2019 NOTE: This document is archived and not updated as of about 2012. Many of the software offerings here are still the cat's meow, such as Audacity, Winamp, and CCleaner. Others have been folded into larger firms and of little value now, and others are defunct.
1. Zone
Alarm Free and VERY effective firewall for your laptop for PC
- http://zonealarm.com
Free spyware removal tool with other useful little utilities - Use
this software at the same time as Ad Aware (noted next). Both clean out
spyware, but they seem to do so differently. Using both will mean you
clean out all the spyware on your computer (run them weekly) http://www.safer-networking.org/ 3 Ad
Aware Free spyware removal tool - keeps your Internet use private! Use in
conjunction with Spyware Search and Destroy (noted above) - http://www.lavasoftusa.com/ 4 Password
Safe Free high encryption mini-safe for your passwords or other private
information based on the Blowfish encryption algorithm - https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/06/password_safe.html 5 SmartDraw Shareware (30 days) trial version - draw diagrams, maps, layouts in
a flash! - http://www.smartdraw.com 6 Paint
Shop Pro Shareware (30 days) trial version - everyone has their favourite photo/image
editing program. But try this one, it won't disappoint - http://www.jasc.com/ 7 Yahoo
IM Free Instant Messaging software - just keeps getting better and more
fun. http://www.yahoo.com.
8 Winamp Freeware - The "skins" and ad-free simplicity make this music
and video player software awesome - now in version 3 and getting even
better! http://www.winamp.com 9 Snag-it Shareware (30 days) trial version - screen capture and annotation software
- a narrow interest software package? Surprisingly useful for capturing
error screens, web pages, and more! http://www.techsmith.com/ 10 Swish Shareware (30 days) trial version - why pay big money for Flash when
you can create those text effects and more in a simple, cheap, easy-to-use
package? http://www.swishzone.com/
11 Winzip Freeware / Demo - The grand master of file compression, file splitting,
archiving, and file bundling. Still free to try, but nice to pay the owners
a small "Pro" version upgrade fee for their long history of
supporting this software - http://www.winzip.com/ Eraser is freeware - Erase files permanently from your hard drive.
I bet you didn't know that files could be recovered from your hard drive
even after they were deleted, the recycle bin was emptied, AND the original
file was overwritten on the tracks on the hard drive. It's true. But this
beautiful little free app overwrites the tracks 35 times with random data
to ensure that your files can not be recovered. Download it here: Eraser - Version 5.3 - .zip package - By Sami
Tolvanen, Finnish Computer Science student. GNU Public License. Now being
maintained by Garrett Trant (Garett's
web site) CCleaner - or "Crap Cleaner" in not so polite terms, removes
all kinds of litter from your computer: Recently visited web site lists,
recently used files, caches of images that browsers automatically store
when you visit a web site, etc. Freeware, but donations are appreciated
to help the author of the software. http://www.ccleaner.com/ Open Office is Sun Computer and the open source community's answer
to MS Office. Free, powerful, easy to use, and up-to-date. Word processor
- that edits ".doc" files and can output directly to ".pdf"
- spreadsheet, HTML editor, presentation software, and more. A super package
- did I mention it was FREE (!) http://openoffice.org
. Suggestion for including this package in the list by Marc Donovan. Thanks,
Marc! Avast virus protection and cleaning software is free to personal /
home users. Not a bad deal considering that competitors make you pay for
their software and then set you up for automatically "dinging"
of your credit card every year. Suggestion for including this package
in the list by Milan Frankl. Thanks, Milan! http://www.avast.com. CallCenter Still have a modem in your computer? Need to fax a resume? Sometimes
you still need to. If you have a faxmodem and need some good, free fax
software, check out CallCenter. The free basic version probably will do
the trick for those odd times you need one. Suggestion for including this
package in our list by Tracy Seelye. Thanks Tracy! http://v3fax.com/freecc.htm Doing backups is like flossing your teeth. Would be good if you did
it, but who has time? With SyncBack, the backups are done regularly for
you automatically. To a backup hard drive, tape drive, network drive,
FTP location, ... Nice software. Takes a bit to configure it, but otherwise,
a great kit for doing automatic backups of your data. http://2brightsparks.com/ Audacity NEW ADDITION! You can
use Windows' sound recorder to record from a microphone. But very quickly
you will get frustrated. You need an powerful but easy to use open source
recording/editing/mp3 converting software package. Audacity is just the
package. The two really useful parts to this software is that you can
test the volume coming in from your microphone and you can edit the sound
files using a bunch of effects such as equalization, reverbs, fades, and
tons more. Please
and let me know about it. Thanks! Home | Last update to this page: April 2005.
2.
Spyware Search
and Destroy
12
Eraser
13
CCleaner
14
Open Office
15
Avast
16
17
SyncBack
18
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
Do you know about a "killer app" sharware
/ freeware software package that I missed in this list?
© 2001-2005, Paul Kurucz. Any information may be copied from this page
for your personal use, but please reference this page as your source in any
publication, either off-line or on-line. Thanks!