useful freeware
Posted: Mon Sep 22, 2008 10:21 am
Hi
Here’s a list of some favourite Freeware which you may or may not know about. (I only found out about most of them by chance, so I thought I’d pass them on.)
GoAway
is an alarm-clock. You set the time you want, and a window will appear on your screen (with or without an acoustic signal, as you dictate) telling you it’s time to go.
SpaceMonger
provides a chart of whatever drive you specify, showing graphically what’s taking up how much room on it. It’s an easy way of discovering (and deleting) clutter. Only the earliest quasi-obsolete version is free, but that’s the best one. Later versions try to do too much, and cost money.
Audacity
records whatever is going through your sound card (irrespective of the source), and allows you to edit it. In this way you can create DIY podcasts, or record short bursts of music, or whole tracks, or whatever.
PhotoFiltre
is the best and easiest-to-use of the amateur photo-processing programmes. It doesn’t have everything, but then none of them do.
FolderSize
allows you to adjust the display in Windows Explorer to show not only the size of files, but also of folders both in terms of total bytes and of number of files.
KeyTweak
allows you to assign different functions to keyboard keys from those they have by default. Thus you can assign uses to otherwise otiose keys. (In the case of my ancient cast-iron keyboard, I was able to give it the Winkey it didn’t have.)
PDFCreator
does precisely that, create a pdf document from something else (web page, Word document, screenshot or anything else that’s printable). It acts as a virtual printer: you use it by selecting it as your printer for the particular task in hand. If like me you have no other printer, all you have to do is click on the print icon.
and talking of PDF:
Foxit
is the best pdf reader, much quicker at loading than Adobe Acrobat (milliseconds rather than 15 sec), and much quicker at searching a pdf file. A word of warning: it is probably best not to have both Acrobat and Foxit installed. Also, your browser may need to be told how to handle pdf links. (Ask if you want more info.)
talking of browsers, I can’t imagine anyone’s still using Internet Explorer, but if you are, there are much better ones around:
Firefox and Opera are very similar, but Opera is more reliable in my experience (fewer glitches). And the new Google Chrome beta is the quickest and has the least cluttered screen (and apart from a minor issue with pdf links, I haven't found any problem with it yet). All three use the same bookmark toolbar, which is much superior to IE or Safari. They all use tabbed browsing, but I can’t get this to work properly on Firefox.
(Incidentally, don’t uninstal IE, that might cause problems as it’s integrated into the Windows system. Simply ignore it.)
Sorry I haven't given you links, but all the above names are googlable and will take you to a download link.
Here’s a list of some favourite Freeware which you may or may not know about. (I only found out about most of them by chance, so I thought I’d pass them on.)
GoAway
is an alarm-clock. You set the time you want, and a window will appear on your screen (with or without an acoustic signal, as you dictate) telling you it’s time to go.
SpaceMonger
provides a chart of whatever drive you specify, showing graphically what’s taking up how much room on it. It’s an easy way of discovering (and deleting) clutter. Only the earliest quasi-obsolete version is free, but that’s the best one. Later versions try to do too much, and cost money.
Audacity
records whatever is going through your sound card (irrespective of the source), and allows you to edit it. In this way you can create DIY podcasts, or record short bursts of music, or whole tracks, or whatever.
PhotoFiltre
is the best and easiest-to-use of the amateur photo-processing programmes. It doesn’t have everything, but then none of them do.
FolderSize
allows you to adjust the display in Windows Explorer to show not only the size of files, but also of folders both in terms of total bytes and of number of files.
KeyTweak
allows you to assign different functions to keyboard keys from those they have by default. Thus you can assign uses to otherwise otiose keys. (In the case of my ancient cast-iron keyboard, I was able to give it the Winkey it didn’t have.)
PDFCreator
does precisely that, create a pdf document from something else (web page, Word document, screenshot or anything else that’s printable). It acts as a virtual printer: you use it by selecting it as your printer for the particular task in hand. If like me you have no other printer, all you have to do is click on the print icon.
and talking of PDF:
Foxit
is the best pdf reader, much quicker at loading than Adobe Acrobat (milliseconds rather than 15 sec), and much quicker at searching a pdf file. A word of warning: it is probably best not to have both Acrobat and Foxit installed. Also, your browser may need to be told how to handle pdf links. (Ask if you want more info.)
talking of browsers, I can’t imagine anyone’s still using Internet Explorer, but if you are, there are much better ones around:
Firefox and Opera are very similar, but Opera is more reliable in my experience (fewer glitches). And the new Google Chrome beta is the quickest and has the least cluttered screen (and apart from a minor issue with pdf links, I haven't found any problem with it yet). All three use the same bookmark toolbar, which is much superior to IE or Safari. They all use tabbed browsing, but I can’t get this to work properly on Firefox.
(Incidentally, don’t uninstal IE, that might cause problems as it’s integrated into the Windows system. Simply ignore it.)
Sorry I haven't given you links, but all the above names are googlable and will take you to a download link.