Great Freewares

almost all are either freeware/open source or free for personal use and contain no spy/nag ware (except for 1) or other such crap. i run XP Pro and one or two of these are XP specific...

...

ClamWin - http://www.clamwin.com - completely free, non-obtrusive, lite anti-virus protection. perfect for those running Mozilla/Firefox/Thunderbird who don't need a full-time, bloated AV.

ClamMail - http://www.bransoft.com/clammail/clammail.html - to go with your ClamWin.

FoxIt PDF Reader - http://www.foxitsoftware.com (i think this link is right - website is down)- *much* faster and smaller than Acrobat, though some functionality is sacrificed. this is the ONLY app that i could classify as nagware since it displays a link to their PDF editor, however it is small and fairly unobtrusive.

VersaVerter - http://www.pawprint.net/vv/ - wow! you want conversions? this has a ton! plus an up to date, downloadable currency rate data.

UltraEdit - http://www.ultraedit.com - couldn't breathe without it. one hell of a programmers file editor! not free however.

PopTray - http://www.poptray.org - hands down, THEE best email account checking utility (IMO) with a bunch of very useful features (delete from server, user SPAM filtering, check multiple accounts, etc.), yet not bloatware at all!

BitPim - http://bitpim.sourceforge.net - GUI for communicating with several mobile phones (backing up phone #'s, uploading tones, modifying filesystem, etc.).

PC Wizard 2005 - http://www.cpuid.org/pcw.php - a free and very good system info utility.

StrongDC++ - http://snail.pc.cz/StrongDC/indexen.htm - file sharing client for the DC network.

DVD Shrink - http://www.dvdshrink.org/what.html - for backing up DVD's.

ffDshow - http://sourceforge.net/projects/ffdshow - a very good codec pack, especially for those who strip WMP from their OS.

foobar2000 - http://www.foobar2000.org - not overly pretty out of the box, but the absolute best (IMO) audio player. highly (and i mean HIGHLY) configurable.

kx Project Package - http://kxproject.lugosoft.com/index.php - got a creative sound card? well, their drivers are crap! kxProject fixes that in a BIG way!

KeyTweak - http://webpages.charter.net/krumsick/ - remap your keyboard from a super easy to use GUI.

KeyPass Password Safe - http://keepass.sourceforge.net - the best password managing utility i've ever ran across.

CDBurnerXPPro - http://www.cdburnerxp.se - a great CD/DVD burning tool.

AM-DeadLink - http://www.aignes.com/deadlink.htm - find and fix your broken bookmarks.

Kerio Personal Firewall - http://www.kerio.com/kerio.html - been using it for years and years. Tiny Personal Firewall (TPF) uses this as their base code, but i can't stand what Tiny has become.

XP AntiSpy - http://xp-antispy.org/?lang=en&option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1 - rather than manually editing the registry, fix those security/privacy holes the easy way!

CUBE - http://www.cubeengine.com - this is the absolute best, free, open source, multi-platform, multiplayer FPS game i've ever played. the graphics are not great, yet i've never had so much raw fun since DOOM! IMO, CUBE is thee definition of a pure FPS.

and of course Firefox - http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox

and Thunderbird - http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird

and now...

for my NUMBER 1, all time favorite...

nLite - http://www.nliteos.com/nlite.html - another "can't live without" app, nLite is used to build a custom Win 2000, 2003 or XP installation (32 or 64 bit). can't stand all the useless, annoying crap that Bill thinks you can't live without, like OE, MSN, IE, useless services, wordpad, etc., etc., etc.? than CUT IT OUT BEFORE YOU INSTALL!!! BTW, my average install disc is ~200 MB after it's "nLited"

oh, and to go with nLite, try Ryan's CAB which contains all the latest hotfixes - http://ryanvm.msfn.org/ . you can easily slipstream this with nLite.

**atomizer** · June 25, 2005

anyone know of an explorer tweak/addon that allows you to "pin" start menu items (like with the BlackBox shells)? sort of like where each start menu sub menu can have a "tear off" line that, when dragged or clicked, would remain on the desktop even after it loses focus.