| Many of the resources below have been excerpted from ZDNET and especially Ed Bott | ||
| Allway Sync (Usov Lab) This powerful tool synchronizes the contents of folders over a network or to external storage and is an ideal complement to most backup programs. | ||
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What’s in your PC? What software is installed? What are the serial numbers of your motherboard and RAM chips? This free utility can answer those questions and many, many more. |
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| Keyfinder (Magical Jelly Bean Software) If you had to reinstall Windows tomorrow, do you know where your product ID is? If the answer is no, get this tiny free utility, which finds product IDs for dozens of popular programs (including Windows and Office) and lets you print or save the results. | ||
| Process Explorer (Sysinternals/Microsoft) The most amazing diagnostic tool ever, created by Microsoft Distinguished Fellow Mark Russinovich. If you use Task Manager, you should replace it with this free alternative, which does so much more. | ||
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Free PC-to-PC calls worldwide, and cheap calls to mobile phones and land lines. There’s gotta be a catch, right? I don’t think so. This excellent personal communication tool is a favorite of podcasters. Actually my own personal favorite is GoogleTalk compatible with many others and available either as a standalone or attached to your gmail so that any of your contacts in your email list can be contacted. |
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Windows Live Photo Gallery (Microsoft)
Blame it on fallout from the U.S. Government’s successful antitrust prosecution and the subsequent consent decree, which severely limits what Microsoft can legally bundle with Windows. Ship a bare-bones utility in the OS and no one will complain. Deliver a decent upgrade and you’re on shaky ground. Provide at least three degrees of separation from that OS and you’re OK again. So you have to work to find this download. But it’s worth the search. It resolves the biggest complaint about the original Photo Gallery - its oversimplified import path. The revised import wizard groups photos by date and time and lets you pick and choose which ones to import. It also adds a whizzy bit of technology that lets you stitch photos together into widescreen panoramas. Its tagging and basic photo editing features are mostly unchanged, which is just fine. All in all, this free download is one of the best programs Microsoft has developed in ages. |
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The amount of love for Microsoft in the blogosphere can probably be measured in thimblefuls. So it says a lot that every blogger I know (including me) raves about this excellent tool. |
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Here is a letter I wrote to Ed Bott from whom I got some of the listings above on my opinion about FREE software: Hi Ed I am actually surprised Ed even tho I thank you for your article with its list of favorite programs. I found out about Sysinternals and some others. Surprised because your readers must be a professional lot who don't mind putting out $30 - $70 a crack for commercial software. I do buy some commercial software. It is probably unavoidable but I maintain that MOST PEOPLE would NEVER have to purchase software again if they weren't conned into into it due to pushy salespeople and/or the recommendations of supposed "friends" or computer dealers who want to make a sale. I WAS a computer dealer for about 17 years and an internet marketer who discovered how to get listed on PAGE ONE of GOOGLE WITH ABSOLUTELY NO COST. [Well okay I did pay for some internet marketing strategies which paid us back in less than 6 months time with increased international sales.] I am not about to list them all here but I am considering doing a composite list from several of my websites and blogs. For office suites, one could use Google Docs and Spreadsheets, email: Gmail, Yahoo or Canada.com, or Thunderbird if you want to access it from your desktop. For print screens Gadwin and Magnibar or the free version of Evernote [my current favorite] are great. So why pay? [I confess that I liked Evernote so much that I bought the pro version when it was on sale for $50 off the regular price.] For photos using Picasa, PHotofiltre, Irfanview and GIMP, and Photoclick will accomplish what the average person needs to do with photos and/or graphics. For personal antivirus and malware use one can use AVG antivirus, Advanced Windows Care Personal, EasyCleaner, Adaware, Spybot and a few others. For defragging, use Windows own defragger or the free SmartDefrag from Iobit. Cobian backup and some other free ones can back up your files. Freewebs, Blogspot, Wordpress.com and many others can give you free websites and most of them will allow you to buy a domain and point it to your blog or website. For calendering and contacts, the addressbook in Thunderbird, and Google Calendar are great. Increasingly however I am using Airset.com which gives you a whole host of freebies including free websites, free blogs, free groups, free calendars and notifications by email, PDA or some phones [and that is ONLY the beginning of the freebies they offer]. I know from personal experience that this short list includes almost all the things the average person uses and so there is NO NEED to purchase software at all for those of us who are on fixed incomes or just like getting value without cost! So why buy when you can keep your money and donate some of the savings to a worthy cause such as World Vision, Mission of Mercy, Samaritan's Purse or some other worthy cause? Charles Pedley www.cpedley.com www.integrity-marketing.com www.schoolgenius.com www.church-software-store.com |
If you think too much about how this particular program came to be, you’ll need a whole bottle of Advil. Technically, it’s an upgrade to Windows Photo Gallery, which debuted in Windows Vista. But this “upgrade” is also available for Windows XP, and you can’t get it through Windows Update on Vista. Huh?