RECOMMENDED FREE SOFTWARE SITES
This page has links to some of the best "freeware" programs we've found on the Internet for the Windows OS; from WIN 3.1 to WIN2000 (NT 5.0.) It's amazing how much free software is available; and that many of these free programs do a better job than equivalent commercial or shareware products.
Though all of the sites mentioned on our software pages are reputable sites, it is always your responsibility to check all of the software you download from the Internet for viruses. You can never be too careful when it comes to protecting your system. Someone, somewhere, could have missed a virus.
Looking for free software programs? Here are links to three of the best software repositories around, (listed in order of my personal preference.) I know there are many sites offering freeware and shareware programs on the Internet, but these are my personal favorites.
This page's contents won't change too rapidly. I have to use, and be satisfied with, a program for quite some time before it makes this list, even if recommended by a friend or associate. I use it, for a few months at least, before considering it as an addition to the page.
Occasionally, you will find a "shareware" program on this page. I personally feel that the program merits the fee the author is charging because no free, or relatively inexpensive, program that we've found does the job as well - or at all. Any shareware programs on this list will be identified as: SHAREWARE.
If you know of any freeware program that you feel is superior in performing a task similar to one performed by a listed program, please tell us about it. Also, if you feel we've missed a truly great freeware program that the world should know about, we'd like to hear from you.
RECOMMENDED FREE SOFTWARE LIST
- 1st STOP WEB SEARCH
There are many programs out there that do searches on multiple search engines simultaneously, and report the results in your browser. I've tried a few of them and have found that this program seems to return more relevant query results and to do it faster than the others. It eliminates the "middleman", i.e. the compiler, and accesses the search engines directly. The standard edition is freeware and it works quite well. - ABSOLUTE HTML COMPRESSOR
If you write web pages you'll like this program. It compresses an HTML page by removing spaces, comments, etc. The compressed pages, being smaller, load faster. I've used a few of these programs and they all seemed to "whack" the page layout after compression. This program, from Serpik Soft, doesn't. Try it, it's great. - ACROBAT READER
Adobe Acrobat Reader - This is a free program from Adobe that allows you to view and print documents created in their proprietary .PDF format (portable document format). More and more help and FAQ (frequently asked questions) files are being published on the Internet in Acrobat format. - APPLE QUICKTIME FOR VIDEO
The Apple Quicktime program is used to view various formats of movie files. .MOV is the main one. This page has Quicktime for Windows and MAC, and also, Quicktime plug-ins for your browser. - BELARC SYSTEM ADVISOR
The Belarc Advisor - Free Personal PC Audit software. Get a very good report on what hardware and software is installed on your system. - BOOKMARK WIZARD
Bookmark Wizard is a great little program with a simple wizard-like interface that generates an HTML page with all or selected links from your Internet Favorites folder. The links in the resulting page are grouped and sorted in ascending order like they are in your Favorites folder. You can control many options and format the results to your liking. - CPU MARK99
A free utility from Zdnet that gives you a quick "benchmark" on your system's CPU speed. Use for a quick comparison of two or more different systems. - CUSTOM ADDRESS BOOK
A great little program for those that don't need a full-blown contact manager like ACT or GOLDMINE. Very customizable with support for Asian languages. See their homepage for more details. - DIMENSION4
A very useful and free utility. Allows you to synchronize your PC's clock with Atomic clocks and network time servers. Easy to install and use. Now you can always have the right time - down to milliseconds accuracy. - DUPELESS
A very useful and free utility from Zdnet - PC Magazine. Helps you find and manage duplicate file entries on your system and get rid of excess files. Be CAREFUL of what you delete! Better to archive the files marked for deletion than to delete them immediately. DO NOT delete any files in the WINDOWS/SYSBCKUP folder! - EDITPAD
A very good totally free text editor program. Good notepad replacement. Far superior to the Win95/98 notepad program. - EM EDITOR
A very good text editor program. Has "hot" URL's feature. Also superior to the Win95/98 notepad. Languages other than the English version are available. - EUDORA LITE
Eudora Lite - One of the oldest and best E-mail programs around. This lite version is a very good, totally free, program with tools that accomplish almost any E-mail task. There is even a version for MAC users. - FILENAME SPACE ELIMINATOR
An excellent freeware program that will convert all the files on your computer to filenames without spaces. It fills the spaces with underscores ( _ ), and has other variations. - HOTMAIL.COM
Both HOTMAIL.COM and YAHOO.COM offer pretty good web based email programs / services for free. - IVIEW
Iview - A very good totally free graphics / image viewing program. It was written by a student in Bosnia. He updates it regularly, and is always adding features and has made it quite sophisticated over the last few years. - LUPAS RENAME
An excellent file renaming utility. Many options and variations for renaming your files. Free too. - MICROSOFT DOWNLOADS CENTER
Microsoft's page of free and trial software. - MULTI SEARCH AND REPLACE
An excellent utility for searching and replacing text in text (non-binary) files. It can work on single files or all files in a folder. I use it all the time for web page work. Some other useful programs here too. - NETSCAPE SOFTWARE DOWNLOADS
Netscape's browser and plug-in pages. - QFS - Quick file search
QFS is a tiny program that helps you in searching and launching your Netscape Bookmarks or IE Favorites. You can search for a part or whole name or URL, and sort results as you wish. QFS launches your selected Bookmarks/Favorites directly in your preferred browser.
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