Freeware programs and applications

[Winchester]

Sweet.

 

[imported_DarkPenguin]

Notepad++ is a nice text editor. I don't know if it has been mentioned. Available over at sourceforge. Also over at source forge is Keepass which is a great password keeper.

 

[bryantp]

Software/hardware inventory of your windows clients.

LanSweeper

 

[bryantp]

Originally posted by: Bob151

Originally posted by: udonoogen
is there a good alternative to Microsoft Money or Quicken? im looking into managing my funds but dont know where to start. i dont want to dish out $50-60 on a program i wont know how to use either. recent college grad looking for help with the funds. thanks!

Don

edit: went out to best buy (gasp, not on a black friday!) to use a couple of gift cards i got for christmas. purchased microsoft money standard 2005 and h&r block's tax cut deluxe ... after rebate it comes out to $20 for the two ... not a bad deal

Darn, I didn't see this in time....

I was going to suggest that, but I would have recommended the Deluxe version. MS now makes the standard product expire within one year or some predetermined date, whichever comes first. For example, Money 2005 Standard might expire on say April 30, 2006, if not sooner.

Occasionally, the Deluxe version can be FAR as well, but not as often as the Standard.

GNUCash

 

[deadken]

Does anyone know of a free DVD Decoder program? IIRC, I can get one from ATI for my 3 rigs w/ATI cards in them, but that won't help me with my rig that has a PNY 6800GT in it. $400 for a Video Card with a Nvidia 'manager' that wants to run all of the time, but they couldn't be bothered to give me a DVD Decoder program? Is there a reason that they don't bundle one with NVidia cards? Could it be that NVidia sells their own Decoder software?

Also, I have one DVD burner (TS-H552B) that came with Nero Burning ROM, Nero StartSmart, and Cover Designer. I have been burning a bunch of DVD's lately and have been considering getting another burner (maybe w/lightscribe), does anyone know if the Nero software will let me burn the same image to two separate drives at the same time? Can someone recommend a program that will? If not, then I probably won't get a second drive.

-Thanks, Ken

 

[Winchester]

search for mrbass on google.

 

[deadken]

Thanks for the info on a great site! It certainly seems to offer alot to download. But, I didn't see any plain payers there... I have done google searches and found plenty, but I was hoping for some suggestions on one or two that have good quality and easy to use features.

Any ideas on whether a DVD burning program would allow me to burn to two drives at the same time? For all that I know the Nero that I already have will allow me to do it (but I doubt it), and it would be an expensive gamble to find out.

-thanks, Ken

 

[Underclocked]

http://www.dsplayer.de/dspweb/index.php but you will need codecs which you can get free elsewhere

nDVD from http://www.dnsoft.be/

can't vouch for the quality of these programs, haven't used 'em. Do a Google for "free dvd codec installer" and you'll find a bunch of players.

 

[AdamSnow]

Originally posted by: bryantp

Originally posted by: Bob151

Originally posted by: udonoogen
is there a good alternative to Microsoft Money or Quicken? im looking into managing my funds but dont know where to start. i dont want to dish out $50-60 on a program i wont know how to use either. recent college grad looking for help with the funds. thanks!

Don

edit: went out to best buy (gasp, not on a black friday!) to use a couple of gift cards i got for christmas. purchased microsoft money standard 2005 and h&r block's tax cut deluxe ... after rebate it comes out to $20 for the two ... not a bad deal

Darn, I didn't see this in time....

I was going to suggest that, but I would have recommended the Deluxe version. MS now makes the standard product expire within one year or some predetermined date, whichever comes first. For example, Money 2005 Standard might expire on say April 30, 2006, if not sooner.

Occasionally, the Deluxe version can be FAR as well, but not as often as the Standard.

GNUCash

Anything for us Windows users?

 

[Jawadali]

Hey Guys, I was wondering if there is any freeware system maintainence tool (or combination of tools), like Norton SystemWorks. I really like the "One Button Checkup" feature, but don't mind if similar freeware programs take more than one button to do a PC checkup .

 

[artikk]

Burn4Free-another cd/dvd burning freeware program.(includes adaware)
http://www.free-codecs.com/download/Burn4Free.htm

 

[yukichigai]

I have a new one. You aren't going to believe this, but it's true.

RealProducer 10 Basic

Yes, for some strange reason the folks at RealNetworks have gone out of their freakin' gourd and are offering a free version of RealProducer 10. It's almost completely functional: it allows you to encode in both constant and variable bitrate formats, up to three simultaneous stream types per file. As a minor drawback it forces you to use the RealVideo/RealAudio 10 codecs, but the one really bad thing I found was that it will not let you change your video size from the source size. However -- and this is the important part -- it can open AviSynth (.avs) files and render from them. You can simply use AviSynth to resize the video for you. If you have the slightest inkling as to how to use AviSynth scripts this makes this software infinitely more useful, as AviSynth has far better filters and resizers than RealProducer.

If necessary, I will post a little how-to on resizing and converting video with RealProducer and AviSynth.

EDIT: It also limits you to only one custom "audience profie" (bitrate setting) which can get kind of annoying if you have to encode several different custom formats. You can delete your custom profile and create a new one each time to get around it. Like I said, annoying, but not crippling. There are a lot of existing formats that should likely fit your needs, however.

P.S. Make sure to select "I refuse to spend money on software" as the reason why you're using Basic instead of Plus.

 

[Red and black]

Putty is not just a telnet client, but is also an SSH client, as well as providing SCP and SFTP clients.

 

[mathfield]

May not be the most commonly used program around, but I use CYGWIN alot! It's a suite of many free (speech and beer sense) ported UNIX utility, making my life much easier with bash, awk, sed, etc...Although I am not quite sure which catagory of software it falls under.

Since now it also come with an Xorg X server, I have stopped dropping $ @ Exceed as well. It also replaced my ssh client and acts as an ssh server, apache server. I am sure other people have found much better use of it too. My complain though is CYGWIN doesn't support unicode, which is a pain when you have to read/write NTFS file with unicode filename...

A kind of problem I find missing in general is an mp3 CD maker, that is, given a playlist, burn a CD with the mp3 files (not audio CDs). I don't know any, so I just wrote a shell script to read the PL, and copy the files appropriately (renaming them according to ID3v2) to another location for burning.

cygwin is also a good transitional software if someone wants to try linux. It did for me. I am actually mostly linux nowaday because of a sudden grown conscience not to use anymore pirated software I can't afford. Even in Windows, I use firefox, thunderbird, Open Office etc...

I don't know much about software engineering, but is development so hard that consumer has to buy new version of the same thing every two years? Surely hardware capacity has increased and therefore one can write more demanding software, but I can't find one thing in office xp that I don't already use in office 2000.--this perhaps belongs in another discussion thread.

 

[scottish144]

DAEMON TOOLS!!! Great software for mounting CD image files. http://www.daemon-tools.cc/dtcc/portal/index.php

 

[Evander]

I was just reminded of this in another thread: Wav Enhancer
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Heights/7017/waveen.htm
It will convert mono to stereo (yes, it does sound better), and can up the sample rate too for a cleaner sound

 

[TP]

SUPER © Simplified Universal Player Encoder & Renderer.

Log Me In - Free - Free and easy remote desktop control service for those of us who are behind pesky corporate firewalls at work...

Essential PIM - a thorough personal info manager.. i use the portable version..

 

[Diasper]

Stuff missing from the original post includes:

AVG anti-virus from grisoft
Picasa 2 as a very simple viewer and very basic editor (but great for less-IT aware family members)
7-Zip for compression - the very best and an open source project

 

[Diasper]

Also on the spyware/trojan side of things


ewido
a-squared
spyware blaster
bazooka

also tor (onion router for priavacy)
privoxy - great addition to mozilla and cuts out alot of crap + makes more private

 

[cheapherk]

Add CCleaner (Crap cleaner) to your list. I haven't tried it myself, though.

 

[jack1201]

Cool, save lots of my trouble and money. Thx.

 

[MorpheusZ]

Crap Cleaner is a definate must

 

[Underclocked]

Has anyone ever mentioned the RASPPPOE protocol? A bit specific maybe but a great replacement for most bloated DSL provider software packages. http://www.raspppoe.com/

 

[BMWOLF]

I'm new here(well been lurking for years) and just came accross this great list. I've enjoyed the list and thought i'd do my part to help out.

XSI Mod Tool:
http://www.softimage.com/Products/Mod/v4/
I use the advanced version but this free version has nearly all the features. most amazing program out there for animation in my opinion. Anyone who is in to half-life2 mods should already know this one!

also

Houdini Apprentice:
http://www.sidefx.com/
learning edition of one of, if not, the most powerful 3d animation and effects applications out there. Not enough people use this program but it is highly regarded in the industry for effects work. Probably the best learning edition of any 3d software out there alongside XSI.

 

[Train]

Originally posted by: b4u
...
Link #1: K9

K9 is an email filtering application that works in conjunction with your regular POP3 email program and automatically classifies incoming emails as spam (junk email) or non-spam without the need for maintaining dozens of rules or constant updates to be downloaded. It uses intelligent statistical analysis that can result in extremely high accuracy over time.

K9 learns from its mistakes and becomes better and better at being able to identify spam. More importantly it learns to recognize what you consider to be spam.

K9 is for standard POP3 email accounts only. It does not directly support Hotmail, AOL or any other kind of webmail type systems, nor does it support SSL or secure authentication as used by MSN.

...

I have been using K9 for my spam filtering for 5 days now, and its already at 96% accuracy. It learns fast, others who have used it say it gets up above 99% pretty quickly.

I've tried out a lot of spam filters, and this one is by far the best. Since it sort of acts like a proxy server for email, and does not plug into your email client directly, its not for novice users.