Useful & Neat Freeware Applications

[Frank Broughton]

Thought I would start a listing of various freeware software applications.

Feel free to join in and add ones you may have found.


For starters:

ViStart, The perfect Start Menu replacement - Vista style start menu in XP

Skins for ViStart


Executor - This is launcher and a more powerful and customizable version of windows run.

[thecoalman]

Well I have a thread for this in my own forum so here's a copy and paste of the current list:

Digital Image Software

• Irfanview -A must have for anyone that has digital images. This is a image utility program for simple viewing to batch processing for stamping EXIF data and watermarks, resizing, cropping etc. This will do all those little tasks, if you just want to manage photos and not edit them extensively this is the only image tool you will ever need. I haven't tried the latest version but the one I did had a slightlty clunky interface.

• Neat Image -Just what the name implies, noise reduction. This works great for cleaning up screenshots of video from old VHS or if you're scaling images up it will remove a lot of artifacts. Excellent program.

• Gimp -A complete digital image editing package. I myself use a suite of paid for programs but I have tried this one and it has as many features as you can expect to find in any paid for version. For a novice it will do whatever you want.

• Paint.NET -Don't go to paint.net because they don't have the site, why in the world would you name a program by domain if you don't own it. Anyhow I haven't used this but the screenshots look sweet and have seen it recommended many times.

Audio and Video Tools

• GSpot -Don't laugh... GSpot is a codec identifier. If you can't play a video Gspot will identify the codec you need. Here's a quick tip that may keep you sane at some point in the future. Don't install codec packs, use Gspot to identify and only install what you need. Codec packs can cause issues immediately after installation or worse days, months even years down the road when other codecs are installed that do the same thing. You can avoid most of these possible conflicts by not installing packs.

• VirtualDub -For processing video prior to encoding. Has hundreds of filters available for noise reduction, B&W, deinterlacing etc. A must have for anyone doing any serious video work. Other features include audio extraction and sequential frame extraction to images. The list is endless, a very good utility program.

• Divx2DVD -Divx2DVD (now ConvertXToDVD) is a program that will convert a variety of video sources directly to a DVD format which you can burn to DVD with your burning application. It's fast and very easy to use, the old free version has limited options. Additionally the encode quality is not the best but it's not the worst either.

• Camstudio -Desktop video capture, this will capture whatever is you see on your desktop to a video file. Haven't tried it myself for this but it should even work for games if you have a fast enough system. Great tool if you want to make a presentation or try and make a tutorial on how to use some software. This is the free version, there is a version available that cost money but in this case it has less features. Interesting story at the bottom of this page if you're interested.

• Audacity -Full featured Audio Editor.

• Vob2MPG -This tool will rip DVD Vob's to a MPEG file. It will not work on commercial discs protected by encryption. Very handy if you have a DVD recorder or video camera that records directly to DVDs.

• Windows Media Encoder -Yea I know it's a MS product... It is free. Windows Movie Maker which is probably already installed on your computer will do some of what this does but if you need the ultimate control over many aspects of a video you want to encode to WMV this is the tool. Ideal for web content. Has some other features such as being able to set up a steaming video right from your computer.... camera not included.

Media Players

• VLC -VLC is a media player that will play just about anything without having to install anything but the player itself including MPEG2, DVDs and AC3.

• Real Alternative -This is one of my favorites. The last time I installed the official version of Real Media player was the final straw. I want to play video with it, that's all. Until I found this program I simply didn't watch any content with a .RM extension. This will play Real Media files and others without all the baggage that comes with the official install.

• Quicktime Alternative -Same as above except for Apples Quicktime format. .

Computer Security, Utilities and Other Misc. Software

• AMP Font Viewer and Manager -Manage and view fonts at a glance. A world of difference than trying to do it through windows. Lot's features most notably the ability to group fonts and install or uninstall on demand.

• CCleaner -This will remove just about everything on your computer you do not need. History, Recently used file lists, temporary files etc. It will cover your tracks but more importantly it will remove a lot of stuff that will never go away otherwise such as install files from MS hotfix updates. Also has a registry cleaner, a word of caution although the cleaner part is harmless the registry cleaner is not. If you don't know what you are doing I'd suggest leaving it alone. If it isn't broke don't fix it, it's entirely possible to corrupt the registry with this tool. Worst case is your machine won't even boot into windows.

• Free Fonts -Hundreds of free fonts, if you have ever gone in search of free fonts you know what a problem this can be. This site does reauire you register to download, it used to be free but they now send you a link vis emial for the download.

• AVG Anti-Virus -Anti Virus, daily virus updates. Very good product, easily as good as the ones you pay for.

• Zone Alarm -Firewall protection. Computer security is not complete without a good firewall. MS's built in firewall is a joke, this is one of the best. Make sure to disable MS's firewall before installing.

• Ad-Aware SE -Spy-ware Removal.

• Spybot-S&D -Another spy-ware removal tool, two is better than one. This one will get what Ad-Aware misses.

• DBAN -Darik's Boot and Nuke, completely wipe a drive of all data. This overwrites all the data on your harddrive with dummy data. Files are never really gone until overwritten. Warning:This does exactly what it says it does. Clearly mark the floppy or whatever media you put it on. If you run this on your computer any files on it will be unrecoverable.

Web Tools

• CoffeCup Free HTML Editor -A text editor for creating HTML, PHP and others.

[Vin DSL]

CoffeeCup is *FREE*, eh?

Interesting!

EDIT

Um...

Looks like trialware to me...

[thecoalman]

Um...

Looks like trialware to me...

Never downloaded it I have the full version, for about 6 years now so I'm working on about my 5 th version. It's label as free so I'm assuming its not some limited time deal. Probably some HTML code you're not supposed to remove I'd imagine.

I think they make most of their money with the other services they seem to be engaged in like search engine placement, graphics etc. All the stuff the noobies fall for.

[the_ancient]

CoffeeCup is *FREE*, eh?

Interesting!

EDIT

Um...

Looks like trialware to me...

No, they are doing what alot of companies do, Offer a Free Stripped down version then have a paid version you can "upgrade" to if you actually want to do anything

FYI, Look under the "free stuff" tab on coffee cups web site, not under the "products tab"

[thecoalman]

No, they are doing what alot of companies do, Offer a Free Stripped down version then have a paid version you can "upgrade" to if you actually want to do anything

Well as I said the screenshots don't appear to be any different, anyhow I went and downloaded it to see what it was about. To tell you the truth I don't see any difference, it adds a line of html with link at the at the bottom when you save a new document, doesn't affect documents you open. There is no indication that you have to keep the line but I didn't read the terms either.

The free version is about 10MB the full version is about 16MB. I can only guess that there isn't a bunch of crap you don't need anyway like buttons... Some of the features I would have expected to be limited are still there, like the flash button designer and DHTML menu builder.

Overall if I used the free version it doesn't appear that it would be any different than the registered version but I didn't test it extensively. Instead of trialware I'd suggest a more appropriate title would be "baitware". Just like the full version it has menu option for other applicatons not included that you can purchase from them.

[Ron]

I LOVE the term "Baitware"! LOL

But right now I think most companies call them a "lite" or a "personal" version.

[thecoalman]

But right now I think most companies call them a "lite" or a "personal" version.

Or SE or Le... Most have major feature disabled though, for example I had a SE version of a video editor and it didn't include the crossfade which is the most used one. I don't see any such limitations with the free version of coffeecup but i didn't go over it with fine toothed comb either.

[thecoalman]

I LOVE the term "Baitware"! LOL

Ahh dam its already registered.

[jason]

While we're talking about image utilities. one that I've always liked is Easy Thumbnails. It lets you batch resize entire directories of images with one click--great for making "lightweight" photo galleries.

Another cool utility I use is Synergy which allows you to use one keyboard and mouse across multiple computers. Its not a KVM system as you need monitors for all of your systems (but that way you can see everything at once), but as you move the mouse to the edge of one sceen it jumps to the next computer. It also supports simple (text only) copy and pasting between systems.

When it comes to coding, I've yet to find anything that beats Eclipse. While the original version only supports Java there are plugins for just about everything else you can imagine including PDT for PHP. I have also used Aptana for JavaScript, though now that v. 1.0 is out they have removed one of the nicest features (the ability to sync between local workspace and server deployment via SFTP) from the baitware version (I believe it does still support unsecured FTP, though). Note: the Eclipse platform is free, but some of the third-party addons are not.

Then there are good ol' Putty and WinSCP, both of which need no introduction...

--Jason

[thecoalman]

Irfanview will also batch resize and do many other things under the batch utility like stamp exif data. another useful image image utility is Exifer , this too will do batch stamping of Exif data. I haven'y used it while but it has a few other useful utilities.

[homoludens]

Lots of things to explore on osalt.

[Vin DSL]

FYI, Look under the "free stuff" tab on coffee cups web site, not under the "products tab"

Aha! You're right!

SOURCE

This is a trimed down version of The CoffeeCup HTML Editor. You can always download the full version here.

I tried CoffeeCup about 10 years ago, but it didn't really gel with me...

I ended up with HomeSite, which I still use from time-to-time.

EDIT

Oops! My bad!

I forgot we're talkin' about free stuff...

[Frank Broughton]

I ended up with HomeSite, which I still use from time-to-time.

What do you use on the other times besides a CMS?

[Vin DSL]

What do you use on the other times besides a CMS?

Alrighty then... two more freebies!

99.9% of the time, I use a freeware editor called Winsyntax 2.0 - really! You'll hate it...

It's like Notepad with syntax highlighting.

The only other editor I use is TopStyle Pro... I find CSS incomprehensible without it!

Here's a free version of TopStyle.