I believe that finding a good freeware is like looking for
a needle in a haystack. Open any freeware site
on the internet and there are literally hundreds
of software listings in every category. Often
there are 10 or more candidate software that
look the same and have similar features. Faced
with this situation I have found a way out for
myself. I use only those freeware that someone
among my friends or colleagues has used and
recommended. Alternatively I read online
articles or computer magazines and use the
freeware recommended by some respected author
based on their personal experience with the
software.
I want to
share with you my experience of 7 freeware that
I have personally used over a period of time and
that I highly recommend.
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Belarc Advisor
On starting
Belarc Advisor, the software conducts a
detailed profile of your computer and
shows the results in the browser.
The
profile contains various details of your
computer like the operating system, the software installed on
your system including licenses,
Microsoft Hotfixes, processor, memory,
drives, main circuit board, logins,
printers, controllers, display, bus
adapters, multimedia, communications,
and other devices.
One useful feature is the hyperlink next
to each software item that opens the
folder in which the software is
installed. That way you don't have to
search the folder where the software is
installed.
Please note the license associated with the Belarc
Advisor product allows for free personal use only.
This means you cannot use Belarc Advisor
in a corporate environment.
| Details |
| Name:
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Belarc Advisor
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| License:
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Free Personal Use Only
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| Website:
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http://www.belarc.com
|
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Cryptainer LE
If there is just
one software that you wish to use after
reading this article then this should be
it. Cryptainer LE is the best free
software that I have used over one year
on a daily basis.
Cryptainer LE is an award winning
encryption software like no other. You
simply create a Cryptainer volume/vault
which is a file on your hard disk. This
vault shows up as a drive on your system
alongside your hard disk partitions in
Windows Explorer. So if you have say two
partitions "C:" and "D:" on your hard
disk, the Cryptainer vault may show up
as "E:" or "F:" or any other letter you
assign it. Now encryption is simply
dragging your files and folders to this
drive. The encryption is handled
automatically by the software, you only
need to specify a password when creating
the cryptainer vault and once during
loading the vault. Decryption is also
simple where you drag-drop files from
cryptainer drive to any other normal
windows folder. You can also open files
from within the cryptainer drive
directly. For example you can specify
Outlook to store your emails and access
them directly from a cryptainer drive.
When you unload the cryptainer
drive/volume/vault the drive is not
shown anymore. All contents within the
vault are in an encrypted form. Further
you can take a backup of the cryptainer
volume/vault simply by copying the
"cryptainer file" that you create at the
beginning and storing it in a CD for
example.
There is a small limitation for the free
edition and that is the maximum size for
cryptainer vault is 25 MB. However, you
can create any number of cryptainer
vaults each of 25 MB, so its not a big
problem.
| Details |
| Name:
|
Cryptainer LE
|
| License:
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Free
|
| Website:
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http://www.cypherix.com
|
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Irfan View
IrfanView is an
excellent image viewer that can handle a
large no. of picture formats. It can
also play windows mpeg files. It is a
small, very fast program with a host of
useful features.
After opening any picture with IrfanView
you can navigate easily between others
pictures/images in the current
directory. All navigation and display
options such as full view etc can be
done with shortcut keys. It is possible
to do basic image editing. Other useful
features are Thumbnail viewer,
Screenshot capture, Acquire image from
Twain source, Slideshow including
screensaver, set as wallpaper, perform
batch conversion of images from one
format to another. One feature that I
appreciate is that IrfanView will prompt
if one of the picture/image file has a
wrong file extension and offer to rename
it to its correct extension.
| Details |
| Name:
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Irfan View
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| License:
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Free for private,
non-commercial use |
| Website:
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http://www.irfanview.com
|
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GIMP
GIMP is an open
source professional graphics package. If
you want to do anything serious with
images, logos, site design etc then this
is it. You can generate professional
looking images with this software.
It took me some time to get used to
GIMP, but one easy way to familiarize
yourself with GIMP is to run each of the
readymade scripts that are available to
make nice looking buttons, logos, brush,
patterns etc. Online tutorials are
available on the internet.
| Details |
| Name:
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GIMP
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| License:
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Free |
| Website:
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http://www.gimp.org |
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Zip Genius
ZipGenius is the
freeware alternative to commercial file
compression/zip software.
It supports all major archive file
formats, allows creation of self
extracting, self-locking , and
self-erasing archives,
encryption-decryption of archives, it
even provides a password manager,
integration with windows shell is also
provided. Further
it also provides FTP software (to be
downloaded separately) to publish the
archives to a website. It is a
combination of good user interface and
functionality.
| Details |
| Name:
|
Zip Genius
|
| License:
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Free |
| Website:
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http://www.zipgenius.it
|
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Abilon
Abilon is a
simple, fast, and responsive news
aggregator.
Abilon lets you organize all your RSS
and ATOM feeds in different groups, with
update intervals. Some other features
provided are different view styles,
archives, memories, selective update,
and yes it even includes a blogging
tool. I have read that the new Internet
Explorer 7 has a built in news
aggregator tool. But since I haven't
used the aggregator in IE 7 I don't know
which one is better. So for now I
believe Abilon is great. There are few
other free news aggregators online but
some of them require the Microsoft.Net
framework installed on your computer.
Abilon does not require any such
prerequisite.
| Details |
| Name:
|
Abilon
|
| License:
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Free |
| Website:
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http://www.abilon.org
|
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ZPaint
ZPaint is a
handy tool/utility to create 3D buttons,
logos to be used in websites quickly.
It is a tiny software but can come in
handy if you want to create a 3D
element.
| Details |
| Name:
|
ZPaint
|
| License:
|
Free |
| Website:
|
http://www.steffengerlach.de/freeware/
|
Hi I'm Omkar Bapat and I am a software professional with more than 5 years experience in software industry. I like writing freeware.
You can checkout more about two of my free software SwiftStart
and Stock Profit Calculator I also do freelance projects, if you are
interested in getting any software developed from me contact me via
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