MORE FREEWARE
MISCELLANEOUS
Last Updated January 4, 2006
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I DO NOT USE ANY SOFTWARE ON THIS PAGE (except those in the My Favorite Freeware box). These pages are for freeware suggestions site visitors have made for which I, personally, have no need and no interest. I can’t (and don’t) vouch for anything here. | ||
| If you don’t find what you need here, I recommend Pricelessware, a very sound, clean freeware site based on recommendations of alt.comp.freeware participants. | ||
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3D Traceroute Added 3/9/04 |
For 98/ME/2K/XP. “I’m not going to sit and tell you I am an expert with this program and know all of its ins and outs, but I will say that I used it and found it to be very helpful for my needs.” By Holger Lembke. (Recommended by Brian Dresser) |
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Bart’s PE Builder Added 10/4/04 |
For 2K/XP/2003. “ Microsoft’s Windows Pre-Installation Environment, not available to the little guy, is a minimal NT 5.0+ Operating System on a bootable CD. Bart began developing his own version, but it was too reminiscent of Microsoft’s and they asked him to stop. Now he has developed a different version. Apart from plugins that enable Ad-Aware, McAfee’ Stinger and VirusScan, and a number of other apps to run from the CD to scan OS partitions without booting them, the main advantage I see is you can browse an unbootable NTFS installation via a Windows GUI (using the 2xExplorer plugin). There are plugins for Nero Burning ROM and Norton Ghost. And while it requires Win 2000 or better to run the PE Builder and Win XP or later installation files to construct the end product, the CD can be used on FAT32 partitions, too. (I haven’t tried it on FAT16 but presume it works there as well. In the latest version there's a DOS support plugin.)” By Bart Lagerweij. (Recommended by Shane Beatson) |
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ChaosPro Added 10/4/04 |
For 9x/NT/2K/XP. “An awesome piece of software that will almost certainly delight any PC user. It’s a fractal generator — it creates wondrous art forms from mathematical formulas. Fractal geometry mixes art with mathematics to demonstrate that equations are more than just a collection of numbers. With fractal geometry one can visually model much of what it is witnessed in nature. Rather like holograms that store the entire image in each part of the image, any part of a fractal can be repeatedly magnified, with each magnification resembling all or part of the original fractal. This freeware opens up the world of fractal art creation to anyone. The fabulous designs that are generated by your PC are truly breathtaking.” By Martin Pfingstl. (Recommended by Alison Smythe) |
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CutePDF Printer Added 12/1/03 |
For 98/ME/2K/XP. “This program is great if you only need to create PDF files through a print driver, and don’t want to pay $200 or more for the full Acrobat software. Based on the GNU GhostScript software, it is easier to install and offers more online help. Produces good quality PDFs pretty quickly that are readable by Acrobat readers through version 6.0, but obviously doesn’t have all the bells and whistles of the commercial Acrobat software.” By Acro Software. (Recommended by Roger Stucke) |
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DPserver Added 10/4/04 |
“DPServer is a webserver with the following features: Supports PHP (any version). Secure file upload. Authentication with username and password. Save all transfer in a log file. A very small webserver, 219 KB filesize. Guestbook run without MySQL. A full working browser for testing your HTML and PHP script with any other software (requires IE 5.x or higher).” By Dirk Paehl. (Recommended by Kai Richter) |
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Driver Wizard Added 12/1/03 |
For 9x/NT/2K/XP/2003. “We provide Driver Wizard, a free application. This is a small standalone application which runs from the desktop or system tray, saving the trouble of looking through Web site bookmarks for driver sites. Driver Wizard scans the computer’s hardware (not the Windows Registry), identifies installed hardware, then produces an HTML file. You click on a hyperlink on this page to open a page on our Web site where you can upload your file. This produces a Web page listing all of your required drivers. Once you have registered, you can download your driver directly from these pages. This part of the offering is free for a limited use, although the software will operate for life and identify the needed drivers (you can download your initial driver via our free trial). We have spent three years putting together a huge database of drivers (currently over 24,000 — and our database is growing constantly).” By Phil Young. (Recommended by Jonathan Clayman of DriverMagic) |
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Fractal Explorer Added 10/4/04 |
For 9x/NT/2K/XP. “Like ChaosPro, this program generates fantastically intricate and colorful designs from compilations of mathematical formulae. But this fractal generating freeware, is much easier to operate than ChaosPro, and allows the user to watch his creation morph as he tweaks the dozens of input values provided (shapes, sizes, colors, etc.). One need not know any math or have any art background — anyone can easily create wildly interesting and exotic, one-of-a-kind designs — and readily save them as .JPGs.” By Arthur Sirotinsky & Olga Fedorenko. (Recommended by Alison Smythe) |
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GSplit Added 10/4/04 |
For 9x/XP. “This file splitter has the advantage of giving an excellent description of each window on the window itself, no need to dig into complicated Help files anymore. I tried several splitters before stumbling on this one. Other splitters have, ocasionally, damaged my files. GSplit has performed without flaws so far. GSplit has the added advantage of being very small: it fits nicely on a 3.5" diskette.” By Guillaume Di Giusto. (Recommended by Alfred Vereecken) |
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Karen’s Power Tools Added 8/3/03 |
For 9x/NT/2K/XP. “A set of many different utilities (written by Karen) that are all little ‘necessities’ everyone should have available. These tools are constantly updated, and a newsletter is available to keep subscribers up to date. Not only are these utilities the best of their kind, but they are all freeware with no ads!” By Karen Kenworthy. (Recommended by Virginia Scofield & others)
Mr. E.’s Note: This is a highly praised and worthwhile site. Karen Kenworthy is a former Windows Magazine columnist and she has a treasure trove of little goodies. I haven’t tried any of her recent ones, but the Windows 98 era tools were great. I can recommend the programmer and writer, even where I don’t have enough recent experience to recommend the individual items. |
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Link Verify Added 12/1/03 |
For 9x/NT/2K/XP. “Webmasters, verify your affiliate and reciprocal links with your trading partners. Automatically check for your link on other sites with Link Verify. Both simple URL check and advanced, preferred, HTML code. Maintains contact information. Retains “Last Found” date. Fast and accurate.” By Rank Exec Software. (Recommended by Ted Tripp) |
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OpenOffice.org Added 2/25/04 |
For 98/ME/NT SP6/2K/XP. “Open Office is the best office suite I can find. Its standard document type uses standard XML, and it has support for proprietary document types like .DOC, and .RTF. Also, it has an export to PDF option (and PDF importing is in the works). It comes with a replacement for PowerPoint, Word, Excel, and Access. If you are a student that has MS Office but not PowerPoint, it’s a cheap way to view your teacher’s presentations. If you use the entire suite, I think you’ll tend to like it.” By Sun Microsystems & OpenOffice.org. (Recommended by Samuel Leathers)
Mr. E.’s Note: Without denigrating this product per se, I should mention that the latest versions of Office do all of this too — except for native PDF format. Of course, they aren’t free! (Though the PowerPoint viewer is free.) |
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OmniHTTPd Added 2/12/02 |
“Full-featured Web server. Works 100% with Win 98 through XP. Easy to configure. Works with either a static or dynamic IP address if you use a rerouting service like DNS2Go (free for home users). Allows unlimited simultaneous connections. An excellent alternative to IIS when you don’t have Win 2000 Server. The company provides next day email tech support. I currently serve my own webpages off an XP Pro box using this product.” By Omnicron Technologies. (Recommended by MS-MVP Harry Ohrn) |
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PureText Added 10/4/04 |
For 9x/NT/2K/XP/2003. “This, in my opinion, is the handiest little app that ever took up next to nothing in disk space and system resources. The name pretty much says it: PureText strips away formatting (bold, italic, font/size, etc.) from text copied to the Windows clipboard, leaving just the text — which you can then paste where you like.” By Steve P. Miller. (Recommended by Gord Braun)
Mr. E.’s Note: I’ve used this, and it’s pretty cool! If you need this sort of tool, it performs well. Recommended. |
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ReplaceEm Added 11/7/04 |
“Why did I not find this before? It’s an application that can do multiple replace actions on multiple files. I use it to change a folder full of HTML files to use stylesheets all at once — saves having to open multiple files to make lots of changes, only to find that you forgot to make one of the changes to one file.” By Boolean Dream Inc. (Recommended by Christian Wickham) |
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RivaTuner Added 6/16/03 |
For 9x/2K/XP. “The most powerful must-have tweaking utility for Nvidia Display Adapters. If you have a geforce card this is all you’ll need to get the most from it.” By Alexey Nicolaychuk. (Recommended by Tuxrox1) |
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Trillian Updated 7/23/03 |
For 9x/NT/2K/XP. “Communicate with flexibility and style. Trillian is everything you need for instant messaging. Connect to ICQ, AOL Instant Messenger, MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger and IRC in a single, sleek and slim interface. You get the goods without the fluff and ads.” By Cerulean Studios. (Recommended by Fred Sexton)
Mr. E.’s Note: I use this as well, though I can’t say it falls in the “my favorite freeware” category. Works well, makes multiple IM accounts available through a single interface, and only misses a few of the niceties that the original IM tools (like AOL Instant Messenger or Windows Messener) have built in. |
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WordWeb Added 11/30/03 |
For 9x/NT/2K/XP. “Dictionary and thesaurus that you can launch with a simple short-cut key (Ctrl+Alt+W is default). I’ve compared it with several other dictionaries (Britannica, MS, Oxford Talking dictionary) and I’ve found no match. Probably the only flaw is that it does not give you any pronounciation IPA.” By Antony Lewis. (Recommended by Agnel CJ Kurian) |