Freeware

[Annobanno]

Hey Thinkpadders!


I am wondering about what freeware programs you guys are using on your Thinkpads/3000's ?

I use Ccleaner and Defraggler. Anyone with any good recommendations, or just some fun and/or useful freeware programs?

[Navck]

Pure Ra - Cleansing temp files
Spybot S&D - Defacto on my systems to cleanse crud and tracking cookies
Advanced Systemcare - Goes along with Pure Ra and Spybot
Wavepad - No recording limitations + Save in multiple formats. I use an older freeware version
Irfanview - Default image viewer
Infrarecorder - Optical disk mastering
Avira - I use this because my NOD32 licenses are on three other systems (License limit)
VLC+MPC and K-Lite Codec Pack - Viewing media, kinda got used to using MPC over WMP from time. Oh and GPU acceleration for rendering. VLC when MPC chokes on videos.
VirtualDubMod - Encoding
Foobar2000 - Lightweight music player
CPU-Z - I use this to get my CPU multiplier state info
CoreTemp - Great to get temperatures on Intel CPUs
Speedfan - Temperature / HDD SMART status
inSSIDer - Wireless AP scanner
7zip - Compression
FileMenuTools - I use the advanced renaming function.
JDownloader - Download videos off Youtube or such, as well as filesharing websites (Ex. Rapidshare)

Oh one more, IE7Pro works on IE7/8, but don't get any version above 2.4.7 (Those are fakes). Lets me keep IE8's speed but the features of other browsers. (Adblocking, download manager)

[Marin85]

Could you specify what freeware you have in mind? Most of us use plenty of freeware, starting with the webbrowser, going through the various media players and ending somewhere at the tools/utilities like the ones you mention

Here is the freeware I have installed on my ThinkPad in cathegories:

1) Multimedia: winamp (only for music), VLC and K-lite mega codec pack with Media Player Classic (using VLC when I am too lazzy to play with the settings of K-lite), EAC and CUETools;

2) Anti-Malware: Malwarebytes, SuperAntispyware (some time ago used also Spybot S&D in addition to the former two);

3) Internet: uTorrent, Skype, Firefox (and hier one should mention all the add-ins and add-ons too, but I won´t);

4) 'Serious' software: VirtualBox, MikTex + TeXniC Center, WinDjView;

5) Tools: Process Explorer (from Sysinternals), TPFanControl (testing it right now, thanks go to forum users Shimodax and troubadix), ODIR (great for cleaning duplicate Office Outlook emails), MonitorOff (thanks go to forum user yak for providing this excellent small utility), NK2Edit (it basically adds e-mail addresses from the Outlook address book to Outlook autocomplete cache, which actually should be done by Outlook, but it is not!), Duplicate File Finder (great utility for finding duplicate files on your computer), and last but not least some program that lets you intelligently rename files and folders in batches, but whose name I don´t remember right now because I haven´t installed it yet after my fresh Windows 7 install 2 weeks ago...

Why protect privacy when many are willing to give it away anyways for just to brag about what they have all installed on their computers

Probably I have forgotten something, so I may update the list later...

Cheers,

Marin

[billp117]

http://onecare.live.com/site/en-us/default.htm

This works for me...and it is now free.

[goofyGAguy]

CCleaner
VLC player
Avast!
Auslogics Disk Defrag
SUPERAntiSpyware
Malwarebytes
ZoneAlarm

That's about it.

[ZaZ]

I'd add:

CDBurnerXP
ImgBurn
Irfranview
OpenOffice
iTunes
Audacity
Armagetron(Linux Based Tron Game, Very Fun I Think)

[yak]

Much of what was already mentioned, plus:

Dropbox
VirtualCloneDrive
Mozilla Thunderbird
Sun VirtualBox
WinSCP
XnView
PuTTY
Notepad2

[automobus]

I use only a few of the applications already mentioned (InfraRecorder, VideoLAN, PuTTY). Here's what everyone else did not mention:

CrystalDiskMark (storage benchmark tool)
Good Timing (small alarm clock program with great sounds)
SpeedswitchXP (like the Windows 2000 SpeedStep Applet, but for Windows XP)
winMD5Sum (very plain MD5 calculator, cannot even verify a list)
SumatraPDF (fast light PDF viewer. I will never use Acrobat Reader again!)
Startup Control Panel by Mike Lin (I cannot do without it! I put it on every Windows installation I come near.)
ImDisk (GPL tool to mount images and RAM disks. Not as feature-rich as the ever-popular Daemon tools, but free/libre and lighter.)

[rkawakami]

As I do a fair amount of coding during my day job...

Dev-C++ - an old C/C++ IDE (integrated development environment) but I still find it useful for banging out a quick-and-dirty DOS program
Notepad++ - a turbocharged text editor that understands the syntax for most any kind of programming language
XVI32 - a hex editor for when I need to fiddle with some bytes in a binary file

Others:

FTP Commander 7.40 - an old FTP program that I use to maintain my web pages
Foxit Reader - a replacement for Adobe Acrobat Reader

and for nighttime work, the usual DVD-related tools to read/write/compress .ISO files

[beGi]

I use the most of apps mentioned here, but here is one bandwidth monitor that is quite useful, powerfull and free ofcourse:

http://www.softperfect.com/products/networx/

[yak]

Speaking of network monitors/sniffers, Wireshark is awesome!

[reub1230]

Open Office, Malwarebytes, IMG Burn and Thunderbird are some of my favorites

Here is a list of my favorite freeware with download links (from my site)

http://www.aandrcomputers.net/free-software-downloads

[Annobanno]

Open Office, Malwarebytes, IMG Burn and Thunderbird are some of my favorites

Here is a list of my favorite freeware with download links (from my site)

http://www.aandrcomputers.net/free-software-downloads

Great list! Thanks a ton

[Temetka]

Let's see:

Microsoft Security Essentials
CD Burner XP
Firefox
VLC
Winamp

A few tablet drawing programs:

SmoothDraw 3
ArtRage 2 Demo
Paint.net

[Navck]

I use the most of apps mentioned here, but here is one bandwidth monitor that is quite useful, powerfull and free ofcourse:

http://www.softperfect.com/products/networx/

I insist that you call that an application or a piece of software and not the short term for "applet."

[beGi]

I insist that you call that an application or a piece of software and not the short term for "applet."

You're joking, right? :searchesforemticon:



http://www.internetslang.com/badword/APPS.asp

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_does_app_mean

And I insist that you ....

[beGi]

Speaking of network monitors/sniffers, Wireshark is awesome!

Yes it is...but i had some problems with Wireshark and my setup (XP + 3945 WLAN card), I use OmniPeek Personal v4.1 instead (it is a bit older but it works great and it is free...later versions are not free):

http://download.cnet.com/OmniPeek-Perso ... 35068.html

[NorrisCell]

A lot of good titles here already that I use.

A few to add:
Picasa- Basic photo editing
MagicISO- Creates a virtual drive from an ISO file for installation
SecureShell for Workstations- SSH client for Windows
Orbit- Download manager/accelerator which also includes a media URL catcher

[emeraldgirl08]

I love freeware

I have:

CDBurnerXP
Crystal Disk Info
Daemon Tools Lite
Foxit Reader
Free Download Manager
Gimp
Pidgin
Shark007 Codecs

[tylerwylie]

www.opensuse.org
www.dragonflybsd.org

[mediasponge]

Combined Community Codec Pack (CCCP) You gotta love their logo from http://www.cccp-project.net/ It has a very robust set of codecs for Windows, as well as a very nice lightweight, no-frills media player, Media Player Classic.

[goofyGAguy]

You gotta love their logo

Uh, no.

[A31]

Recuva from Piriform (piriform are the guys who gave us CCleaner and Defragler along with other stuff as well) works well for recovering lost files even if they were on a drive that had been formatted (found this out last night lol! Back ups are important!)

I dont have much freeware on this Windows 7 PC (only really Opera, uTorrent, Adobe Reader 9 and Free Studio), but I do love free software! (Recuva was on my mother's machine).

[lemonstar]

Open Office, Malwarebytes, IMG Burn and Thunderbird are some of my favorites

Here is a list of my favorite freeware with download links (from my site)

http://www.aandrcomputers.net/free-software-downloads

I'm trying to compile an .iso of all the freeware apps I use as I'm about to take delivery of a new laptop (T60) and thought it would be useful to have a disc like this to simplify the task of installing everything but I also thought it would be useful to be able to create an up-to-date on demand but I'm not sure of the best way to do that - does anyone have any ideas?

I imagine there is a website out there where you can store a list of your favourite freeware download links but it's not easy to find when you put the word freeware as a search term - anyone know of such a facility on a freeware site?

I could create my own HTML page and use a Firefox download extension to "Download All" or even write some JScript/Javascript to download everything and to save each item in s a folder structure ready for burning or I could create a script using a Firefox add-on such as GreaseMonkey to achieve the same thing. Hopefully there is already a website or a simpler or pre-existing solution out there.

Ideas?

Edit
I found this
http://ninite.com/
but it doesn't list the majority of the things I want.

[Tõnis]

malwarebytes, super anti spyware, cpu-z, mobile meter, audacity, unlocker assistant, Cute PDF

[killer]

Cute PDF is essential. A wonderful piece of Freeware.

[ThinkRob]

Well I only run Free software, so... well... everything in my house is both Free and free.

[Radioguy]

Cute PDF is essential. A wonderful piece of Freeware.

I think PrimoPDF is the most popular freeware PDF printer. I know Cute and others followed it, but are they better than Primo?

(actually, I think Snagit's PDF creator is better, but of course that's not freeware)

I think another valid question is....which of the previous freeware apps mentioned in this thread, is one you would pay for if they decided to start to charge?

The main one that springs to mind as a no-brainer, is VLC. Of course that couldn't happen, but I know it's worth paying for.

[killer]

@Radioguy: I've never heard of PrimoPDF. I'll look it up and see if it is better than CutePDF.

[dsvochak]

I imagine there is a website out there where you can store a list of your favourite freeware download links

Dropbox or any of the other similar cloud storage sites should accomplish this.