Your favorite downloaded freebies?

[wavinwayne]

What are your favorite free programs that you've downloaded from the internet? What do you use the program(s) for, and why do you love them?

Me:

CCleaner - cleans up Firefox & IE remnants in one swoop.

Firefox - Can't put it into words; it's just 'friendlier' to me than IE. I seem to get less error messages with FF, too.

Open Office Suite - Why didn't I find this years ago?

Google Earth - I dreamed of a program like this 25 years ago, when I was a little one. I'm glad somebody smarter than me finally developed it & gave it away.

Google Desktop - makes searching SOOOOOOOOO easy.

Google toolbar - how did I ever use the internet without this?

What about you BITOGers?

 

[Quattro Pete]

RocketDock - helps manage desktop icons. Thanks to it my desktop is no longer a mess. The icon bar can disappear altogether when not in use.

 

[NJC]

Most of what I use is free, since I'm using Linux. But here are some:

Irfanview (Win) - super fast picture viewer/basic editor
Winamp - lightweight music player
The Gimp - photoshop-like program
Audacity - sound editor
OpenOffice suite - self-explanatory ... but excellent program

Firefox
Thunderbird - email client both Win/Linux. Not esp mature, but handles Gmail accounts, uses Tags, can set Folder email retention policies.

 

[ALS]

I like using free-codecs.net for all the freeware they offer.

 

[Quattro Pete]

Also FastStone Photo Resizer - kinda self explanatory, very feature-rich and great for batch-processing of large number of photos.

 

[97tbird]

AVG free a/v, --
AVG free a/spyware
CCleaner
SuperAntiSpyware
Rocketdock
DVD Shrink
Audacity player/recorder
...and FIREFOX !!! (the best browser EVER!)

 

[GrtArtiste]

In addition to Irfanview, Gimp, Firefox I have:

IZarc---for zip/unzip functions

PingPlotter

HoverIP---traceroute/port scanning and more

Stellarium---a planetarium for Win/Mac/Linux

EasyGPS

GrtArtiste

 

[simple_gifts]

Of course, Ubuntu; if open source guys can makes apps such as Gimp, Open Office, Thunderbird, Firefox etc, do you think an open source OS might be just as good?

 

[Quest]

Gimp,
OpenOffice,
Ubuntu,
ClamAV(LinuxOS),
Firefox,
All the freebie Firefox extensions
CCleaner

 

[stogiedude]

Excellent thread idea wayne!

AVG (the best antivirus program I've tried)
Firefox (better than IE IMO)-I never use IE anymore
CCleaner (great program, been using it a long time)
Winpatrol (super, I highly recommend)
Spywareblaster
Battlefield 1942 Secret Weapons Of WWII Demo (awesome game)
Medal Of Honor Demo (awesome, very old game)
audiograbber (ripping program)
tagscanner (makes lists of files you have on your computer)
Bonk encoder (change media file formats like MP4 into MP3 etc.)
Quintessential Player (excellent simple media player with really good sound quality, also has lots of skins)
adaware (antispyware)
winrar (like winzip)
Open Office Great MS Office workalike
sycBack (file backup and folder sycronization)
Karafun (Karaoke software)
memento (free post it notes program)
spywareblaster

 

[sprintman]

CCleaner
SpywareBlaster
SUPERAntiSpyware
a-squared
Counterspy

 

[97tbird]

I forgot SpyWare Blaster

so the complete list is:

Spyware Blaster
AVG free a/v,
AVG free a/spyware
CCleaner
SuperAntiSpyware
Rocketdock
DVD Shrink
Audacity player/recorder
...and FIREFOX !!! (the best browser EVER!)
oh. and Everest Home edition: (show CPU usage, and a whole lot of other info on parameters/activities)

 

[Touring5]

Most of my favorites have already been mentioned, but I'll add:

Paint.net - ever closer to Photoshop, yet it's open source.
Exact Audio Copy (EAC)
Total Commander
Pop Peeper

 

[kgb007stb]

Great thread, could you guys expand on what you use for backup and desktop icon management, I’ll have to look into sycback and RocketDock.

 

[SrDriver]

Originally Posted By: kgb007stb
Great thread, could you guys expand on what you use for backup and desktop icon management, I’ll have to look into sycback and RocketDock.


For free backups I highly recommend DriveImage XML!

Link To Web Site

Burn a boot CD/DVD with Bart's PE ("BartPE is Admin's best friend") with the DriveImage XML plugin for a complete backup restore solution.

Link To Bart PE

Have used it for backup - restore several times without issue.

 

[ToyotaNSaturn]

gparted, partition resizer

7-zip, fantastic Unzipper (better than Winzip)

CD-EX, media format changer (mp3 to wav, wma to mp3, etc)

VMWare server, run multiple windows/linux instances on the same physical PC

DOS Box, for Mac, PC and Linux boxes, to play old DOS games like Castle Wolfenstein 3D and RedBaron

Foxit PDF reader, vastly better than Adobe's own reader

and of course:
OpenOffice
Firefox