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Quick Links- Auto Gordian Knot DVD Converter - Trend Micro Online Virus Scan
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Introduction
If I came across this website before I started buying commercial software, I would've saved a lot of money. The hardest thing to do is change your mindset and switch to these freeware products. Believe me - you'll be glad you did. Please, where you can, support the developers. They are the small fish creating fantastic products. Products evolve. There's no obligation to donate to the developers, but it'd be great if you could spare some change. After all, it's free for us but not for them. The List
Remember: software is a matter of personal opinion. What's right for me may not be right for you, but if you believe spending thousands of dollars is better than getting it for free, then go ahead. Make their day.
Click on one of the items in the appropriate category for more information, and remember: I have all these installed and I recommend them. These are all five-star, highly recommended products.
There are a few items that are missing - I'd appreciate your help in finding appropriate free software so that I can test it and put it up on this site for others. Contact me!
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Software is expensive, but it doesn't have to be. Windows XP cost me enough! My
following list is the best of free software (freeware) for Windows XP. In most
cases, the freeware is better than commercial products. 
Operating System - Ubuntu
Internet
Security
Internet
Applications
Multimedia
Office
Utilities
Help!
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| I used to believe in ZoneAlarm until I found Comodo Firewall v2.4. It's easy to use novices and tweakers
and has won a number of awards with rave reviews. Comodo has now
released v3, but after installing it, I went back to 2.4 because of a
few issues - two major (outbound leaks, applications connecting without
approval on custom mode). Version 2.4 however, is more stable and trustworthy at this time. There are some great features in v3 but for the purposes of this page, I recommend only v2.4. Comodo (www.comodo.com) has other free-for-life products available, including an anti-virus, but I feel they need to mature these products before I would look at them again. Avast is a much better free antivirus option. However, the Comodo firewall is a fantastic find, and I wouldn't replace it with any commercially available product, even if they were also free! If you use Comodo firewall v3, you will notice it comes with HIPS, a type of intrusion system, but if you also install Spyware Terminator (ST), you may want to turn it off and use ST's HIPS instead to take advantage of the integrated antivirus system (two umbrellas are better than one!) |
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| There are three free antivirus
big-hitters: Antivir, AVG, and Avast! The first two only offer basic
protection and don't scan for spyware and adware. Avast! however, is a
complete solution. Avast! Has a number of scanners that work seemlessly in the background and it's as good as any of the commercial antivirus packages and scans e-mail, internet, computer, on-demand and has a resident shield. You can even download skins here including one that visually fits Vista. I highly recommend Avast! even if you have a commercial antivirus installation. I removed my CA Internet Security Suite 2008 so that I could install Avast! and retain my Comodo Firewall!! Avast! updates the program component and antivirus database automatically. There's different update options dependent upon what type of internet connection you have. It's a very simple program and tweakers can look under the bonnet and drill down into various options. |
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| Although I have Avast!
installed on my computer, I wanted another layer of protection. Some
would call it using two umbrellas: I call it using free stuff and
minimising risk. I was surprised when I installed this product because you can also install ClamAV Guard, an open source (free) antivirus scanner. ClamAV Guard isn't as good as Avast! but it's yet another layer of protection and installed without conflict to any of my other softwares. Spyware Terminator is easy to use and sits in the system tray, although for some reason, the icon disappears on reboot. There's an option to remove the icon, but I have it ticked. It's a small nuisance, and the program still runs in the background. I'm excited about this product because it works with Comodo and Avast! very well and has multiple layers of scans. It updates automatically and supports HIPS which is an intrusion detection device similar to that shipped with the new Comodo firewall. It also includes web security guard so that you can check the validity of web pages. |
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| The fourth layer of internet
security is an online scanner that is independent of the layers I have
already installed. Kapersky is the best virus scanner but it doesn't
remove the virus or malware. The two best online scanners are
Bitdefender (IE4+ only) and
TM
Housecall. TM allows you to select the whole computer or a selected directory. When you use it, it installs components - so don't block them. It needs these to scan the computer. The browser you use tells you how long the scan will take and after the scan, you can view and manipulate your results and read about the virus or malware it encountered. Don't believe the timer, though. It's a guess-timate, and not very accurate. Whatever virus scanner you use, it's best to use an independent online scanner to ensure your antivirus software is working properly and isn't infected. Not all virus scanners are the same. |
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| There are some very good
internet browsers available for download, and many have evolved. I was
surprised to try
Netscape Navigator v9 due to its almost identical interface and
options to Firefox, but herein lies a bonus of the two packages. I use Firefox without a proxy and Netscape with Tor for when I need an additional layer of protection when surfing. They both use the same engine and most plugins can be used with both Firefox and Netscape - there is very little difference. The only reason I chose Firefox over Netscape was because some of the plugins didn't work with Netscape. Believe me when I say they are almost identical. Have a look for yourself. The Opera browser is another good alternative, but personally, I can't go past Firefox as the preferred choice. I understand v3 is on its way soon, too. |
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| When we connect to the
internet, we get assigned an IP address which is used in a similar way
to our postal address. Anybody can track us (go to
www.ip-adress.com
and have a look). With this address, companies can track your surfing
habits and perform internet surveillance. It leaves you completely
exposed to hackers and all sorts of issues. Tor simply puts the information you send and receive through other computers so that you can't be tracked easily, leaving you anonymous (more detailed info here). After installing Tor, you have to tell your applications how to find Tor so that Tor can protect you (in most software, go into the settings area and look for proxy. The address is 127.0.0.1 and use port 8118. After installation, re-check your ip-address. You could be anywhere in the world! This is a fantastic program. On the downside, it can get very slow. Don't use download managers or torrents through this service - keep it free and fast for everybody! |
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| Not much of a title, but
better than any other download manager I have used. I have used
Flashget for years and recently found FDM. I'll never go back. There are two versions: full and lite. The full version includes a torrent downloader, but I prefer uTorrent, so chose FDM Lite. It has all the functionality of Flashget, but without any advertising. There's lots of options, including a scheduler, traffic usage, import and export, optimisation tweaks and you can even create a portable version - all free! Flashget? Flashgone! |
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| I am currently looking for a replacement e-mail client/personal information manager to replace Microsoft Outlook, the contact and e-mail manager that ships with Microsoft Office 2003. The closest I can find is Evolution but it's clunky, buggy and lacks certain features. Contact me with as much detail as possible if you find something! | |
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| This isn't my preferred choice
of e-mail, but my wife and kids love Incredimail for its emoticons,
stationery, notifiers, animinations, skins, and everything else that
comes with it. Personally, I don't like it, but I know a lot of women
that wouldn't replace it for the world! You can now make e-mails look good with various types of enhancements. More can be downloaded form the Incredimail website. However, this free version lacks some important functionality including a spam blocker (JunkFilter) and supports adverts. It also includes a link at the bottom of each e-mail similar to many free web e-mail services. I find it slow and annoying because of the effects. It takes time for the notifier to appear, time for the virtual paper to fold and send, and time for much of the other features. My wife loves this program and doesn't mind the time lapses. She's happy so I'm happy. Incredimail is very popular and even though it's not a favourite freeware program, I'd be a fool to exclude it on this page. |
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| I manage a number of internet
sites, including this one at
www.damienkane.com and the easiest way to transfer files from my
computer to the online server, is through FTP transfer. SmartFTP allows
me to do this task easily. It is customisable, light and easy to use. It also supports large file transfers and it's all as easy as dragging and dropping. It's not jam packed with options, but that's why I like it. I don't need something thick with tweaks. I just want to put files on the internet. It remembers sites as favourites and has an easy backup and restore utility. There are two versions. I use the free one! |
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| By far the best torrent
download manager on the internet today, and small enough to download in
less than a minute. It is fully customisable and like all the software
on this page, has never crashed. If you feel adventurous, you can even
download skins. The kind developers of uTorrent have placed a lengthy FAQ on their webpage. Whenever I have wanted to know something, it's always been easy to find. uTorrent is a fantastic yet tiny download and very difficult to compare with other softwares due to its ease of use, stability and tweaks. |
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The problem with free software DVD players is that you usually can't watch DVD's. A special decoder is needed called MPEG-2 that you have to buy. If you have no decoder on your system, then use VLC Media Player. The Windows version has had almost 100,000,000 downloads in two and a half years - yes, that's right: 100 million downloads! Across all other operating system platforms it's triple that. The player does not need MPEG-2. Chances are you already have a DVD player installed if it is on your system. VLC Player has a lot of features for free software, including some you would only expect from commercial software. VLC Player is much more than a free DVD player. It can get live streams from the internet such as video and radio, TV capture cards and other devices, transcode, play a large variety of formats including CD's, mp3's, DVD's etc, and is fully customisable. Although it has its own skins for download, you can import WinAmp skins as well. A full set of features can be found by clicking here. I'm still figuring out what it's capable of! There are two things I don't like about VLC Player. The first, is that I had to play with it a little to allow the player to load with the skin I selected. Not a big issue - only had to do it once. The second and more important problem is that there is no full screen control. There's a post in the VLC Player forum dated end September 2007, that it will be included in a future release, so hold on to your hats! VLC Player is highly recommended for a variety of tasks, and with the inclusion of full screen controls, the future of the player will far outweigh buying anything on the commercial market. |
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| DVD Decrypter is a very small piece of software that can copy encrypted files to your hard drive. If you have a large DVD collection, then you know how much it costs to replace. DVD Decrypter allows you to store the DVD on the hard drive for burning or watching. It is very easy to use and although it's a few years old, it's still as good as commercial products that you have to pay for. | |
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| When I first started to back
up my DVD collection, I bought three commercial products. None were as
good as DVD Shrink. Imagine having software that compresses a movie the space of two DVD's into one, well, that's DVD shrinking. with DVD Shrink, you don't notice the quality difference. It also allows you to deselect tracks, video and subtitles you don't want, thereby improving the quality of the DVD itself. It also has a limited capacity to author your own DVD, by placing chapters from different DVD's into one single DVD: great for home movies that are already on DVD. Even if you don't like the sound of DVD Shrink, you'll be an idiot to not try it. Note that you also have an option to burn the DVD after it's been shrunk. I understand there are DVD's today that have an alternative copy protection that DVD Shrink can't bypass. I haven't had such a DVD yet, but when I do, I'll find alternative freeware and post it on this page. |
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| A codec allows you to watch
and encode multimedia such as sound and video. Perhaps the most popular
is the DivX codec, and you've probably seen some DivX enabled hardware
such as DVD players in the shops. DivX is very good, but it's also expensive.You can download a free DivX software player from www.divx.com but the codec itself, to convert video and DVD to DivX, costs around $30AU, and the MPEG-2 codec I mentioned with Nero/BS Player/VLC costs a further $17AU. All up, that's over $50AU. I could buy a new DVD Writer and Nero software for that! Xvid has a better compression ratio than DivX and both the encoder and decoder are free. Further, I believe the quality is better, too. It even supports decoding DivX - why buy DivX! Xvid has a fantastic future ahead of itself. It's a tiny download, there's no nag screens, and odds are it's compatible with your converter. I've found Xvid beats all competitors, including DivX hands-down. I use the best settings for Xvid and it runs around 15-20 frames per second (a little slower than watching it real-time) but the results are excellent. Xvid versus DivX? Xvid has my full support, even if it wasn't free! |
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| If you have a movie file and
want to play it on a DVD recorder, then you need to convert it using DVD
authoring software. From the many I have tried, DVD Flick appears to be
the best. DVD Flick allows you to add multiple videos in many different file formats and compress and convert to your hard drive, an ISO file or to a DVD disk. You can customise the disk to your preference. Although this appears to be a simple program, it is very good at encoding to DVD. If you need to know, DVD Flick supports over 45 file formats, 60 video codecs and over 40 audio codecs. It is an efficient and effective program. |
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| A transcoder is a piece of
software that can convert a multimedia file from one format to another.
You may have heard of AVI, MPEG, OGG and so on. Some formats are only
compatible with certain programs and at times, there's a need to
transcode one format to another. For example, if you have a training
video and want to rip out the audio and put it on your iPod as an MP3
file, then you need a transcoder. I'm fuddled as to how many good transcoders are out there and I ended up with three: GX Transcoder, MediaCoder and VLC (which has on-the-fly transcoding). As at the time of writing this, GX Transcoder (GX) is superior to anything I have seen, although it doesn't cater for my favourite AVI Xvid video format. After installing and running GX, I immediately fell for its perfect interface and ease of use. It's a diamond in the minefield of transcoders. Download it for yourself and see, or have a look at these screenshots. GX Transcoder also rips music from CD's, so you can back up your collection, perhaps even copy it to your portable MP3 player. It supports other functions such as downloading and converting streams from the internet which I've never used but understand it's use. There is provision in future releases for the transcoding of my Xvid AVI files, but not yet. You may want to also have a look at MediaCoder which does do AVI files as well as others, but there are a few issues with it (poor interface, and always connecting through a default browser on use). I'm looking forward to what's next for the GX Transcoder, although you may have to settle for MediaCoder until they have the full video version ready. I'm hoping the next release will be just as powerful as its commercial counterparts such as Blaze Media Pro which, after a 15 day trial, you have to buy for around $55AU. |
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| I've been after a solid XVid batch converter (DVD to AVI) for some time and have tested a number of freeware products, howveer, Auto Gordian Knot seems to be the best and incorporates a number of tools for the more advanced user. It is very easy to use and has custom compression ratios. One can queue many DVD's and convert by batch. It is customisable, and I achieve a very high compression ratio and frames per second when converting. This piece of software is excellent. | |
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| I mentioned that
Comodo Firewall Pro was the best
free software find this year. Well, if that's the case, then OpenOffice
is the best free software find this CENTURY! I have seen OpenOffice before. One reason I never downloaded it was because I had already purchased Microsoft Office 2003 (MSO) Professional. When I looked around at alternatives, I saw screenshots of OpenOffice and thought they were MSO. I can hardly believe OpenOffice. It's fantastic and ships with the popular Microsoft equivalents including: - Writer (Word); - Calc (Excel); - Impress (Powerpoint); - Base (Access); - Draw, and - Math. As a writer, I have found Microsoft Outlook 2003 invaluable, so I can't get rid of Microsoft Office entirely (if you know an alternative, PLEASE let me know!) OpenOffice has the added functionality of putting a small icon in the system tray for easy access which speeds up loading of the relevant package. Good idea - why didn't Microsoft think of that? It may be a small thing to you, but as a writer switching between various applications and documents, it's a bonus! It loads faster than Microsoft Office, too. As a home user, OpenOffice is more than what I need in an office application. Even better, it saves in Microsoft standards, too. Even my novels which consist of hundreds of thousands of words can be saved in Microsoft Office format which is great news, because I can use OpenOffice, save as a Word document, and send it to a publisher over the internet. There is one thing I miss from the OpenOffice suite, and that is Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). VBA is a programming tool within Office to deploy various solutions. I use VBA extensively, but not at home! OpenOffice has everything that the average Microsoft Office user wants, including a better-than-thou user interface which Microsoft customers will greatly appreciate. Wait! I'm not done yet! OpenOffice is huge on the web and has many extensions including galleries, templates, dictionaries, sending and receiving faxes, using bluetooth enabled devices t control presentations, and a variety of other useful tools. Yes. This is the download of the century, and best of all, it's free. |
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| This may be a controversial
choice, but I have my reasons. There are scores of PDF readers on the web, including the more popular FoxIT PDF reader, but what makes the Free eXPert PDF Reader different? Well, for a start, you can click on hyperlinks, copy text into a word processor, click e-mail address for your default e-mail client, put in comments, add attachments, add bookmarks, thumbnail pages, and other stuff. It even loaded a 4GB file in a fraction of a second. It has a small 8mb download size and is simple to use and very easy on the eye when reading. |
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| I've used dozens of system
tools for performance enhancement, disk defragmentation, etc but nothing
compares to the functionality of System Mechanic 6 (SM6) by
Iolo software. The strange part about this free software is that it isn't known as free software, in fact, this review from PC World (which gives a 4 out of 5 star review) puts the RRP at $65AU. So why is it on this page? Well, the good guys at Iolo have upgraded to System Mechanic 7 (SM7) and are offering version 6 as a free download. You fill out a quick form and they e-mail the registration details to you, but don't be fooled: this was well hidden and very hard to find. I caught a sniff on a forum and it took a few days to find it. Firefox doesn't allow the download so you have to use Internet Explorer (click here to go to the download page). SM6 is fantastic. After using SM7 for its trial period, I was glad to go back to a licenced SM6. It's easier and the interface is much simpler to use. SM6 comes with a one button fixes all solution and although slow, it's thorough and always finds something to fix. Further, it adds yet an extra layer of security by seeking out Spyware using Spython. Because of my multi-layered security of freeware, I've never had a virus or a spyware, but I'm sure something will find it if I ever get one! I remain impressed with my SM6 and even more impressed by finding it. Hands down, it's one of the best overall utilities and comprises (not exhaustive): - Disk defragmentation to reduce hard drive wear - Spyware search and destroy - Optimise memory, Windows startup and internet - Clean junk, internet and privacy - Fixing registry and broken shortcut issues - Systemguard (not needed with my current softwares) SM6 features PC TotalCare which at the click of a few buttons, does all the work for you. I always choose to reboot so it can complete the process and it keeps my PC in perfect working order. Download NOW - I don't know how long the download link will remain. For quick cleaning, I recommend CCleaner. |
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| There are various CD/DVD
Burning utilities that transport files in what is called an image file.
These files have an extension like ISO, NRG, CCD, CUE, etc. Daemon Tools
allows you to convert an image file into a CD drive. This type of conversion is called a virtual drive, because it creates a virtual CD or DVD drive. If you have thousands of files that you want to read but don't want it cluttering up your hard drive, then creating an image file may be a perfect solution. For example, I have all my installation software in an ISO file and use DAEMON tools to mount that file so I can install it. It's one file, like an archive without the compression, and very easy to use. |
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| CCleaner is a system optimiser
and privacy protection tool and removes clutter from you hard drive.
When you surf the internet, certain pieces of information gets stored on
your computer, well, CCleaner removes them and other traces of your
online and offline activities. System Mechanic (SM) has a broader spectrum of utilities for optimising your system, but CCleaner's quick registry fix is very good for between large SM scans. |
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| There are a number of good
archive and file compression utilities, but I have found IZArc to be the
best. I remember when WinZip became popular in the UK, but I've always
preferred the WinRAR format. IZArc doesn't care much for the type of format you use. As you can see from its features page, it supports multiple file types. So: if you want a free archiver, IZArc is (in my opinion) the best one you can get, offering better than commercial quality in a small and easily downloadable file. |
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| I'll be honest with you here:
I use Nero and it isn't free. I've had no reason to change because it
was in the box when I bought my DVD recorder for the PC. I've tried no other CD/DVD burning freeware software, but I hear the following are good programs: Burn4Free, Infrarecorder and CDBurnerXP. |
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| No: not
Irfanview
(although it is free and quite good). FastStone Image Viewer is much
better! If you have ever used ACDSee, then you'll like FastStone Image Viewer (FS). I remember using ACDSee v3 and swapping to FS because it was free and just as good as the competition. FS allows you to view, convert, optimise and generally process a wide variety of picture formats. It's good for the casual and expert user. If you want to see more features, then click here. |
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