Post your Favorite Freeware

[Homestar]

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#1) I was talking to one of my friends about computers, and he recommended a really cool program
named Qliner that allows you to add any hotkeys you want to the windows button.
Lemme repeat that YOU GET TO MAKE YOUR OWN HOTKEYS
(aka, Windows + I for internet [firefox] or Windows + W for Microsoft Word) Anyway,
I was told it is only 12kb after the installation , which if true is totally awesome.


#2) From another friend I was recommended (what seems to be) a really awesome program
called Max-Mem, this is my little buddy who hangs out in my tray and automatically closes subliminal
programs that aren't currently being used. Just got this one, and haven't had enough time to fully
test it out, but it was highly recommended and seems to work very well. It has many options on
how often it checks the memory, how agressive to be, ect. in addition to graphing out the memory
usage over the past 60 seconds.



#3) I'm pretty sure everyone here already knows about this one, but it is essentially an excellent, close
as you can get without actually having photoshop, freeware... any guesses?
It's called The Gimp. The Gimp is really good for doing a lot of things MS paint doesen't. The real
explanation is to check it out for yourself. When downloading, make sure to download the
GTX RUNTIME ENVIORNMENT first.
(And don't wory about the which country's download to choose, as I really don't think it matters.)


#4)Ad-Aware SE is my personal favorite of all the Spyware cleaners/eliminators. I really love it, so just
thought I'd share that one.


#5) ... And while I'm on the topic of spyware, the best free antivirus out there is called Avast, as it
has the highest ratings of any free antivirus program I know of (better than many of the paid for
antivirus programs I have too).


And then you have the browsers like Mozilla Firefox(2), Opera(9), Explorer(7), ect. ect.

So, What freewares do you have up your sleeve? Especially a compressor (as I've always wanted one of my own,
and an IM would be nice too, as I hated AOLol ).

This thread is also open for freeware debate, overviews, or any comments of the like. If you do post a link, please
have it go to the official website if possible, and give a few details about it. This is not limited, however,
to downloads, and can extend to online programs such as email, hosting, video sites, and beyond.

_______________________... Let the surfing begin.

[kv83]

the best free antivirus program is not Avast! but AntiVir It gets all those awards every year

http://www.free-av.com/

[kalan_vod]

CCleaner is my favorite besides Firefox/Opera.

[Timendus]

I just discovered the Google Web Toolkit (a little late I suppose according to some, but it's cool nonetheless). It basicly allows you to write GUIs in Java, use java.lang and java.util classes and use network IO classes for GET and POST operations as well as the normal client socket thingies, and "compile" it all to HTML and JavaScript which takes care of about anything. From browser incompatibility to sending over objects in serialized form.

It's really just sick. It's completely reshaped my view of designing websites in one evening... I'm still shaking

Oh, and I use AVG for virusscan. I've recently tried to find a good free (preferably open source) virusscanner/firewall, and this one seemed a good choice. I've seen both of your anti virus programs, but for some reason which I can't remember I chose this one

[Shadow Phoenix]

Open Office. FTW!

[threefingeredguy]

Opera and CCleaner.

[anykey]

Mine are all mac programs, so you might want to ignore me

Obviously, firefox and opera


Cyberduck: a simple but amazing ftp client.


iStat: an amazing system monitor application that hangs out on the back of my desktop and looks good.

X-Chat: a nice irc client.

Blender3D: professional quality 3D software for free! Mucho fun.

Gotta' love freeware!

[Arcane WIzard]

MAKE YOUR OWN HOTKEYS

Windows supports setting hotkeys without additional programs.

#2) From another friend I was recommended (what seems to be) a really awesome program
called Max-Mem

Good for a memory management app, but here's a better one: Windows XP.

#3) I'm pretty sure everyone here already knows about this one, but it is essentially an excellent, close
as you can get without actually having photoshop, freeware... any guesses?
It's called The Gimp.

Many win. THe toolkit is called GTK though not GTX.

(And don't wory about the which country's download to choose, as I really don't think it matters.)

Nearest by is fine unless server loads are so different that a further away server can serve you faster. It has no effect on language settings in GIMP or anything, so no it doesn't really matter except for the download speed.

#4)Ad-Aware SE is my personal favorite of all the Spyware cleaners/eliminators.

Makes deals with spyware companies to ignore their files.

anti-virus, anti-spyware

http://www.ewido.net/en/download/ but free version is feature limited after 30 days.

Opera(9)

<3 simaquarium : )

So, What freewares do you have up your sleeve?

diagram drawing: http://www.gnome.org/projects/dia/

grep for windows: http://www.powergrep.com/

regex tool for windows: http://weitz.de/regex-coach/

ssh client & server: http://www.openssh.com/

ftp client for windows: http://winscp.net

video editing: http://www.virtualdub.org/

text editor: http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net

sysinfo tool: http://www.astra32.com/

Especially a compressor

http://www.rarlabs.com/download.htm

http://www.gnu.org/software/tar/

http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/tar.htm

IM

http://www.miranda-im.org/ (get an older version than the latest, it sucks)

email

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/

http://www.squirrelmail.org/

Open Office. FTW!

x2

[kv83]

As good as freeware is... I often find commercial software far better... (PhotoShop >>> GIMP, MS OFFICE >>> Open Office)

[benryves]

As good as freeware is... I often find commercial software far better... (PhotoShop >>> GIMP, MS OFFICE >>> Open Office)

Agreed on both counts.

Anyhow, my mix:

Paint.NET is a freeware image editor. I much prefer it to the GIMP.

VirtualDub is the king of video encoding tools. Well, as long as you're working with AVI. Supports filters to process the video, can capture (and filter/compress on the fly) and do all sorts of other magic.

VirtualPC lets me play all my old DOS games and run my Windows '95 applications perfectly, and dragging and dropping files between the host and emulated machine is wonderful.

There are some useful XP Powertoys, especially the RAW Image Thumbnailer and Viewer (if you have a digital camera), ClearType Tuner, Power Calculator and Virtual Desktop Manager.

ApiViewer is a handy tool for developers needing to perform any P/Invoke black magic.

DirectShow FilterPack is... well... a pack of DirectShow filters. MOD playback in any Windows media application? Groovy.

QuickTime Alternative and Real Alternative need a mention for allowing us to avoid the evil Apple QuickTime player or Real's RealPlayer. QuickTime alternative installs the relevant DirectShow filters, so QuickTime files can be, once again, viewed in any media application.

For viewing PDF documents, there's Foxit Reader. It's not as fully compatible as the official Adobe offering, but doesn't install browser toolbars, a process that launches on startup or take a minute to load. Lightweight and fast is how I like it.

If you want to print PDF documents, but don't want to fork out for Adobe's offering, PrimoPDF installs a PDF printer driver. Very handy piece of software.

On a similar note, the .NET 3.0 Framework will allow you to run .NET 3.0 applications (not so surprising) but also installs an XPS (XML Paper Specification) printer driver, letting you print XPS documents from any application. XPS is Microsoft's "PDF-Killer" format. I'm not sure if it will gain wide acceptance, but it's an open standard, the viewer is light, and the .NET framework offers all the relevant methods for generating them programatically, so it might do quite well.

[Arcane WIzard]

Well, if you don't need your objects or tables to cooperate with you, sure MS Office works fine. I don't see any advantage of it over OO though, in fact, OO can do much more and without the silly layout bugs.

Photoshop > GIMP, yes, if you don't mind having all your images show in one silly window and losing any advantage of having a multiple monitor environment. Photoshop's ease of layer use? Yes, superior, unless you're not familiar with Photoshop but with GIMP. Need to make some buttons for a website or correct the lighting in a picture? GIMP. Need to create a whole magazine full of pictures and vector effects for a commercial company? Photoshop.

Adobe Acrobat Professional would be a better example.

[benryves]

Photoshop > GIMP, yes, if you don't mind having all your images show in one silly window and losing any advantage of having a multiple monitor environment. Photoshop's ease of layer use? Yes, superior, unless you're not familiar with Photoshop but with GIMP. Need to make some buttons for a website or correct the lighting in a picture? GIMP. Need to create a whole magazine full of pictures and vector effects for a commercial company? Photoshop.

I'm not sure what you mean with the first point, but at least in Photoshop 7 the MDI window is not a true MDI window (the windows are not contained within it). You can even reduce the size of the main window to be a thin strip and move it to the top of the display ala MacOS. If you mean that each image doesn't get its own toolbar button... well, I guess that's a point, but I just use Ctrl+Tab anyway.

[Arcane WIzard]

Ok, I'm more familiar with older versions.

[kv83]

I hate when GIMP does that... giving every window a own toolbar thingie... way to mess up my toolbaar :S

[Arcane WIzard]

Oh, and tweak-ui for x-mouse setting. ctrl+tab or clicking = lolnothx

Also disable windows stealing focus.

http://download.microsoft.com/download/ ... ySetup.exe