DAVID

DAVID'S LAND OF THE CHEAP AND HOME OF THE FREE

There are some great freeware programs out there to do all kinds of things. I have been evaluating freeware and cheap-ware for a long time on several types of systems and I have a list that I am going to pass along. Some of you may have heard about these before. I have basically "wrung" these out, they aren't disk or IO hogs and I use them regularly. However, as I can't know about your individual systems, your mileage may vary:

Utilities:

Avast AntiVirus www.avast.com I have this running on all my systems. Free, full featured and works with Vista for those so inclined. AVG anti-virus also seems ok, but doesn't work with Vista.
AdAware www.lavasoft.com/products/ad-aware_se_personal.php Well known spyware cleaner, still free and a must IMO. Vista friendly also.
JV-16 Power Tools www.macecraft.com Cheap-ware registry cleaner and compactor along with some other goodies too. $ 12.95 to $ 29.95 depending on version and features. I haven't found a free registry cleaner that I really like yet.
Volumouse http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/volumouse.html Adjust sound volume on the fly with your mouse-wheel. Nice to have when watching DVD's on a laptop. What's that? Windows Media Player won't play your DVD's... That's because MS didn't bother to include a codec.
Media Player Classic http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=82303&package_id=84358 with codecs to play DVD's and handle many other different types of media files including Real and Quicktime. So no more need for either Real or Quicktime's space hogging, hijacking apps and nag screens. Note: You will still need Quicktime from Apple for Itunes.
Taskbar Activate http://home.nordnet.fr/pmdevigne/TaskbarActivate.html I hide my taskbar. This app controls the time it takes for it to reappear. Allows you to play around at the edges of app windows without inadvertently displaying the task bar. A must when using my imprecise laptop touchpad.
Send To Power Toy www.microsoft.com/ntworkstation/downloads/PowerToys/Networking/NTSendToX.asp Should have been a part of the Windows OS to begin with! Doesn't work with Vista though. Google for the Vista registry hack to do that.
Rocket Time www.rocketsoftware.com/portfolio/rockettime/free.htm Keeps PC time precise.
Stickies www.zhornsoftware.co.uk/stickies/ Take those yellow sticky notes off your screen and put them up electronically or attach to individual webpages.
Belarc Advisor www.belarc.com Probably more then you ever wanted to know about your system.

Advanced Utilities and Linux:

Parted Magic http://partedmagic.com An alternative to Partition Magic 8.0 . Not quite as robust or intuitive as PM 8.0 but it's free and that makes it $ 70.00 cheaper; so who's complaining? Download the .iso and make your own boot disk.
Smart FTP Client www.smartftp.com/ Now that IP Switch is charging for WS_FTP, this is my alternative choice. Actually Firefox has an add-on which works great called FireFTP.
Bart PE www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/ Probably better attempted by the more technically inclined. Use it to create a bootable Windows environment you can run from a CD-Rom. This one has saved my bacon more then once. Many vendors are providing plug-ins for this app which can make it even more robust. Laptop users and others without a Windows CD take note... Bart PE will allow you to re-install or repair Windows from your Windows I386 file which is installed on most laptops and other systems that didn't come with a CD. Before you do that however, check your Windows CD key to make sure you have it recorded correctly with:
Keyfinder www.magicaljellybean.com/keyfinder.shtml .
Acronis 10.0 True Image www.acronis.com IMO better (and cheaper @ $ 49.99) then Ghost-especially now since Symantec has screwed it up so badly in the latest versions. Ghost 2003 is my other choice, so if you have it, hang onto it. Neither one worked properly for me with Vista which is supposedly providing its own imaging program in the release version.

Linux:

Ubuntu Linux www.ubuntu.com The downloadable .iso image can build a CD to run locally for evaluation or you can do a full install to hard disk. This is the first Linux build that I have seen that would entice me to throw Windows "out the window" so to speak. If I had a system that needed a free OS, this would be it. Too many features to mention them all, but two of the best are that it will automatically update/install additional apps available from the Ubuntu server. It also has built-in support for some wireless cards which is the first Linux build I have seen with that capability. I would build a disk to run locally first and give it a test drive. It found all of my hardware on my desktop, setup the network automatically and I was on the Internet without making any additional inputs. My wireless on my laptop works too. Also includes OpenOffice which will handle Windows .docs also. IMO, this one is getting close to a Linux that will be usable by the masses.

Applications:

CD Burner XP Pro www.cdburnerxp.se/ Handles most burning, ripping and erasing needs for both CDs and DVDs. Makes bootable disks. Burns from and creates .iso files and many other things. Does what Roxio attempted to do and Windows should do; only better and for free.
Shrink DVD www.dvdshrink.org/what.html Among other things, this is good for backing up your DVD movies.
Cute PDF Writer www.cutepdf.com/Products/CutePDF/writer.asp This creates a printer driver to save documents as .pdf files. I need to save copies of web pages from time to time, including schedules, receipts, etc. off the net. Sometimes web pages cannot be saved with all the information and images intact. I use this little app to save these as .pdfs which don't have any missing information. Not comparable in any form to the full Acrobat program, but it gets the job done. Download both the app and the converter.
PhotoFiltre www.photofiltre.com/ Will handle the graphic manipulation chores of most average users with ease and a whole lot more if needed.
Picasa by Google http://picasa.google.com Find and catalog all those long lost photos and image files.
MP3Tag www.mp3tag.de/en/ allows you to edit all types of sound file meta tags for free.
Wordweb http://wordweb.info/free/ A free dictionary and thesaurus.

Email and Music:

Gmail www.gmail.com tops my list of free email programs. Gmail spam blocker is excellent and POP access is free.
Yahoo Music Jukebox http://music.yahoo.com/jukebox/ is the music service I use. An annual subscription is $ 72 and you can have the software on three different machines. Music burns are .79 cents a piece.

Most of the providers of freeware have a way to make donations if you really like their programs. I do this from time to time if I really like the app and use it a lot.

David