Curse

Sovetskeey · Jun 30, 2005, 04:55 PM // 16:55

I was raiding my start menu today and I decided to put together a list of good little freeware programs I had. Then I figured why not see what else is out there

Rules on this thread:
Freeware only. That means:
- No shareware. They almost always have spyware and I hate feature-limited programs.
- No free trials. None of those 30-day trials or feature limited trials.
- No freeware or shareware listing sites. Only the actual programs!

Also, post a link to the program's site or a safe download page.

This is the list I gathered from my Start Menu.

VLC Media Player
Plays nearly every video filetype I've tried.
TuneXP
Opens up alot of hidden features in Windows XP. For advanced users only.
LameXP
Basically a GUI for the LAME encoder. The best and fastest MP3 encoder right now.
Winamp
Okay, so you have to put in a serial number to burn and rip CDs but the free download is fully functional.
MP3Gain
Free open-source volume normalizer for MP3 files. I use it on every song I download.
ID3-TagIT 3
I needed a program that could batch edit ID3 tags and this is what I found. Works great although I've had a few crashes.
Xfire
The free instant messager for gamers. If you have it, you probably love it.
CrapCleaner
Cleans out alot of useless stuff for IE, Firefox and Windows. Also has a great registry cleaner.
FileZilla
A really good open-source FTP client.
DAEMON Tools
Mount CD images from your hard drive rather than burn them. Mounted images read at a theoretical 200x speed or more.
Ad-Aware
Everyone should be using this. Most people do. The free version only lacks the Ad-Watch live protection thingy which I wouldn't use if I DID buy it.
Spybot: Search & Destroy
You should run both Ad-Aware and Spybot to ensure the cleanest possible system. Personally I only run Ad-Aware.
Mozilla Thunderbird
An awesome e-mail client to replace Microsoft Outlook created by the Mozilla team.
___________________________________________

I forgot to mention web browsers too:

Mozilla Firefox
The award-winning Web browser is better than ever. Browse the Web with confidence - Firefox protects you from viruses, spyware and pop-ups. Enjoy improvements to performance, ease of use and privacy. It's easy to import your favorites and settings and get started. Download Firefox now and get the most out of the Web.
Opera
The Opera browser is fast, safe and easy to use. Alot more features built-in than Firefox has and is about as fast.
Netscape 8
Speed, flexibility and more security choices than any other browser.
Mozilla Browser
Web-browser, advanced e-mail and newsgroup client, IRC chat client, and HTML editing made simple -- all your Internet needs in one application.
___________________________________________

These are the user-submitted ones. This thread is a pain to go through and people keep posting those shareware download sites so I'll list everything here:

Google Earth
Google Earth is an amazing sattelite imagery program. It contains maps of nearly every place in the world and allows you to find driving directions between any two places.
PDFCreator
Allows you to create a pdf file from any print job, run your word processor then click print to the "PDFCreator" printer and now you have a pdf of that word doc (or any other thing else you can send to the printer).
Foobar2000
A great freeware audio player that plays any audio format (winamp alt) very lite resouce friendly.
Media Player Classic
A great freeware video player that plays any video in windows that have the direct show filters installed (anything that can play in windows media player). Has the same interface as the old Windows Media Player 6, also uses less resouces then windows media player.
Trillian
Chat Client that allows you to do Aim, Yahoo, MSN, ICQ, and IRC without any ad windows / spam that the native clients (and free from adware/spyware/popup's it self) and you can access all of them from one client.
SmartFTP
Nice full featured ftp client, only get an occasional nag message if you use during certain times (aka work hours after a certain time) but not spyware / adware / and the nag is not intrusive and fully functional.
Ace Mega Codec Pack
The codec pack to end all codec packs.
OpenOffice.org
A free, fully functional alternative to Microsoft Office.
Azureus
Open-source BitTorrent client that feels much like the classic P2P software.
Gaim
Great multi-messenger that is available for both Linux and Windows. Connects to AIM/Yahoo/MSN/ICQ and many more!
Blender3D
A free 3D modelling tool that is far more fully-featured than MilkShape3D (until now the only free 3D modeller). Users with knowledge of Python can even write an entire game inside Blender!
The GIMP
Free alternative to Adobe Photoshop. The GIMP is available on both Linux and Windows. A few tutorials and you'll be using The GIMP just as well as Photoshop!
EZThumbs
Freeware thumbnail generator.
Paint.NET
A freeware MSPaint-style program with a few extra features. It's still not Photoshop but it's a great replacement for MSPaint!
EvilLyrics
An awesome free lyrics searcher. Searches lyrics databases as the song plays in your player.
XMPlay
No install needed. Just unzip and go! Plays most major filetypes, is skinnable and plays .pls radio streams! (ShoutCAST streams)
EditPad Lite
Great alternative to Windows Notepad. More features than WordPad too!
FastStone Image Viewer
An image browser, converter and editor that supports all major graphic formats including BMP, JPEG, JPEG 2000, GIF, PNG, PCX, TIFF, WMF, ICO and TGA.
GSpot
Finds what codec(s) are required to play a .AVI file.
___________________________________________

Here are Juhanah's badly formatted entries that I didn't feel like editing:

Irfanview: Change image format into another (i use this to change Photoshop's Png into 16bit for RPGmaker2003) http://www.irfanview.com/
Cleanup: to cleanup unwanted stuff in computers http://cleanup.stevengould.org/
Hijackthis: spyware tool http://merijn.org/
Pic2pic: quick and easy format-to-format image converterhttp://www.wavelsoftware.com/pic2pic.htm
ffdshow: directshow decoding filterhttp://sourceforge.net/projects/ffdshow
AVG: Free Anti-virus http://free.grisoft.com
Everest: list every hardware in your computer with model # and very much infos about it http://www.lavalys.com/
Resource Hacker: view, modify, add, rename and delete resources in Win32 executables and resource files. (Don't mess with this if you don't know what you're doing) http://www.angusj.com/resourcehacker/
ConText: A better Text editor http://www.context.cx/
TCPView: Show TCP and UDP activity http://www.sysinternals.com/utilities/tcpview.html
Xnews: Newsgroup browser http://xnews.3dnews.net
Hexedit: Hexadecimal Editor http://www-physics.mps.ohio-state.edu/~prewett/hexedit/

EternalTempest · Jun 30, 2005, 05:05 PM // 17:05

I love freeware too (and nice list)

PDFCreator (OpenSource/Freeware)
Allows you to create a pdf file from any print job, run your word processor then click print to the "PDFCreator" printer and now you have a pdf of that word doc (or any other thing else you can send to the printer).

Foobar2000 (Freeware)
A great freeware audio player that plays any audio format (winamp alt) very lite resouce friendly.

Windows Media Player Classic (OpenSource/Freeware)
A great freeware video player that plays any video in windows that have the direct show filters installed (anything that can play in windows media player). Has the same interface as the old Windows Media Player 6, also uses less resouces then windows media player.

Trillian Basic (Freeware)
Chat Client that allows you to do Aim, Yahoo, MSN, ICQ, and IRC without any ad windows / spam that the native clients (and free from adware/spyware/popup's it self) and you can access all of them from one client.

SmartFTP (Freeware-Personal Use)
Nice full featured ftp client, only get an occasional nag message if you use during certain times (aka work hours after a certain time) but not spyware / adware / and the nag is not intrusive and fully functional.

The undead Mesmer · Jul 27, 2005, 02:24 PM // 14:24

dum dum dum-dum arisen from the dead

go to this site for freeware games www.gamehippo.com

sorry for doing this

EchoSex · Jul 27, 2005, 02:46 PM // 14:46

Wow. Something I requested actualy happend :3 AWSOME ^.^

Edit:

I got something VERY usefull for you torrent heads or media freaks like me...

Ace Mega Codecs Pack

That is THE biggest codec pack I have ever seen. Finnaly, all that crap can just be played in windows media player :3 (I have an undieing hate for quicktime).

EverBlue · Jul 27, 2005, 03:01 PM // 15:01

So.. Would Abandon-Ware work on this list.. ?

http://www.abandonia.com/

Judas Hawksriff · Jul 27, 2005, 04:15 PM // 16:15

http://www.irfanview.com

Serafita Kayin · Jul 27, 2005, 04:23 PM // 16:23

OpenOffice http://www.openoffice.org for a free and better replacement to M$ Office, which also writes PDFs...

SpyderBar and Samurize are great freeware monitoring systems for you overclockers...

Also, Guru3D has lots of fun tools for display and video card tweaking...

Let me finish breakfast and cap some skills and I'll be back...

fleeb · Jul 27, 2005, 07:09 PM // 19:09

This is perhaps obscure, but:

http://www.citadel.org

It's collaberation software. Probably doesn't work on Windows (I've never tried to actually build it there), but I'm pretty sure it'll work on a Mac if you use their easy installer at http://easyinstall.citadel.org.

With this, you can have a forum, calendaring, e-mail server, web access to all of this, and some other features that I'm not able to describe.

Imp · Jul 28, 2005, 08:03 AM // 08:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by EternalTempest

Windows Media Player Classic (OpenSource/Freeware)
A great freeware video player that plays any video in windows that have the direct show filters installed (anything that can play in windows media player). Has the same interface as the old Windows Media Player 6, also uses less resouces then windows media player.

I have to quote this because this is by FAR the best media player out there. You can set up subtitles and all that snaz.

Another freeware I can put down is Azureus
http://azureus.sourceforge.net/

For all your legal bittorrent needs.

Angryhob0z · Aug 01, 2005, 10:20 PM // 22:20

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sovetskeey

DAEMON Tools
Mount CD images from your hard drive rather than burn them. Mounted images read at a theoretical 200x speed or more.

without that risk of a CD shattering and flying out of your case like a someone put a grenade with some shrapnel in your box

oh and to just break everyone elses hopes of adding anythign to the list

www.snapfiles.com

has freeware, shareware, trials... its pretty much anything you ever need

Serafita Kayin · Aug 04, 2005, 11:48 PM // 23:48

Priston Tale. Free online RPG, forgot where it's downloaded from though...

Sekkira · Aug 07, 2005, 04:34 AM // 04:34

Ick, I'd rather use Gaim over freeware trillian. Then again, I'm not one that condones pirating either. I'll just leave it there and endorse gaim even though I don't use it.

http://gaim.sourceforge.net/

Cunning · Aug 07, 2005, 08:46 AM // 08:46

Blender 3D
The GIMP

Hiawatha · Aug 24, 2005, 12:20 AM // 00:20

Quote:

Originally Posted by EchoSex

Anybody got some image resizing software that will resize a batch of pictures all at once?

Easy Thumbnails

A lifesaver.

Paint.net -- the next generation MS Paint. Still very simple, but includes a number of great improvements, most notably layers.

Evil Lyrics -- TINY. The only lyrics program I can even think of using!

Google for "antivir", "avast antivirus", or "avg" for free antivirus programs. At present I use antivir

It's small and efficient, and so far it seems to work fine.

Finally, my beloved: XMPlay -- music player which will play pretty much anything you can play with winamp's input plugins. Skinnable, supports several plugins, and visualisations--but simple, and uses very little resources. No installation required (if memory serves me right)

My absolute favourite feature however is the ability to save shoutcast streams straight to your HD. I love winamp, but XMPlay comes second =)

Cheers!

Mercury Angel · Sep 02, 2005, 06:50 AM // 06:50

http://www.geocities.jp/br_kato/

Quote:

Restore files which are deleted from the recycle bin or deleted while holding down the Shift key by mistake.
Conversely, this program has another function that makes it almost impossible to restore all deleted files.

Quote:

From a deleted file recovery FAQ.
The sooner you try to restore a file, the more successful you’ll be. But stop a moment and think about the other things that could cause this part of the hard drive to be overwritten. If your hard drive is pretty full, the odds are much greater that Windows will grab your precious unallocated space for its next write. Or, if you defrag the hard drive, you run the risk of unused parts of the drive being overwritten!

---
http://www.editpadpro.com/editpadlite.html

Nice improvements on Notepad. Check it out for the list of features.

Warchief Blong · Sep 08, 2005, 07:25 PM // 19:25

Google Earth

This is a satellite image of earth. You can zoom in on your house. It's really neat. It's a good tool for terrorist.. I mean for anyone. Anyways have fun checking it out.

Just checked it out. Xfire is awesome.

SOT · Sep 08, 2005, 10:00 PM // 22:00

http://www.snapfiles.com/freeware/freeware.html

Click on freeware. Freeware of every type of program, all sorted by useage. TONS of really great stuff here.

Drognan · Sep 11, 2005, 06:54 PM // 18:54

Quote:

Originally Posted by Serafita Kayin

Priston Tale. Free online RPG, forgot where it's downloaded from though...

Priston Tale Webiste

Did the search for you.

Drognan
IGN: Synthia Starstriker

Kuku Monk · Sep 12, 2005, 03:13 PM // 15:13

Quote:

Originally Posted by EchoSex

Anybody got some image resizing software that will resize a batch of pictures all at once?

FastStone Image Viewer... one of the best programs I've used in a long, long time.

http://www.faststone.org

The rest of the goods can be found at http://www.majorgeeks.com

sasafetch · Sep 19, 2005, 10:39 PM // 22:39

Here's a free beat em'm up game made by Senile Team:

http://www.segaforums.com/senileteam/bor.php

Most of you are probably thinking Wtf? I don't want no free lame beat em' up game. Ok well one, the game isn't lame, and two you can MAKE YOUR VERY OWN STAND ALONE beat em' up game with this engine. What's even sweeter is that the community is so huge that fellow moders have made it so that your game is playable on PS2, X-Box, PSP, Palm OS, Windows, Dreamcast, etc. It's a really awesome engine that's so simple, that even a monkey with two fingers could understand it. Seriously it's pretty wicked. Here's some of my previous work with it to show you just how versital this sucker is:

http://www.parkviewpc.org/rp/viewtopic.php?t=3