Freeware Software Recommendations

[Stupify]

This thread is to post freeware software recommendations that you may have. Please post the Software name, link to developer, short explanation of what it does.

Example:
VLC: Plays multimedia files - http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
FireFox: Browse Internet - http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/
...

Links to sites that have compiled similar lists:
http://techmilieu.com/power-your-pc-wit ... plications
http://www.techsupportalert.com/content ... ditors.htm

[Stupify]

µTorrent: BitTorrent Client - http://www.utorrent.com/
7-Zip: Compression Utility (available 32/64bit) - http://www.7-zip.org/
CCleaner: Clean junk files - http://www.ccleaner.com/
FireFox: Browse Internet - http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/
GIMP: PhotoEditor (Photoshop alternative) - http://www.gimp.org/
Microsoft Security Essentials: Antivirus, spyware detector - http://www.microsoft.com/Security_Essentials/
Notepad++: Text Editor (coders) - http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/
Open Office: Office Software (M$ Office alternative) - http://www.openoffice.org/
PDFCreator: Create PDF files and combine multiple files - http://en.pdfforge.org/
TeraCopy: Copy files in Windows w/ pause and queuing feature - http://www.codesector.com/teracopy.php
Thunderbird: Email program - http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/
VirtualBox: Virtual OS - http://www.virtualbox.org/
VLC: Plays multimedia files - http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
Winamp: Plays mp3s/videos - http://www.winamp.com/
Xplorer2: Multi-pane file browser - http://www.zabkat.com/

[Stupify]

Reserved for compiling a list.

[DIREWOLF75]

Combined Community Codec Pack, provide everything needed for majority of video playback, including several media players: http://www.cccp-project.net/

ApexDC++, Direct Connect and Advanced Direct Connect fileshare network client: http://www.apexdc.net/

Speedfan, check temperatures, fan speeds and harddisk condition easily: http://www.almico.com/sfdownload.php

Free games: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Freeware_games (including some former commercial games, like Mechwarrior 4 Mercenaries with all additions)
OpenTTD, freeware version of Transport Tycoon Deluxe: http://www.openttd.org/en/

Moyea Youtube downloader, allows you to save videos from youtube and some other sites as local files : http://www.moyea.com/free-software/

Advanced Renamer, allows complex file renaming with ease: http://www.advancedrenamer.com/

[Silver]

A very good codec package, was previously called Vista Codec Package.

Win7codecs, x64 Components (for Win7codecs) - Official Site

CDisplay Sequential Image Viewer v1.8
http://web.archive.org/web/200710110032 ... splay.html

This is a program for opening .cbr and .cbz wich is mostly comic books scanned as one image per page. Might be useful for someone to know that its still avalible since GeoCities have been deleted.

Ive not used this program much since I dont really like reading on my monitor :/
but as soon as we get some good 300 DPI monitors ill be sure to try this out again ^^

[mavericko]

Find open source software alternatives to well-known commercial software
http://www.osalt.com/

[mavericko]

Mark Russinovich's Sysinternals Suite
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysi ... 42062.aspx

This is one good collection of tools, that would let you get a bit closer to Windows.
The Sysinternals Process Explorer can be used as a replacement for the Windows Taskmanager and it kind of gives some better control.
It has some nice features like pausing a process, finding which file or handle is open by a process, finding if any process is opening a network communication etc.
Basically you can trace what a suspicious process is doing, relatively well with this tool set

Couple it with Strace for Windows
http://www.intellectualheaven.com/defau ... strace.htm

[Hammer_Time]

EMSISOFT Anti-Malware : http://www.emsisoft.com/en/software/antimalware/ Just download the FREE version and manually run the update and system scan periodicially. It is VERY powerful and detects stuff that the regular anti-virus programs sometimes miss...even the the best ones...the only thing with the free version is that you cannot have it update itself or scan automatically, you have to do those things manually, but if your puter is infected this is one of the best tools out there to clean it up with...

Avast Free edition anti-virus ( use it myself, very happy with it in general ) : http://www.avast.com/en-ca/free-antivirus-download

Ashampoo Burning Studio 6 ( free ) , good free alternative to Nero, lots of options: http://download.cnet.com/Ashampoo-Burni ... 76287.html

Nitro PDF Reader : http://www.nitroreader.com/ Great alternative to Adobe, compact, stable, fast, lots of options and FREE!

GPU-Z is interesting if you want to find out exact details about your video card or onboard gpu:

http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/SysInfo/GPU-Z/

Driver Sweeper is a fast tool to remove driver leftovers from your system. It's very important to remove your drivers on a proper way, because driver leftovers can cause problems like stability and startup problems ( not to mention slow game performance or other 3D problems ). You can use it if you want to update/remove drivers from your system: ( Sometimes simply uninstalling your old video driver is not enough, ESPECIALLY if you switch from ATi to nVidia video card, or vice versa - then you REALLY need to completely clean all remnants of the old driver out, and Driver Sweeper is one of the best ways to do this easily and quickly )

Get latest Driver Sweeper here: http://phyxion.net/Downloads/

RealTemp is similar to "Speedfan" , a good cpu core temp monitoring utility: http://www.techpowerup.com/realtemp/

I use all of the above with Windows 7 64-bit , all very stable and run perfect with this OS. ( and will run fine on 32 bit versions and older Windows OS as well of course ).

Epub Viewer ( to read ebooks etc. published in ePub format ) , here is the FireFox plugin for it: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/45281/ Runs right in the FF browser, no need to launch separate application to view ePub book ...

More ePub readers are reviewed here: http://www.jedisaber.com/ebooks/readers.asp

[Thunder]

Blender: 3D Graphics (Max/Maya alternative) - http://www.blender.org
Defraggler: Disk Defragmentation - http://www.piriform.com/defraggler/
FileZilla: FTP Client - http://filezilla-project.org
ImgBurn: CD/DVD Burning - http://www.imgburn.com
Windows Live Mail/Messenger: Email/IM - http://explore.live.com

I recently switched to FileZilla as my primary FTP client. So far I like it.

[Hammer_Time]

Since many of us are having problems with Daemon Tools in Windows 7 ( sptd.sys keeps crashing to BSOD all the time ), Jordi kindly provided us with a stable free alternative that works well in W7, here is the link he posted in that thread:

Virtual CloneDrive:

http://www.slysoft.com/en/virtual-clonedrive.html

[vineter]

PIXresizer: http://bluefive.pair.com/pixresizer.htm

Simple little program that resizes images very quickly and easily, can do batch file conversions too (reviewed here).

SlimCleaner: http://www.slimwareutilities.com

System cleaner which does a sideline in other useful bits such as a startup manager with advice drawn from the program's community (there's a review here).

[Hammer_Time]

Will the real Slim Shady please stand up??

Thanks for the links, I will try out that PixResizer, looks very easy to use...

[Sauron_Daz]

Will the real Slim Shady please stand up??

[Hammer_Time]

Skype latest version stuttering all the time? Common problem with latest version, especially since they got bought out by Microsoft.

Here is a much better FREE ( for pc to pc calls that is ) alternative called "Vbuzzer" :

http://www.vbuzzer.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vbuzzer

Vbuzzer or Vbuzzer Messenger, is a voice over IP and instant messaging software and service, based on open protocols of XMPP (for instant messaging) and Session Initiation Protocol (for voice over IP). It competes against proprietary protocol based software like Skype, Yahoo! Voice, as well as other open standard based VoIP software. Vbuzzer offers free basic offers PC-PC, Phone-to-PC calling service as well as a paid PC-Phone service.

Compatible software

Yahoo! Messenger
Windows Live Messenger
Google Talk

Skype sucks now...

[DIREWOLF75]

Was pretty much a matter of time.

[Sauron_Daz]

Yea. I wonder if that was the goal from the beginning.

[Hammer_Time]

Who knows really? Skype is not what it used to be, that is for sure...

Anyways, if you want to view the movie trailers on Apple.com/trailers page, you need Quicktime installed.

Apple's Quicktime is very bloaty though, here is a good free stripped-down alternative:

http://www.filehippo.com/download_quick ... ternative/

[Sauron_Daz]

More hippo's...?? (referring to lol animal thread)

[Hammer_Time]

It did give me inspiration to post some hippo pics in the LOL animals thread today, glad you approve!

[Hammer_Time]

Found good free utility that scans your Windows minidump files ( BSOD crash files ) and then BlueScreenView scans all your minidump files created during 'blue screen of death' crashes, and displays the information about all crashes in one table:

http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/blue_screen_view.html

Works for both 32 and 64-bit versions of Windows.