If it's not free, I don't want it (no illegal stuff plz).

Remember the good old days when the Internet was free? It seemed like every program came with a unlimited ‘evaluation’ period. Spyware and nag screens were almost nonexistent. Nowadays, everything has strict limitations or fills your hard drive with crap. I recently downloaded a new version of Win-Zip and the first thing I see is a f**king nag screen to register it.

I thought I’ll post on here a list of free programs I personally use and enjoy. That means no damn nag screens or extraneous adware. I’m aware of sites with huge listings of free programs (try typing ‘free’ in google) but most people don’t have the time to comb through those lists. These are all programs I like enough to keep on my computer. Know this, just because you have to pay for a program doesn’t mean it’s better then the ones you can download for free.

Following is a list with brief descriptions for each item. Every program is free and easy enough for the technologically illiterate. There are no ads or other little surprises unless otherwise stated. I’m sure someone out there is looking for a program to perform one specific function but are unwilling to pay $40 to use it once or twice. I hope you will find something useful.

AbiWord Open-source word processor similar to Microsoft Word.

AdAware This little program searches for any spyware on your computer.

AVG Anti-Virus Great virus detector that doesn’t hog much processing power.

DreamStars 2 Very fun upgrade to Asteroids. Version 3 does require purchasing though. :frowning:

Eraser This little program will securely delete your files. I don’t use this much but I still like to have it around. Kinda like a security blanket.

Exact Audio Copy (EAC) with LAME These two programs in combination are the BEST way of ripping your cds onto your hard drive. Just google for EAC and LAME to find instructions.

FlashGet I use this download manager for its functionality and ease of use. However, it does have spyware. Does anyone know of a similar program without spyware but just as intuitive?

gSearch This little program provides a small toolbar at the bottom of your screen for searching with Google. I used this back before I switched to Opera because it was very un-intrusive.

GSpot If you have any problems playing a video, download this program. It will tell you what codec are being used to render the file. Very useful for troubleshooting.

Gibson Research Corporation This isn’t a program but a security site. It has many excellent programs for checking (and fixing) your internet vulnerability .

Jv16 Power Tools This is a registry editor with many powerful tools for file management as well (warning: registry cleanup is automated but you should still be careful when mucking around in the registry).

MP3Gain I’m rather anal about my music collection and I like all my files to have the same loudness. This program makes it simple to readjust the volume for mass files.

MP3Trim This little program is good for cutting off those annoying silences at the end of songs. I use this surprisingly often.

MP3 Tag Studio All right, so I’m very anal about my music :). This great program automatically tags and renames your MP3, as well as many other abilities. Very useful.

Muse I use this program to convert music file formats. It has other features such as burning cds but I haven’t tried them yet.

Opera This browser is ad supported but I find it much more intuitive then Internet Explorer.

Proxomitron I absolutely love this program. It sets up a proxy between you and the net to filter out ads and anything else you can think of. I haven’t seen a pop-up since I installed this program.

Spybot Search and Destroy Similar to AdAware but in my opinion the better of the two.

Sysinfo 1.40 This program lets you know exactly what hardware specs your computer has. It has a $25 registration fee in order to print out your stats but why not simply write down the info with a pen and paper?

TweakUI This program allows the user much more freedom with Windows. It takes care of many problems Microsoft didn’t catch the first time.

Winamp version 2 This is still my standard music player. It’s small and efficient without the bloat of version 3.

WinRAR This compress/uncompress program is for those .rar files. They do have a 30 day trial limit so if anyone knows of another program, please let me know.

ZoneAlarm Firewalls are essential for a internet connection. This program does have a few nag screens but otherwise it’s great.

Whew! That’s it for now. Took me a hour to paste all the links :). I’ll post some more stuff as I think of them.

So, does anyone have freeware on their computer that they just can’t live without? Let the rest of us know! Not everyone has the free time to shift through all the terrible programs out there (unlike me). I’m always on the lookout for great programs for free. Right now I’m trying to find a video editing program that’ll let me capture the sound from a movie. Any suggestions?

I hope this list is helpful to my fellow dopers. Everything here I actually use on a daily basis.

P.S. I’m well aware of technically ‘legal’ freeware such as kazaa lite. However, I feel those programs are only used for illegal purposes so I’m not going to get into them. Please, if you provide your own suggestion, do not mention anything that is illegal. Everything I have listed here is completely legal and most important, FREE.

There is so much great free software out there now. Here are my picks (sorry, too lazy to do the links):

OpenOffice(.org) - now I don’t need to buy/steal a MS Office license.
Mozilla, of course.
Popcorn email - lightweight email client that allows you to read/delete messages without downloading them from the server
Tight VNC - like PCAnywhere but free.
Audacity - very good sound file editor.
AP Guitar Tuner - slick guitar tuner.
In the “I use this surprisingly often” category:
Minute Timer - why Windows doesn’t have an alarm clock I don’t know.
Mike Lin’s Startup Control Panel
I use a spare PC as a video recorder, which makes the following free apps indispensable:
Virtual VCR - the best VCR software I’ve used.
Virtual Dub - great for cleaning up and compressing video prior to burning it to CD.
DScaler - Watch TV on a computer without those horrible artefacts. Very good for Teletext too, much better than a real TV.

I also second EAC, Jv16, Winamp 2, and AVG. Don’t know about AbiWord though - I’d say it was more of a WordPad equivalent. It doesn’t even do tables!

Thanks for some of those…I have been looking for something like MP3 Gain for a while now!

If there’s one thing I’ve learned, there’s always something decent for free (or even real cheap) if you’re willing to look long enough.
Here are a few of my favs:

First off, head to No Nags. There you will find a huge directory of freeware without spyware or nag screens.

Belarc Advisor sounds like the ‘sysinfo’ in the OP, but has no limitations.

Find Junk Files will search your HD for ‘junk’ files (.bak, .tmp, etc.) and list them for you, you can then select what you want it to delete.

Everybody need to backup their computers! My Own Backup is simple, quick and effective. (and, oh yeah, FREE!)

If you’re running a network, InterChat is a great, light chat utility that allows everybody on your network to communicate with each other via the LAN.

The Open Office Suite is similar to MS Office, it has a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation manager, and drawing program. A very nice little suite I am trying to really field-test in hopes I can adapt it for use on my Network.

Just wanted to say - thanks! What an excellent thread.

I recommend Watchdog 95 (wdog.exe) - a tiny little systray app that checks your POP server and barks when you’ve got mail.

It’s so old that I don’t know if you can download it any more. Anyone who wants a copy, just mail me.

Great thread idea!

I’ll add Tiny Personal Firewall, free for personal use, and extremely waterproof according to the Gibson Research site mentioned above.

Have to cover the Mac side too :wink:

Lots of great free Mac stuff out there. I’ll start with Meteorologist…“the only free weather program for OSX”. (Although I thought WeatherPoP Lite was also free).

Great program to monitor the weather in your menu bar.

Check out kung log and lung tunes…kung log is a free blogging program (Leo Laporte from the Screensavers uses it) and Kung Tunes will automatically post what iTunes is playing on your web site.

Finally, Launch Bar is free for up to seven items per session.

cletus, 7-Zip is an open source program which can open RAR files. I find it a bit clunky compared to WinZip, and I don’t like its intrusive installer (e.g. adding itself, uninvited, to context menus), but it does the job.

RoughDraft. I love this program. It’s a word processor created specifically for writers. I’ve used it exclusively for a long time now and I can’t imagine ever going back to MS Word.

Happy to be of service guys:).

Thanks for the link to RoughDraft Greywolf. The only problem with Abiword is it saves to its own file type. I’ve been looking for another word processor that uses a general file type.

NoGoodNamesLeft, I’m gonna go through that ‘No Nags’ site and post anything good on here. I’m only gonna link programs that I feel are worth the time to use. Us dopers have to help each other out (maybe I just have to much free time?).

Does anyone know of a program that’ll let me split a big file in half so I can burn onto two cds?

Any others with a wish list of free programs? Who knows, one of us might have it on their computer.

Hope you don’t mind Usram but I took the liberty of posting links for you.

Mozilla
Popcorn email
Tight VNC
Audacity
AP Guitar Tuner
Minute Timer
Mike Lin’s Startup Control Panel - Small and efficient are always a plus with programs (looking at you Microsoft :dubious: ).
Virtual VCR
Virtual Dub
DScaler

I’m downloading VirtualDub now, it might be just what I’ve been looking for. I hope all those links go to the program you intended.

Cant afford $500 for the full version of Photoshop? Try The GIMP. Yes, there is a version for Windows.

I can’t bring myself to use The GIMP even though I’d like to have a free image processing program. If only it followed some standard Windows UI conventions and wasn’t so damn ugly. :slight_smile:

MyIE2 - Skinnable freeware browser based on the IE core. With the tabbed interface and mouse gestures, it’s like a cross between IE and Opera. It has a feature called ‘Simple Collecter’ which works like the new ‘Notes’ feature in Opera 7.10.

Outpost Firewall - Comes in two versions, Pro (which costs money) and Free.

ToolBox - A very nice looking application launcher.

2xExplorer - Windows Explorer replacement. With this installed I never use Windows Explorer.

VirtualDub is one of the best freeware programs I’ve ever used. There’s just so much you can do with it! You can capture video. You can encode video to any AVI codec you have installed on your system (for those of us that prefer MPEG, TMPGenc, regarded by many as the best MPEG-1 encoder out there, is free for MPEG-1 encoding [You’ll have to pony up a few bucks if you want MPEG-2.]). There are tons of free VirtualDub filters for cleaning up noise in videos, deinterlacing, inverse telecine, etc, etc.

I often find that the volume in my captures is quite low even though I have the levels turned up all the way. This is a common problem. Fortunately, freeware can come to your rescue again, this time in the form of Normalizer, a very small, easy-to-use, lightening-quick, command-line utility. Just go to File->Save WAV in Vdub, then run normalize on the WAV. If your end source will be MPEG, you can just run the freeware tooLAME mp2 encoder on your WAV, then specify it as the audio source when encoding in TMPGenc.

I frameserve my files from VirtualDub to TMPGenc. This just means that Vdub reads the captured AVI file, applies its filters, and feeds the video to TMPGenc, frame by frame, for MPEG encoding. This is a popular method for high-quality video capture. If you really get into this stuff, there’s an excellent (freeware, of course) tool called AVIsynth. It’s faster than Vdub because it can work in YUV colorspace. Like Vdub, it has plenty of filters. The downside? It’s not a GUI program. You write scripts to do all the dirty work. There are, however, some script creation utilities listed on their site, and some 3rd parties are starting to provide GUI support for it, the most notable being VirtualDubMod, a freeware modification of VirtualDub that offers serveral new features not found in the official version.

hjsplit.