languages and automatic indentation handling, great multiple open file handling (tabs) and many other useful features.
Download link: http://filehippo.com/download_notepad/
CPUZ & HWinfo
Want to know what your computer have inside? You don’t necessarily need to open up the computer case. These two programs can tell you pretty much all.
Download links:
CPUZ: http://filehippo.com/download_cpuz/
HWinfo: http://www.hwinfo.com/download32.html

I hope you found this little list very useful and if you have suggestions for this list please feel free to use our contact form to inform us: http://www.computerwizardindy.com/contact-us/

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