When I bought my computer about 5 months ago, I decided to put more money into the hardware instead of buying lots of expensive software, and waiting until I could afford all the programs I wanted. but actually I ended up only really spening money on the operating system (which was included in the computer price) and a few games. what I found was that I could find a freeware program that was almost as good or just as good as programs I would've bought. I found the programs mostly from searching on an excellent newsgroup(alt.comp.freeware (http://groups.google.com/groups?q=alt.comp.freeware)) and links from posts there. here's a list of some of the best freeware and freeware sites I've found (I don't use shareware and adware, it's just annoying):

Freeware
[list=1]
GIMP (http://www.gimp.org) (the Gnu Image Manipulation Program: A lot like PhotoShop, except for some things like different layout, no Dust and scratches filter etc etc. (for Windows and Linux)
Irfan View (http://www.irfanview.com/): Image/media viewer/editor/converter. view Jpg BMP Tif (and most other image formats) mp3 avi quicktime and others.
StarOffice 5.2 (http://wwws.sun.com/software/star/staroffice/5.2/index.html) The best free office suite around. can even import files from all the MS office programs, edit them and export them again. (note: version 5.2 is free, but the new version 6.0 is $75 US)
Tiny Personal Firewall (http://www.tinysoftware.com/home/tiny?pg=tpf_summary&la=EN&v) A great firewall, and its a really small download (about 700k)
[/list=1]
Thats just a few of the programs I use almost every day. there's loads more that i use lots but I'm too lazy to type them out right now, and they can be found in most of the following links:

Freeware Websites
[list=1]
Son of Spy Freeware page (http://www.sover.net/~whoi/)
Pricelessware (http://home.att.net/~willowbrookemill/pricelessware.html)
alt.comp.freeware Newsgroup (http://groups.google.com/groups?q=alt.comp.freeware)
Tucows (http://www.tucows.com) note: this is not just a freeware site, there's lots of shareware and demos listed too.
Do a search on Google (http://www.google.com/search?q=Freeware) for freeware, and you'll come up with tons of other good freware sites. if you're looking for something specific, search for "image editing freeware" or whatever kind of software you're looking for.
[/list=1]
the other way I've got some really nice software for almost free, is from magazine CD's (especially the british ones) often you can get full version programs a few versions back that are really expensive programs.
Anyway, thats how I get most of my software, and some of the great programs I've found. What's some of your favorite freeware that you've found?

- David :)

Great idea, David. I'm a big fan of Freeware too (starving artist type you know...) Glad you mentioned Tucows - that's the first place I go looking when I need software.

Here's the freeware on my HD:

Sygate Personal Firewall (http://www.sygate.com/swat/support/documents/spf_help/default.htm) - Really good firewall, easy to use and works great!

AVG Antivirus (http://www.grisoft.com) - Frequent updates, auto scan scheduling, check incoming/outgoing mail. I switched to it from Norton and love it.

Popup Killer (http://software.xfx.net/utilities/popupkiller/tsguide/index.html) - Closes all of those nasty little popup windows

X-news (http://xnews.newsguy.com/) - Newsreader. I really like it much better than using OE, but it can be a bit confusing to configure.

Guidescope (http://www.guidescope.com/home/) - Better cookie and privacy control than IE controls

Callwave (http://www.callwave.com) - takes messages while I'm on the computer.

Mailwasher (http://www.mailwasher.com) - Really cool Spam fighter that bounces back email to spammers and tells them "you've moved and left no forwarding address"

MWSnap (http://www.mirwoj.opus.chelm.pl/winfreeware/index.html) - Screen capture program

Clean Center (http://www.miniwish.com/) - Cleans up junk files on my HD

Irfan View (http://www.ryansimmons.com/users/irfanview/) - Neat little image viewer

Click FTP (http://cliksoft.net/) - FTP program

IMS Web Dwarf (http://www.virtualmechanics.com/?dwarf) - WYSIWYG web page creation

And here is a shameless plug...

United Devices (http://members.ud.com/projects/cancer/) - This is the most important thing I do with my computer as far as I'm concerned. UD is a research project that uses my computer's free resources to do chemical/molecular computations. It is searching for information that will lead to a cure for cancer. The molecules are a scrensaver - I've gotten quite attached to my "pet molecules." This is completely unintrusive and runs in the background. It's a REALLY worthy cause for anyone like me who wants to do something charitable but can't afford to donate $$...

hi Jak,
thanks for mentioning the United Devices thing. I think thats really neat what they're doing. (i'm downloading it right now)
just remembered a bunch more good programs:

AntiVir Personal Edition (http://www.free-av.com/) - Anti virus program

Adaware (http://www.lavasoftusa.com/downloads.html) - Program for finding and getting rid of spyware on your computer

Spyblocker (http://personal.bellsouth.net/mia/k/r/kryp/) - Program that blocks banner ads, spyware, cookies, bugs, scripts etc.

WS FTP LE (http://www.ipswitch.com/downloads/index.html) - An FTP program I really like

Pegasus (http://www.pmail.com/) - great mail program

1st Page 2000 (http://www.evrsoft.com/) - my favorite HTML editor I've found (I've tried lots and I find i can be fastest and get the least errors with this one)

WinMX (http://www.winmx.com/) - file sharing program

PuTTY (http://putty.gyron.net/) - Telnet program

ConTEXT (http://fixedsys.com/context/) - Programming and text editor with highlighting for many different programming languages (HTML too)

Startup Cop (http://www2.sunysuffolk.edu/mandias/tips/startup_cop.html) - controls which programs open at startup

DLExpert (http://www.yanew.com/english.htm) - a download manager

CD-DA Xtractor (http://xtractor.sourceforge.net/) - the only CD ripper I found that actually works (and it works great), outputs to wav, ogg, or mp3

- David

Wow, you guys compiled quite a list of freebees. Great.
DJ

Originally posted by Jakaleena
RE:
United Devices (http://members.ud.com/projects/cancer/):
I've gotten quite attached to my "pet molecules."

:D me too! I love that program, I just leave it running in the background all the time.

- David

Popup Killer - Closes all of those nasty little popup windows
I jumped on this one, only to find that it has been discontinued due to issues with new browsers (possibly like the ones that plague us Mac users using IE here at this site). How unfortunate.

I use Popup Killer even though its discontinued and it works great. The download is still available, just the web updates have been deactivated.

Originally posted by Blacknight

I jumped on this one, only to find that it has been discontinued due to issues with new browsers (possibly like the ones that plague us Mac users using IE here at this site). How unfortunate.

I can probably send it to you if you PM me with your addy. I'd be happy to give it a try anyway :)

Here's another offering by a chap in Finland. 'Reg cleaner'


http://www.jv16.org/


its handy for getting rid of rubbish from the registry files. My friends have a habit of trying allsorts of rubbish programs from magazine discs and then ring me up complaining of the splashscreens that now appear. This is great for flushing them out and safer than bare arsed registry searches.

Whilst this may be off at a slight tangent (apologies). Residents of the USA are eligable for a free game made for the US Army. It is a 1st person perspective shoot-em up I believe and have heard the game is up to Operation Flashpoint standard. The US Army website has more details I believe.

Sorry to bring non applications into the thread, but it is freeware!

Jakaleena,

I f you tire of X News give Agent a try, they do a lite version which has been going for years.


http://www.forteinc.com/agent/index.php

Originally posted by chris h
Jakaleena,

I f you tire of X News give Agent a try, they do a lite version which has been going for years.


I actually have tried Free Agent, and I liked it as far as it went, but it doesn't allow killfiling :(

Since I don't intend to pay for a newsreader, I found that X-news does everything I need PLUS eliminates trolls nicely... :D

Originally posted by chris h
Here's another offering by a chap in Finland. 'Reg cleaner'
http://www.jv16.org/


thanks for the link Chris. the registry is always getting messed up, and the only way I knew of to solve that problem was to reload windows and everything every 6 months or so.

- David

Originally posted by Mike Needham
Whilst this may be off at a slight tangent (apologies). Residents of the USA are eligable for a free game made for the US Army. It is a 1st person perspective shoot-em up I believe and have heard the game is up to Operation Flashpoint standard. The US Army website has more details I believe.


for anybody who's interested, here's a link to the story about it: http://www.dtic.mil/armylink/news/May2002/a20020523armygame.html
It's supposed to come out this summer.

- David :)

Dave,

The reg cleaner helps prolong the life of your OS but eventually enough is enough and its time for a clean sweep. I've just bid farewell to 98 and its now 2K/XP dual boot, its a pain doing all the re-install but for a few weeks at least you notice the difference. I found that Spyblocker isn't compatible with 2K, do you know of anything similar that is ?

Cheers........

hi Chris,

there's something called Ad Killer (http://www.softcows.com/killer/index.html) that I found, and it says in the read-me that it's compatible with Win2K, but I couldn't get it to work in XP so i dont know how well it works.
I just checked the Spyblocker website, and it says "SpyBlocker works with ALL versions of Windows" do you have the latest version? also I just found out that Spyblocker is no longer freeware, it's turned into $hareware :(

eventually enough is enough and its time for a clean sweep.
yeah, I guess that's true, it's not only the reg that gets messed up, there's a whole lot more junk that builds up that you can't really get rid of without reloading Windows.

- David

Thanks for the information re Spyblocker Dave I'll have another look. I think you reach the point with an 'aged' installation that using a reg cleaner your never quite sure if your chopping away at the foundations ! I'm quite happy with 2000 so far apart from a couple of problems with Nero however Clone Cd is a good substitute for general burning tasks.

I'm having problems with Nero too, so I was looking for a good freeware susbstitute and I hadn't found one yet, so thanks for the info! I'll definitly tryout CloneCD

- David

over in the One Bit Image (http://retouchpro.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=2696) thread, people were talking about vector programs, and I just found an interesting looking freeware Vector drawing program here: http://www.zoner.com/draw3/overview.asp

- David :)

Ok, Doug gave me some burning sites a few months ago and this is probably the best one in my opinion. Lots of blurb on Clone CD.


http://www.cdrinfo.com/

great link! CloneCD looks even more interesting then I thought at first, and there's a great tutorial there on using it.

-David

Dave,

I'm a great fan of Nero but Clone offers some interesting 'extras' !
Feurio is superb if your heavily into audio its obviously been a labour of love for its creator but it's so configerable at times it becomes baffling. Its strongest point is extracting data from damaged cd's.

http://www.feurio.com/English/index.shtml

Hi chris,

Feurio sounds good too.it's so configerable at times it becomes baffling.
at least it IS configurable. I hate the built in software in XP for burning, you don't have any options at all.

- David

I've used the XP facility, its handy for tossing a few files onto a CD quickly. What puts me of it is that I understand its a Roxio production and I've never had any joy with their burning software.
As youve probably gathered theres a huge number of burning programs available I keep playing around with them out of interests sake.

More on the Nero saga......

I installed a version that came with my Plextor burner about 5.1 and it loaded once and then 2K gave me the 'generated errors' panel and shut it down. I then downloaded the latest version 5.5 and the same result. Finally I borrowed a friends version that came with a Mirai burner and about 4 months old and tried that, it works perfectly ! I'm tempted to load the latest download as an upgrade on the working version but I think I'll hang fire for the moment. Nero has grown in size enormously since I first used it and its now burdened with label makers and other junk and in turn its being shadowed by small efficient progs like Clone. Are your experiences with Nero similar to the above ? these are the first problems I've had with it.

Confirmed Nero 5.5 user here. Never given me any trouble and as I have also used and still do sometimes (for its childish interface) Clone CD I can't think of an area where Nero doesn't beat Clone CD.

However I am always open to hearing new tips or functions that I have been oblivious of - so pleeeease expand on the features that I am missing out on:)

Essentially Clone is a copy utility and its easier to run and gets quicker results when burning than my present out of date version of Nero. I'm having problems with Nero on a new installation of W2K and am expecting a response from them to see if they can sort the problem. I understand 2K is very similar to NT and I can recall NT being very fussy as which programs it liked and those it just closed down as is my case with Nero. At the end of the day we're talking a couple of minutes in the burning process with a 24 speed Plextor a bit different from the days of my 4 speed HP ! I was surprised with the new front end of Clone its become a slave to animations which I hate in any type of utility, they're just a waste of time.

Originally posted by Blacknight

I jumped on this one, only to find that it has been discontinued due to issues with new browsers (possibly like the ones that plague us Mac users using IE here at this site). How unfortunate.

I just downloaded Popup killer. It is compatible with XP.

Here's (http://www.popupstopper.net/product_popupstopperpro-ad2.html) the download site.

Ed

Unfortunately, Popup Killer has just failed its first test on my machine. While browsing cdrinfo (see one of Chris H's mails above) I hit an about:blank and a doubleclick ad - both popups :(

I have Popup Killer and don't like it or any of the 2 other ones I have. I havent found a good popup killer yet.
I did install Mail Washer and it's not to bad, only used it one day on OE.

I've tried a couple pop-up killing programs, and haven't had much luck with them either.

I've just found some really cool looking freeware graphics programs:

Project Dogwaffle (http://www.dogwaffle.com/cyberop.htm) " Project Dogwaffle creates surreal landscapes, plasma clouds in space and realistic planets. Containing over 80 filters, this program allows multiple undo's, particle painting and supports many file formats. Win 9x/Me/NT/2000 are supported, which means it'll likely run on XP."

Pixia (http://www.ab.wakwak.com/~knight/)
"Not another paint program, but rather a painting program. This will turn your lil' ol' mouse cursor into a paint brush, creating textured strokes as if using oil paints on canvas"

- David :)

Ok, ok stupid me :blush: I enabled aggressive control and those popups disappeared. Unfortunately, this seems to block all popups (including RetouchPro popups!), so ctrl-click has to be used when following links in RetouchPro.

I wonder what the "non-aggressive control" stops? :confused:

Speaking of filters a nearby library has ADSL links to the net and occasionally I use their system if I'm nearby. Unfortunately their censoring filters wont even let this site load which is a pain. I assumed these censoring filters worked on site lists compiled by suppliers, is this correct ?

Closing RetouchPRO windows is the only downside I've found to it so far. I disable mine while here on RetouchPRO since when I'm here I'm usually not cruising around in other places at the same time. I haven't found a way yet to tell it to leave ALL of the RetouchPRO windows alone since each one has a different name...

We have popups? Anyway, you can tell it to ignore anything from retouchpro.com/*

Well, they're not really popups, but my Popup Killer thinks they are. It's the open in a new window aspect that it always catches...

That worked, Doug! Thanks!

But I had to enter it as www.retouchpro.com* before it did.

Just been playing round with the latest version of Mozilla

http://www.mozilla.org/releases/

seems very stable and its handled every site I've thrown at it. I usually run Opera but a second string is never lost.

thanks chris,

I'd heard about version 1.0 of Mozilla coming out, but I hadn't really heard much about how good it is.

- David :)

Give it a try Dave I don't think you'll be disappointed with it. I thought being a beta it might crash every 5 minutes but its held up without any problems.

X-news is great, once i figured out how to work it. I Primarily use it for binary newsgroups, because it supports yenc compression.

When I am just posting to a regular, non-binary NG, I use Google, because it is faster for me to find what I want.

Scary to think they have a 20 year archive!

One of the nice things about popups, is that they are small (usually) and novice users don't get confused about the big bad back button (If they hit the x then they are back to the page they came from)

The advantage to them being small is that you can refer back to the referring page for information if you need to.

Advertising popups suck. Period. (Sorry to be so blunt)

Originally posted by chris h
Give it a try Dave I don't think you'll be disappointed with it. I thought being a beta it might crash every 5 minutes but its held up without any problems.
yeah, I'll have to give either Mozilla 1 or Netscape 7.0 a try. re Beta version, I find it kind of funny that most open source/linux beta version programs have less bugs then Microsoft's actual releases!

- David :)

I understand Mozilla is a spin off of the ailing Netscape. If so why ?

Not entirely sure of a use for this, but Screen Ruler (http://www.microfox.com/index.shtml) still looks very cool. Little ruler you can drag around your screen. Free and regged versions, PC and Mac.

Originally posted by chris h
I understand Mozilla is a spin off of the ailing Netscape. If so why ?
actually, netscape opened up the source code for netscape in a project called Mozilla a while ago, which from there was worked on by all kinds of people. not really sure of the reason why Netscape opened up the source.

- David :)

There was a television programme about it a few months ago but they never answered the question.

Panorama Factory (http://www.panoramafactory.com/download.html#freeware) has a freeware version of their stitching application (get the version with the help files).

Ref Mozilla ; Got the Beta version 1.03 from their site and seems to work OK in XP. It picks up IE favourites on installation but for some reason spat them out again however a manual import sorted that out OK. A good alternative to IE6 if you fancy a change.

wow, I just found a pretty good source of free software: http://www.freeserifsoftware.com/ there's DrawPlus 4 (vector), PhotoPlus (photo editing), PagePlus 5 (desktop publishing), 3DPlus 2 (3D obviously), WebPlus(webdesign)
haven't tried any of it out yet (just found the site today) but it looks like some pretty good software.

- David

Was trying to find a free newsreader that supported yenc encoding. Came across this one, that is feature rich and is pretty easy to use. This was a $35.00 product, but the company went out of business. The main developer now makes it available as freeware.

I've only had it for a little over a week, but I like it a lot.

http://lightning.prohosting.com/~tbates/gravity/super.html

David & Jak,

At the beginning of this thread, you both mentioned free anti-virus programs that you're using: AntiVir (http://www.free-av.com/) and AVG Anti-Virus (http://www.grisoft.com). After a nightmare reinstall over the past couple of days (let's just say after three starts at a clean W2K install, I finally discovered that the new USB 2.0 card I installed was causing resource conflicts somewhere - finally removed it and things went much more smoothly), I'm finally ready to install some anti-virus software.

Per suggestions by Randy in my Hard drive problems (http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=3977&perpage=20&pagenumber=1) thread, I don't want to install Norton SystemWorks. Unfortunately, SystemWorks is the only version of Anti-Virus I have, so I'm considering going the freeware route. It's been a few months since both of you mentioned these, so I assume you've had a few months of experience with them. Are you both still happy with them? Does anyone have any cautions about using one of these freeware versions vs. going with Norton?

Thanks, Jeanie

I'm still very happy with AVG. It automatically updates its files, and I've set it to scan my HD daily as well.

But, it hasn't caught any viruses coming into my computer, so I can't say how it performs there. The only reason it hasn't caught one though is because I'm also using Mail Washer which catches them before I even attempt to download them from the server... Mail Washer has been 100% successful so far in notifying me of any viruses waiting in emails on the server for download.

Hi Jeanie,

so far I've never had any viruses, so I don't know how well AntiVir catches them. however, it has worked well, except for the internet update (which hasn't worked at all, it can't connect to the server, even with my firewall off)
I 'd suggest trying AVG first, and if it doesn't work for you, then try AntiVir.

- David :)

Thanks for the feedback Jak & David. Interesting that both you you have never had any viruses to really "test" it! I seem to get them all the time (I got hit with about 15 Bugbear viruses when I returned from vacation about 2 weeks ago!) - and Norton has always caught them for me.

Interestingly, I found a PC World review of anti-virus programs and it listed AVG as one. They reported that it missed a few of the viruses in their test - of course, then weren't running it with Mail Washer. The only program they rated with 5 stars was Norton - because it caught every one of the viruses they tested it with and because of the easy interface.

Hmmm - not a clear decision (at least, not in my mind.) :(

Thanks for your help,
Jeanie

Jeanie, you should run mailwasher (http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=3740). It deletes a lot of rubbish off the server which means less activity for your antivirus s/w (you don't even know that someone had sent you a virus).

Interesting that both you you have never had any viruses to really "test" it! I seem to get them all the time (I got hit with about 15 Bugbear viruses when I returned from vacation about 2 weeks ago!) -

Just wanted to clarify this a bit more.

I've had plenty of viruses try to get into my computer. They've just never gotten past Mail Washer, which they'd have to do before there would be a need for my AV program to deal with them.

Mail Washer catches them while they're still on the server, not as they try to enter my computer.

I'm also running AVG, and mail washer. Mail washer seems to be doing an excellent job for me. Like Jak, I haven't had a virus yet. AVG also seems to be doing a good job, but it hasn't caught any viruses yet. Probably because I use mail washer before opening anything.

Ed

Thanks for the feedback on Mail Washer everyone. I've got a question. I'm on a LOT of e-mail lists and I've been concerned that some of those lists might look like spam to an automatic filter. Is there a way to determine what Mail Washer is catching? And if it's catching some stuff that I actually want to see, is is possible to customize Mail Washer to tell it what to let through?

Thanks, Jeanie

You have total control over what it deletes and what it doesn't. It has a Blacklist and a Friend's List - the more you use them, the more "intuitive" it becomes.

Here are some I like:

Gravity: Used to be a commercial newsreader, but has been released to public

http://lightning.prohosting.com/~tbates/gravity/start1.html#download

Screen Calipers: for measuring things on your screen

http://www.iconico.com/caliper/

Color Picker: like an eyedropper for picking up colors anywhere on your screen in any program

http://www.iconico.com/colorpic/

Process Explorer: Better than hitting ctrl-alt-delete to see what's running, or kill a program.

http://www.sysinternals.com/

Internet Sweeper: for cleaning out cookies, cache, etc. You pick what it cleans

http://www.bmesite.com/

Diskeeper Lite: Free version of their defrag software. Limited to manual use, one drive at a time.

http://www.executive.com/coverpage.asp

thanks for the list, Andrew. there's some interesting programs on there, a coule of which I haven't heard of.

- David :)

Thanks for the info on Mail Washer Jak.

And Andrew, thanks for your list. Diskeeper looks interesting.

Jeanie

Jeanie

Diskeeper is supposed to be quicker and better because it leaves space for some files to expand. Also, it will only defrag up to a point that it thinks is necessary. Run it again right after that, and it will take it further (sometimes). I've read about Diskeeper for years, and the reviews seemed to think that this is a good way to defrag.

BTW, I've only used it on a Win98 computer a few times. So not much testing on my part yet.

Thanks for sharing your knowledge about Diskeeper Andrew!
Jeanie

I just ran across a free program called Guidescope (http://www.guidescope.com/home/) . It looks pretty useful, and I was wondering if anyone knew anything about it.

Ed

I use it and really like it. I think I've mentioned it a few times in the forums, so a forum search should get you something...

Thanks for the link Ed, I used to use SpyBlocker for the same purpose but it turned into shareware and kept crashing on me anyway.

- David :)

Originally posted by Jakaleena
I use it and really like it. I think I've mentioned it a few times in the forums, so a forum search should get you something...

I guess I didn't just find it. In fact, I questioned the compatibility issue with XP once before. But at my age, I only remember what happened long ago. :D

Ed

Originally posted by d_kendal

CD-DA Xtractor (http://xtractor.sourceforge.net/) - the only CD ripper I found that actually works (and it works great), outputs to wav, ogg, or mp3

- David

This is a very cool program, David! Thanks for the tip. :)

I just downloaded it and turned a CD track into a WAV file. You're right - it works great!

Hey Jak,
no problem, glad to hear it's working well for you! I tried a couple other rippers, but lots of the time I'd get an error message about CD protection and I couldn't get it onto my computer.

- David :)

I use Easy Audio Copy (EAC (http://www.exactaudiocopy.de)). Best free ripper for me as it tries to fix damaged sectors (?) in the image file while ripping. Haven't tried it with copy protected CDs, so can't comment.