free software review

[valhallen]

While spending alot of time on your pc am sure that there are lil proggies which are downloaded and installed only to be binned the next day or sit gathering virtual dust....

but there are some which you may come across which soon become firm fav and are always present on your HD....some maybe not used for days, weeks or months but always there cause you can't do without them and you always know they will come in handy. Everyone has lil proggies like these you might have come across purely by accident...some maybe more main stream but after a format (like i recently had to do....inspiring me to write this post) you can be sure they will be the first proggies that are reinstalled on your machine.

Heres a quick list of some of mine...many am sure alot of you will already have but maybe a few you aint come across yet - never know could introduce someone else to a firm fav as well

• Irfanview : An image viewer but so much more. Can view almost any file type from the usual .jpg to more many more obsecure image file types. Also incorporates a slideshow function where you can save your show to .src or .exe and a batch conversion utility which i have found flawless. This all bundled together with some basic image editing tools. Ok this may seem like quite enough for one lil exe but it also has the added feature of allowing plugins - just some of the ones on offer on the site are
  

  SOUND_PLAYER - (version 3.80): allows IrfanView to play OGG files (Ogg Vorbis)
  VIDEO - (version 3.80): allows IrfanView to play video/sound files (AVI, MPG/MPEG, WAV, MOV, MID/RMI, AIF, AU/SND, WMA, WMV)
  WAD - (version 3.70): allows IrfanView to read WAD3 game files

  this is a very small sample....ohhh and did i mention its logo is what appears to be a cartoon runover cat?? ok not the most pleasent of things but def different
  
• Winamp : An old fav and IMHO still one of the best even if number 3 is a bit resource hungry. Fully skinable mp3 player with a wealth of other functions....video play back etc Oh but one thing thats nice about V3 is the media library which organises your mp3 collection for easy searching.
  
• Winrar : Windows compression tool - very similiar to winzip but able to decompress .zip .rar .tar files (as well as .CAB, .ARJ, .LZH, .GZ, .ACE, .UUE, .BZ2, .JAR, .ISO) esential if you download alot as nearly everything is compressed some way.
  
• File Renamer : A simple little utility that lets you rename file series's - handy if like me you have alot of shots named like image00001.jpg etc and are including them in a webpage....is alot easier to remember that files clubxxx.jpg are form inside the noghtclub and outsidexxx.jpg is outside the nightclub than image0001 to 0127 are inside and 0128 up are outside.....
  
• KazzaLite : p2p trading software.....the blurb on the site says it all
  
  

  Kazza Lite is a peer-to-Peer File sharing application that does not contain any 'Spyware'. In actual fact it is a modified version of the very popular Kazza Media Desktop

• Mirc : The daddy of all chat proggies. No thrills, no fancyness and thank god no emoticons like the annoying msn ones....also home of the almighty /me command as in
  *valhallen slaps msn around a bit with a large trout
  
• Divx Video Bundle : Bundle of video playback codecs a must have if you d/load anything movies (non-copyrighted of course) to watch.
  
• Download Accelerator : A quality downloader manager - not something i had to use much when was on cable but when was stuck with 33.6 I adored this piece of software....am not to sure if it really speeds up your connection that much but its resume function is quality.
  
• Acrobat Reader : Enables you to read .pdf documents which is becoming the standard for online instruction manuals etc
  
• cuteFTP : The first program on the list that aint free to use but it does offer a 30 day trial and is one of the easiest ftp prog to get to grips with but then again there are just as good free ftp progs, WS_ftp
  
• [url=http://www.opera.com[/url] : One of the best browsers around and free to download if you dont mind the banner or you can pay and have it removed. Has built in features like pop-up blocker etc and my personal fav mouse shortcuts. Hold your right mouse key down move the mouse in a preset direction and it performs a function. see here for full blurb about it
  
• CoffeeCup HTML editor : ok so most hardcore html coders will tell you that all you need is notepad which is true but coffeecup has a couple of nice features - colored highlighting of html tags and being instantly able to see any changes you have made as well as identing text are the reasons why i use it....one of the user opinions on downloads.com says it best...
  
  

  To me, Coffee Cup is pretty easy. I like being able to edit my pages & see it happen in an instant. But it certainly helps if you already know html

  but on the other hand of the other raters didn't find it as appealing
  
  

  "Must be for expert NERD's.."
  Hard to use not for beginner

  I dont think it is at all hard to use as long as you know html as it isn't a wysiwyg (what you see is what you get) builder.
  
• Trillian : For all the chat enthusiasts this is a good send combining ICQ, AIM, MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger and IRC in one proggie no more having to jump around to different windows while everything beeps at you.....also their fight against aol has to be admired
  everytime aol would try to block people using trillian from being able to talk to people on AIM they would release another patch to find away round it.....only thing tho when i installed it on my g/f machine for her it mixed up my msn buddy list and hers ? not completly but people from hers appeared on mine and people from mine appeared on hers - not everyone from each list just some (lucky hot_hot_hot_minx@hotmail.com didn't find its way onto her list >_< j/k)
  
• Windows Blinds : Ok now this one the jury is still out on....it allows you to change a hell of alot about windows appearance (even giving you a third option instead of minimise/maximise you can roll the windows up like on a mac which i like) but it always runs sluggish on my machine and causes too many errors - but i think thats more the machines fault than the proggies as it runs fine on friends more to up-to-date machine without giving him any probs - it is however another shareware proggie so unless you buy it you get bugged with a splash screen everytime you startup

ok well thats the first lot that come to mind - please feel free to add your own to the list am always on the look out for handy progs - i know this list is on the short side when it comes to security progs but i find where they are concerned its better to actual fork over the bucks tho as you have prob read in many dif posts there are a wealth of free firewalls, trojan scanners out there - just search the forums and you'll see what i mean as there has been already been several discussions about which are best hence why i didn't include any of the free ones in here

hope someone finds something in this list they havn't seen before and they like

v_Ln

just thought i would add as well 2 good resources for free/shareware proggies
downloads.com & tucows
happy downloading

[jaguar291]

I'll add for the hell of it:

TGTSoft's Style XP: A good program that allows you to modify/create themes for Windows XP. It comes w/ two or three free themes and many more can be obtained online. This program is a must for anyone interested in having a cool desktop.

Z-Modeler: If you play GTA and have modded the game at all, you probably know about this 3D modeling program. It is lower rate version of Lightwave (less powerful by a LOT) but it is awesome for making car models for games. I've used it for about three months and have made two very nice car models... so overall, its a good free program to have if you can't afford Maya or Lightwave.

AIM: Yes, its from AOL but its a good program if you have friends... I know that val mentioned Trillian, but I've had too many crashes with that program... so here's my AIM approach. It's not the best instant messaging program but its good to use when you have friends that are completely computer illiterate (AOL users..haha) ...

Tweak UI: I asked a few questions about this program a while back and started using it... it can really be your best friend... I know that its not really free software but I still think its worth mentioning. This program allows to tweak things in Windows... anything from your display settings to your file sharing programs...

Dev-C++ Compiler: A good C++ compiler available online for free, it has a nice GUI, and it compiles C# and C++. It's pretty simple to use if you know the language and can be very helpful if you can't get those command line compilers to work..

Well, that's my short list, I might add a few later but those are the free programs I use that val didn't mention....:-)

[11001001]

Hey Jaguar-
Could you add some links to those?
Thanks!

[jaguar291]

No problem...

Style XP: http://www.tgtsoft.com/ (Use the free trial sample... there is no time limit.)

Z-Modeler: http://zmodeler.nfscheats.com/

AIM: http://aim.com/

Tweak UI: http://www.microsoft.com/ntworkstati.../NTTweakUI.asp (That's the one for NT... if you're using a different OS, you'd have to search the Microsoft website.)

Dev-C++: http://www.bloodshed.net/devcpp.html (I don't remember where I got my copy but I'm pretty sure you can get it from there.)

== Cheers, ==
jag291

[noODle]

Nice list v_Ln
Let me add some to the fullest.
##############################


Bintext http://www.foundstone.com/resources/...sc/bintext.htm

A small, very fast and powerful text extractor that will be of particular interest to programmers. It can extract text from any kind of file and includes the ability to find plain ASCII text, Unicode (double byte ANSI) text and Resource strings, providing useful information for each item in the optional "advanced" view mode.
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Ollydbg http://home.t-online.de/home/Ollydbg/

OllyDbg is a 32-bit assembler level analysing debugger for Microsoft® Windows®. Emphasis on binary code analysis makes it particularly useful in cases where source is unavailable. OllyDbg is a shareware, but you can download and use it for free
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Hexview http://www.funduc.com/otsoft.htm#hexview

Freeware hex editor
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Belarc Advisor http://belarc.com/free_download.html

The Belarc Advisor builds a detailed profile of your installed software and hardware, including Microsoft Hotfixes, and displays the results in your Web browser. All of your PC profile information is kept private on your PC and is not sent to any web server.
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K-Meleon http://kmeleon.sourceforge.net/

K-Meleon is a lite Web browser based on gecko (the mozilla rendering engine). It's fast, has a minimal interface, and it is fully standards-compliant. K-Meleon may be considered the unbloated Mozilla for Windows.
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ISOBuster http://www.smart-projects.net/isobuster/

The ultimate tool for busting ISO's
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NERO Burning ROM http://www.nero.com/en/

CD Recording software
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Picozip Recovery Tool www.picozip.com

PicoZip Recovery Tool is an easy-to-use program that can help you recover lost or forgotten passwords from password protected Zip files created by compression utilities like PicoZip, WinZip, PKZip, etc.
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Activeports http://www.ntutility.com/freeware.html

Active Ports maps ports to the owning application so you can watch which process has opened which port. It also displays a local and remote IP address for each connection and allows you to terminate the owning process. Active Ports can help you to detect trojans and other malicious programs.
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Rawwritewin (search google for it)

Utility to write images to floppy-disks.
Very handy if you experiment with live linux flops like toms or blueflops(http://blueflops.sourceforge.net/download.html)
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ActivePerl http://activestate.com/Products/ActivePerl/

ActivePerl is ActiveState's quality-assured distribution of Perl, available for Linux, Solaris, and Windows. As part of ActiveState's support for Perl, we provide the ActivePerl packages free to the Perl community.
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Offcourse AV/FW/AT progs.
ettercap,nmap,winzip,techfacts,john,resource hacker,mobile phone utils....

[valhallen]

nice addition jaguar & noODle thanks for the links
might give the modler a try

v_Ln

[d00dz Attackin]

Hell yeah!!!! Thankyou so much valhallen, noODle, and jaguar291 well need information . All you can get them all at www.downloads.com .

Cya

[scriptkiddie18]

Anyone tryied to download from Warez?
Hehe....I did like 5 times but after all those pop-ups and all other stuff
i just get the creeps and close it all
Did anyone download from there with success?Anyone?

[Und3ertak3r]

Anyone tryied to download from Warez?
Hehe....I did like 5 times but after all those pop-ups and all other stuff
i just get the creeps and close it all
Did anyone download from there with success?Anyone?

downloaded 10 or 12 files .. learnt heaps about virus removal after each one.. a lesson in BIOS recovery.. Also a lesson in installing a new motherboard.. a reliable method of removing crap from a HDD....
YEp great stuff that Warez.. on the up side I did manage 20 new p0rn links.. down side ..my wife found them.. I get the stitches out next week..

cheers

[mQ8]

Hey everyone...
I screwed up by not assigning my partitions right when installing linux over XP...and now all i have is Linux RedHat and DOS....can anyone please help me find a free XP download out there??