A page of freely downloadable programs that offer an alternative to
mainstream applications or provide a useful (or just plain cool)
function to users like ourselves.
To contribute an item please:
1) test it out yourself
2) describe a bit about its funtionality and/or why you like it
3) provide links for download, instructions, whatever
4)
send me the above
and I'll add it
Anti-Virus: AVG
Anti-Virus by Grisoft
We all know that running an anti-virus program is a necessity. As free
ones go AVG seems pretty well thought of. Pro's: it's
free for the life of the product, can scan incoming and outgoing email,
can be set to automatically update itself and, should you wish,
fully scan your HD at a preset time. Cons: may not be able to fully
disinfect everything it finds (none of them do), doesn't maintain
as good of a step-by-step manual disinfection procedure on its website
for viruses it can't automatically deal with the way some
pay-for-play anti-virus developers do.
Anti-Spyware Tools:
Spybot -
Search & Destroy by Patrick Kolla
Ad-Aware
SE by Nicolas Stark
If you're not familiar with what's referred to as "spyware" you'd
better become so, because your PC is probably riddled with it.
A good one page tutorial can be found
here.
So many new versions and types
of spyware are constantly being created that using multiple tools to
combat it (one will catch what the other
might miss), and keeping them updated, is highly recommended.
Exact Time Finder: Atomic
Clock Sync by Worldtimeserver.com
By themselves PCs do not keep accurate time. This little utility will
ensure that yours does. It rides in the system tray and can be set to
run at startup, automatically check and, if necessary, adjust your PC
clock once a day. It will also find local time anywhere in the world
with two clicks (more or less).
Acrobat PDF Creator: PDFCreator
by SourceForge.net
This is something I really could have used when I was sending resumes
out. Here's a good description of it found on
The Washington
Post:
"Portable Document Format (PDF) files routinely fill people's browser
windows and e-mail inboxes. They're sent there by organizations,
companies and government agencies that use this format to ensure that
documents such as tax forms and loan applications look the same on
whatever computer they're opened. Why not just send a Word file? A PDF
will preserve whatever text styles and graphics you added, which you
can't count on with Word files transferred between computers -- even
those running the same version of Word. It will also be readable on
computers that don't have Word installed at all. Lastly, a PDF cannot
be edited except with high-end software.
Neither Windows XP nor Microsoft Office includes a save-as-PDF
capacity, although some Office competitors, such as WordPerfect by
Corel and OpenOffice, do feature that option. The cheapest PDF-creation
program from Adobe, the developer of the PDF standard, is its $299
Adobe Acrobat Standard. However, since this format is an open,
well-documented standard, other companies have been able to develop
their own free PDF-publishing tools -- or at least, free in a monetary
sense."
Registry Utility: EASYCLEANER
2.0, by Toni Helenius
I've used this on several PCs now and like it a lot. Here's a
description found (again) on
The Washington Post:
"Cleaning the Windows registry -- the system-wide database of settings
that regulates much of a PC's workings -- is a task too vital to skip,
but too tricky for most to undertake on their own. Most registry
utilities come bundled in such complex, pricey packages as Symantec's
Norton SystemWorks, but EasyCleaner is different. Finnish author
Helenius's free, compact download focuses on keeping this inscrutable
Windows component in good health, although it also provides a few other
options (for instance, removing duplicate files and setting start-up
features).
Like its commercial cousins, EasyCleaner can analyze a registry file
and remove invalid or unneeded items automatically, providing a quick
speed-up in the process. On an old Windows 98 test system, for example,
EasyCleaner took about two minutes to scan the registry, finding 181
invalid entries (along with hundreds of unneeded, temporary or
duplicate files that had eaten dozens of megabytes of disk space).
EasyCleaner's fixes for those problems yielded a visibly faster system,
cutting this PC's start-up time from almost a minute to just 25
seconds.
Sensibly enough, EasyCleaner saves the changes it makes for a later
undo, should things not go right."
Sandbox: Sandboxie by Ronen Tzur
The following description has been lifted from techsupportalert.com, a
great security site to go browse around in should you be so inclined. A
diagramed
description of what sandboxes are and do is on the linked Sandboxie
page.
"The strange name "sandbox" derives from the Java world where it refers
to the
highly contained and restricted environment in which Java programs
(applets) are
allowed to run. They are allowed to "play in the sandbox" but not go
outside it.
The important point is that while running in the sandbox, the programs
have no
access to your PC.
So it is with security sandboxes. While browsing within the environment
provided by one of these program you are totally corralled off from
your other parts of your PC. Any files you download are isolated to the
sandbox. Similarly, any programs that are executed only do so within
the sandbox and have no access to your normal files, the Windows
operating system or indeed any other part of your PC.
This means you have complete browsing security. Nothing you do while
browsing
can have any effect on your PC outside the sandbox."
What is all that stuff? ProcessLibrary.com will tell you.
Hit the Ctrl-Alt-Del keys and the "Task Manager" pops up. Go to the second tab called "Processes". That's the stuff I'm talking about.
Those are programs running in your memory (RAM) space. Most of them are needed by the operating system but some aren't.
Some can even be detrimental. How did they get there? Well, lots of ways. Programs you've installed through purchase, download, whatever,
sometimes take liberties without telling you and install little slivers of themselves here. Their reasoning is that this makes their programs
work faster and that's true to an extent. But what happens when LOTS of programs all do this? You run out of RAM and that ain't good.
My advise? Be selective. Decide for yourself what you do and do not want running here. The first step, and what this tool is all about,
is to identify what's what. I use this all the time.