Monday, September 1, 2008

My favourite free software.

A selection of my favourite free software (freeware) for windows. If you bought commercial software to do these jobs it would cost over £500. These free alternatives are very good and I use them at home every day.

I regularly update this article. If you find a broken link please leave a comment and I will update the broken link.



Antivirus


AVG Free Antivirus



PDF Tools

FoxitPDF Viewer - faster than Adobe PDF Reader and uses fewer
resources.

PrimoPDF - makes a PDF file from any type of file.



Text Editor

EditpadLite - better than Notepad



File Compression

Jzip - like Winzip but free



Utilities

Tree Size Free - Gives a breakdown of the usage of every directory on your computer hard drive including those used by other users on the same machine.

SyncBack Freeware - for backing up your files automatically to a second drive, even an external USB hard disk.



Office Suite

Open Office - free alternative to Microsoft Office, requires Java runtime
environment (also free)



Image Editor

Paint.net image editor - handles layers and has lots of filters available.



Media

Real Alternative - simpler plug in codec for Real Audio and Real
Video

AVS DVD Player - very good free DVD player for Windows. If you
can't get DVD's to play in Windows Media Player this will work instead.

Divx Player - plays divx files and installs the codec so you can play them in
Windows Media Player too.


Video

DVD Flick - turns any video clip or collection of clips into a fully functional DVD with menus. Even burns the DVD.

Auto Screen Recorder Free - for making screen capture video recordings of activity on your computer screen.


Audio

Audacity - comprehensive audio recording and editing software with lots of effect plug ins, also does multi-track recording.

Free Rip - Rips audio files to MP3, WAV and several other formats


Music

Electronic Piano - Play music from your qwerty keyboard using the midi synthesizer in your sound card.


Internet

Kompozer - WYSIWYG HTML editor for designing and building web sites.

Sam Spade for Windows - network tools like whois, ping and traceroute.

PuTTY - SSH and Telnet client.

Win SCP - FTP client