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21 Best Free Digital Image Editor Updated 18th August, 2006I use to recommend The Gimp [1] but after dozens of letters from newbies who couldn't manage to install it or work out the idiosyncratic user interface, I've decided to confine that recommendation to more experienced users. If that's you and you patient enough to learn the product's sometimes quaint ways then you have no need to consider anything else. If you are used to Photoshop you might like to look at GIMPShop [2] , which changes the user interface of GIMP to something more familiar though frankly, I prefer the original.
For other less experienced users I have two recommendations: First there is Paint.net, an amazingly sophisticated piece of work from computer science students at Washington State University. It's not quite as powerful as The Gimp but a lot easier to use and install. It's also getting better; the new V2.5 continues this product's impressive development record. It is however only for Windows 2000 and later and you'll need Microsoft's bulky .NET framework installed on your PC.
My second choice is PhotoPlus 6.0 from a company called Serif [4] . It's an impressive piece of work; again it installs easily and it's loaded with features including layer support. In fact, it looks and feels like a "lite" version of Adobe PhotoShop except that it is relatively easy to use. I say "relatively" because graphics editing is by its nature, not simple. Both Paint.net and PhotoPlus are outstanding free products. Which is the best? Hard to say, try both and decide for yourself. Note: You need to register with your email address to get PhotoPlus and you may receive promotional material as a result.
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[1] http://www.gimp.org/windows/ (7.07MB)
[2] http://www.gimpshop.net/ (7.4MB)
[3] http://getpaint.net/ (3.6MB)
[4] http://www.freeserifsoftware.com/software/PhotoPlus/default.asp(19.4MB)



22 Best Free Digital Photo Organizer It’s rare for me to be utterly wowed by a product but this one certainly did it. When you first run Picasa it offers to scan your whole hard drive (or designated locations) for photos and videos. Scanning is surprisingly quick and when finished you’ll have all your shots neatly organized into folders on a time line basis. Now you can view you shots one at a time, in slideshow or traversing the time line. The editing features are limited compared to professional image editors yet they provide you with every function amateur photographers need including one click red eye reduction. Similarly adding labels to photos is a cinch while a simple but effective star rating system allows you to flag favorite snaps. Individual folders can also be password protected. Facilities are provided to import your images from your camera in multiple formats including RAW. You can send photos to your choice of web printing service, cut a CD, print to a local printer or share with others via your own blog or instant messaging. Simply sensational. Windows 2000 or later, 300MHz Pentium with 128MB memory or better, 4.0MB.
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http://www.picasa.com/



23 Best Free Notepad Replacement There are lots of text editors and Notepad replacements. Some of these aspire to be programming editors while others try to be word processors. What I love about EditPad is that, unlike the others, it concentrates on simply being a better plain text editor and in that role, it succeeds brilliantly. It has a Notepad-like interface combined with tabbed document windows, the ability to open as many documents as you like, no file size limitations and unlimited un-do capability.
If however you are looking for something that will also serve as a programming editor you might like to check out Notepad++. It's not only great for programming but can be used as a Notepad replacement as well. It also supports plug-ins, themes and has multi-language support. Note that I'm not saying that Notepad++ is the best programming editor available, that's too controversial a category even for me ;>)
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http://www.editpadpro.com/editpadlite.html Windows 98 and later, Free for non-commercial use, 2.4MBhttp://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm Windows 95 and later, Free Open Source,1.03MB



24 The Best File Archiver/Zip Utility checked out six utilities: QuickZip, ICEOWS, IZArc, TUGZip, ZipGenius and 7-Zip. The product that impressed me the most was the Open Source program 7-Zip. It was the only product in the group that could unpack a multi-part RAR volume embedded in a ZIP archive and the only product to give a meaningful error message when an attempt was made to unpack a 256bit encrypted WinZip archive. My only reservation is that it handles fewer archive types than some of the other products; it only supports 7z, ZIP, CAB, RAR, ARJ, GZIP, BZIP2, Z, TAR, CPIO, RPM and DEB . If that's really important to you than I'd recommend IZArc. It can read nearly 50 archive types including media formats like ISO, BIN and IMG and can write (and convert) to 12. You couldn't go wrong with either product. 7-Zip is a little more robust while IZArc is a little more flexible. If you already use WinZip you'll find either 7-Zip or IZArc make excellent companion products. They can can read just about all the major archive formats WinZip can't, including the widely used RAR.
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http://www.izarc.org/download.html Windows 9x and later, 3.1MBhttp://www.7-zip.org/ Windows 9x and later, 1.05MB



25 Best Free Hotkey Utility Updated July 25, 2006PS Hot Launch VVL [1] is a free utility that allows you to define your own hotkeys so that a single key press can launch an application, insert commonly used text, change your volume, or just about anything else. Hotkeycontrol works on all versions of Windows and is an excellent performer even on slow machines.
A second alternative is the qliner's free Open Source "hotkeys" utility [2]. It's strength is its wide support for international keyboard layouts plus a handy reminder key that flashes up your current hotkey assignments. On the minus side, it's not quite as flexible as PS Hot Launch and it's only available for Windows XP.
A third option is not really a hotkey utility at all but achieves the same result by using "magic words." SlickRun [3] places a tiny text box on your screen and when you type specially assigned words into the box, it will launch a program, go to a web site or whatever. For example if you type "mail" it can launch your mail reader. Type in "46" and it can take you to the web page of the "46 Best-ever Freeware Utilities." Of course, it's up to you to define these magic words and you can have as many as you want. It all works very neatly with some really nice touches like auto-complete for your magic words which means you only have to type in two or three letters and SlickRun will complete the rest. Nice too, is an eyedropper tool that allows you to identify a program you want to "hotkey" just by clicking in its application window. There's also a built-in note jotter and a calendar date display.
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[1] http://www.pssoftlab.com/pshl_info.phtml Windows 9x and later, 743KB
[2] http://qliner.com/hotkeys/ Windows XP and later, 804KB
[3] http://www.bayden.com/SlickRun/ Win 98 or later, 168KB



26 Best Free Registry Cleaner Updated July 25, 2006To keep the registries on my PCs in top running order I use the the registry cleaner "SystemRegistry" in the Fix-It Utilities though many folks swear by the Registry Cleaner in jv16 PowerTools. Both of these are commercial products though you can still find the last free version of jv16 [1] on the web.
In my mind the best registry cleaner is one which reliably fixes problem entries but doesn't itself cause problems in the process. The products most likely to possess these qualities are those that are conservative in operation and confine their cleaning to removing definite and unambiguous errors. I say this because I have seen as many problems created by registry cleaners as problems solved. This view flies in the face of many who consider, for whatever reason, that the best registry cleaner is the one that finds the most problems. To me such products can be dangerous and not worth owning.
That said, my top recommendation is Toni Helenius' free EasyCleaner. It's a good reliable, conservative performer that will fix all major problems with a low risk of creating problems of its own As a bonus, it will also detect duplicate files and help you clean up temp files to make more disk space. One of its best features is a regularly updated "blacklist" of registry values that should not be cleaned. I'm sure this contributes to the products excellent record of causing few problems. Remember though, as with every Registry cleaner, to back up your Windows Registry before use.
A reasonable alternative is Eusing Free Registry Cleaner [3]. I've only had a couple of reports of it causing problems but it has an easy to use backup and recovery feature that will help you out should you get into trouble.
CCleaner (see section 37) , the class-leading disk cleaner has an inbuilt registry cleaner as well. However I'd never leave anything as critical as registry cleaning to a general purpose product; you really need a specialist utility.
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[1] http://www.321download.com/LastFreeware/index.html#jv16 Freeware, All Windows versions, 2.1MB
[2] http://personal.inet.fi/business/toniarts/ecleane.htm Freeware, All Windows versions, 2.8MB
[3] http://www.eusing.com/free_registry_cleaner/registry_cleaner.htm Freeware, Window s98 and later, 860KB.



27 Best Free BitTorrent Client Updated July 25, 2006It's amazing how quickly BitTorrent has become one of the major download formats. With good reason, too: it's fast, equitable and efficient. If you haven't yet installed a BitTorrent client on your PC, you should as there are some great free clients available. I recommend the Open Source program Azureus [1]. It's beautifully implemented, well supported and, being Java based, is available for multiple platforms. It's very feature rich and supports embedded tracker so you can host your own torrents, UPnP, a distributed decentralized database for decentralized torrents and DHT (Distributed Hash Table) which distributes indexing responsibility across multiple clients rather than relying on a single web-based tracker plus many other features too numerous to mention. There are also a lot of plug-ins available for Azureus including a competent RSS feed scanner. One downside with Azureus is that the Java code will eat up your CPU cycles so you need a reasonably fast PC.
A good alternative is uTorrent [2] which comes in at a tiny 170KB. It's fast, lean on resources, easy to use and requires no installation. It formidable feature list includes trackerless downloads, multiple simultaneous downloads, multi-scrape, UPnP and has an inbuilt RSS reader which is an impressive achievement for such a tiny package . uTorrent is being enhanced so quickly that I suspect it will soon match or surpass Azureus.
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[1] http://azureus.sourceforge.net/ Open source, any PC that supports Java, 7.6MB
[2] http://www.utorrent.com/ Freeware, all Windows versions, 170KB



28 The Best Free FTP Client Updated July 25, 2006I used WS_FTP Pro as my principal FTP client for years. What started out as simple and effective product gradually with each new version became more feature-bloated and less effective for simple routine tasks. With the release of Version 9 it was clear to me that the product had totally lost its way so I started looking for an alternative. After trying seven different FTP clients I decided that the best for me was the Open Source utility FileZilla. It uses a simple layout based on a two pane interface that looks a bit like the early versions of WS_FTP. But this simplicity is deceptive, it is actually a quite powerful product There's a full featured site manager, firewall and proxy support, SSL and Kerberos GSS security, restart, drop and drag and a lot more. The only significant feature that's missing is site-to-site transfer but that's of no importance to me. What is of importance is that FileZilla is fast, totally reliable, secure and and very easy to use. There's also a free FileZilla FTP server which I haven't used but I hear that it's just as good as the client.
If you want a SCP (secure copy) client for Windows that uses SSH and offers a rich feature set you might like to try WinSCP. It features a built-in terminal, it can launch Putty directly, allows remotely file editing edit files, direct transfer and transfer queuing and the ability to limit download speed rates. Me, I'll stick with FileZilla.
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[1] http://filezilla.sourceforge.net/ Free Open Source, Windows NT and later, 3.4MB
[2] http://winscp.net/eng/index.php Free GNU license, All Windows version, (1.4MB)



29 Best Free Bookmark CleanerAM-DeadLink scans your browser bookmark file for dead links or duplicate links. When I tried it on my huge favorites file I discovered 17% of my links were dead. I've now got a much leaner set of favorites and the comfort of knowing that the links actually work. Freeware, all Windows versions, Internet Explorer, Opera, Mozilla and Firefox, 1.1MB.
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http://aignes.com/press/deadlink140.htm



30 Best Free Folder Synchronization Utility This is getting scary. First I recommend Microsoft Antispyware as the best free spyware scanner and now I'm going to recommend another Microsoft product as the best in this category. Well, equal best. It's called SyncToy v1.0 for Windows XP [1] and, as the name implies, is only for XP - SP2. This program is more than a syncing program; it can copy, move, rename, and delete files between any number of folders and even computers. The program operates on the principal of pre-defined folder pairs. You define and name these pairs and then when you want to perform a sync or other task, you recall one of these pairs and carry out the operation. Syncing can be in either direction and covers all options from complete sync to updating newer files only. The handling of files with changed file names is exceptional as is the backup of overwritten files. Overall, pretty well everything you ever wanted in a sync utility. Note that SyncToy requires V1.1 of Microsoft's .NET framework.
Also highly recommended is 2brightspark's SyncBack [2]. It works for Windows 98 and later and has a number of features that SyncToy lacks such as the ability to sync to a remote FTP server.
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[1] http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=E0FC1154-C975-4814-9649-CCE41AF06EB7&displaylang=en CCE41AF06EB7&displaylang=en (844KB)
[2] http://www.2brightsparks.com/downloads.html(1.9MB)



31 Best Free Screen Capture Utility Two recommendations here: The first is PrintScreen. It does exactly what I want, in the way I want and furthermore avoids the trap of providing lots of useless and confusing features. It's the little things that count like making the hot key PrtSc so I don't have to remember it, and automatically sequentially naming the output files for multiple screen shots.
A second recommendation is Screen Hunter. It's a commercial product but the "lite" free version is excellent, offering more features than Gadwin at the cost of a little added complexity. Both products work with Win 98 and later versions.
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http://www.gadwin.com/printscreen/?prnscr (976KB)
http://www.wisdom-soft.com/products/screenhunter.htm (381KB)



32 Best Free Search Toolbar Search toolbars allow users to do web searches without having to go first to the home page of a search engine. This really saves a lot of time. In the last year search toolbars have become a hotly competed product class and as result, users now have an excellent choice. The "best" in terms of features is probably Yahoo's Toolbar whose features include anti-spyware capabilities as well as popup blocking. It's for Internet Explorer but they are currently offering a beta version for Firefox. My only beef with the Yahoo product is that I prefer to use Google for my web searches rather than Yahoo and that's why I use the Google Toolbar which also offers popup blocking though no anti-spyware features. On the other hand it includes a useful web form spell-checker and a few other goodies not found in the Yahoo product. Google also offers a full Firefox version as well as the standard IE version.
Some folks still like Dave’s Quick Search Bar because it gives access to multiple search engines. Another advantage is that it resides in your task bar rather than your browser so it's easily accessible from any application. Other Dave's features include a dictionary, thesaurus, calculator and a lot of customizability.
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http://toolbar.yahoo.com/ie (3MB)
http://www.dqsd.net/ (327KB)
http://toolbar.google.com/deskbar/ (447KB)



33 Best Free Download Manager
You have several good choices in this category. To me a good downloader is one that does the job, is well integrated into your browser and is not intrusive.
That's why my top recommendation for some time has been Star Downloader [1]. Unfortunately the freeware version has been effectively frozen at version 1.44 with future enhancements restricted to the shareware version. It is however, still a fine choice.
After trying half a dozen other products, I've settled on "Free Download Manager" [2] as my current top selection. It's fast, stable and integrates well into both Internet Explorer, Opera and Firefox though the later works best with the free FlashGot extension installed. "Free Download Manager" offers simultaneous multi-part downloads, easy restarting and recovery, a powerful scheduler, downloading from mirrors and just about everything else you need in a download utility. Additionally, there is no embedded adware or nag screen.
After using it for a couple of weeks, I've decided that it's actually just as good as Star Downloader with the advantage that it's still being actively developed. Indeed, version 2 released in April 2006 adds even more features to this already impressive product.
If you are looking for another option the commercial FlashGet [3] program is now available for free. It's certainly full featured and nicely integrated but I find it overly complex to use. The product has a bit of a history of bundling in other products with the install but when I tried V1.72, it was totally clean.
A final (and excellent) choice is the time-proven LeechGet [4] program which is free for personal use. Again it's got pretty well everything that you want in a download manager. Some folks find its colorful graphical presentation attractive, I find it a little gaudy and intrusive. Looks aside it certainly does its job well. Note that the indicated download rates are a tad optimistic so don't mistake this for superior performance. There is a separate plug-in for Mozilla/Firefox, Netscape and Opera integration.
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[1] http://www.stardownloader.com/downloads.php Freeware, All Windows versions, 2.34MB
[2] http://www.freedownloadmanager.org/download.htm Freeware, All Windows versions, 1.66MB
[3] http://www.flashget.com/index_en.htm Freeware, all Windows versions, 1.43MB
[4] http://www.leechget.net/en/ Free for personal use, All Windows versions, 2.9MB



34 Best Free Web Site Ripper Updated July 25, 2006HTTrack is one impressive product: it's easy to use, has an excellent user interface, offers every feature you could want, is blindingly fast and free of any adware as well. If you like to download web sites so that you can "browse them offline", this is the product to get.
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http://www.httrack.com/ Free GPL, All Windows versions, 3.3MB
35 Best Free Download/Upload Meter NetMeter [1] shows upload and download speeds, along with cumulative weekly and monthly volumes and projected values. The program reminds me in many ways of Hagel's excellent $20 shareware product "DU Meter." It's freeware and works with all Windows versions. In essence, everything you really need for nix.
A good second choice if you have the Microsoft .NET package already installed on your PC is BitMeter II from Codebox Software [2] . It's a little more feature rich than NetMeter but uses a tad more of your PCs resources to deliver those features.
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[1] http://readerror.gmxhome.de/ (601KB)
[2] http://codebox.no-ip.net/controller?page=bitmeter2 (806KB)



36 Best Free TCP Settings Tweaker Whether you use a modem or broadband, you'll get a faster connection if you tweak your connection's TCP parameters. Among the most important of these is MaxMTU which, in simple terms, needs to be set to the largest value possible without your data being broken up into smaller chunks en-route. Most techies determine MaxMTU by trial and error pinging using different packet sizes but it's a tedious procedure and definitely not for beginners. TCPOptimizer from SpeedGuide.net is a free utility that will do the job for you automatically. Furthermore, it will use this value to advise you on your other TCP settings and then apply these values at the press of the button. There are commercial programs that will do much the same thing but TCPOptimizer does it just as well and is totally free. The only minus is the lack of in-program help however you'll find a useful FAQ at the SpeedGuide site. (225KB)
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http://www.speedguide.net/downloads.phphttp://www.speedguide.net/faq_in.php?category=100



37 Best Free File Cleaner Updated August 17, 2006
My first choice here is CCleaner [1], a product that started off as pretty basic but has continued to improve to the point where it is now very close to the best in its class regardless of price. It's very effective in freeing up disk space by removing unused and temporary files, cookies, Recycle bin entries, Windows hot-fix files, sold prefetch data, history and cache files in many applications such as Internet Explorer and Firefox and much more. Additionally it will check the Windows Registry for invalid entries.
There are some minuses: first the installation settings are quite aggressive so do check them carefully. Second the product installation, by default, includes the installation of the Yahoo Toolbar so if you don't want it, make sure you uncheck that option. Finally I wouldn't trust this product to do your Registry cleaning; that's a job for a specialist utility. Similarly if your aim is to remove all your surfing traces rather than just to clean up your disk I'd be inclined to use a specialist cache cleaner.
However if simply freeing up disk space is your objective the CCleaner is hard to beat.
A good companion to CCleaner is Empty Temp Folders. It's not as complete a product as CCleaner and it's been a while since it was last updated however I find it always manages to clean more temporary file than CCleaner. That's why I suggest you use both.
Another cleaner with a solid following is Steven Gould's CleanUP! [3] It's a compact, well designed and very well maintained and is a real alternative to CCleaner. I've had a couple of instances of it causing problems on my test PC but this may be specific to my setup. Certainly the feedback I get from users has been uniformly excellent.
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[1] http://www.ccleaner.com/ Freeware, all Windows versions, 1.4MB
[2] http://www.danish-shareware.dk/soft/emptemp Freeware, Windows 98 and later, 667KB
[3] http://www.stevengould.org/software/cleanup/download.html Freeware, Windows version unstated, 331KB.



38 Best Free Resource MeterThis is cute. TinyResMeter [1] is an itsy-bitsy system monitor. Unlike many other monitors, it doesn't consume a lot of CPU utilization in order to tell you your CPU utilization. In addition to CPU usage, you can optionally monitor cache, RAM, page file and swap file usage, running processes and threads, disk space utilization and a number of other parameters as well. Also built-in, is a screen grabber that saves the current screen to disk when you press PrintScreen. How the author fits all this into 92KB beats me. A new version is on the way offering even more functionality.
If you are like something a little fancier than TinyResMeter then check out StatBar [2]. It's got more features than you could ever want though but at the cost of a higher resource overhead needed to run the program. Nice product though and easy to try out as the program doesn't require installation.
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[1] http://www.pesoft.com/ (92KB)
[2] http://www.statbar.nl/ (1.65MB)



39 Best Free Sticky Notes Utility Some people hate these programs others swear they can't work effectively without them. I used to be in the first category but with so many things on my plate these days, I'm slowly being converted. The function that I find really useful is the reminder that pops up at a designated time and date. I use it for simple things like "put up the latest issue on the web site." ATnotes is a neat implementation that features configurable alarms, resizable windows, variable fonts and a host of other useful features. The product is remarkably similar to the class-leading commercial sticky notes utility called, TurboNotes, a case perhaps of imitation being the sincerest form of flattery.
NOTE: As of the 30th of May 2005, development work has ceased and the author's site pulled down. However someone has built a mirror of the author's site [1] where you can read about ATnotes and download the final version. You can also download ATNotes from the a number of other sites including the second link below. If you want an alternative that is still being developed try StickyPad. Some folks actually prefer it to ATnotes and I must admit the interface is very slick but I find the alarm function to be rather inflexible. It cannot for example handle recurring events such as birthdays. If you want that functionality you are better of with another sticky note program called "Stickies" from Zhorn Software. It's not quite as svelte as the other two programs I've mentioned but it's very effective in operation.
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[1] http://atnotes.free.fr/news.html (723KB)
[2] http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file_description/0,fid,17660,00.asp
[3] http://www.greeneclipsesoftware.com/stickypad.html (550KB)
[4] http://www.zhornsoftware.co.uk/stickies/ (596KB)



40 Best Free Secure Erase Utility Updated July 25, 2006Eraser [1] is a free, GNU license utility that will securely erase files, folders or even whole disks from any Windows or DOS PC. Eraser overwrites data area with selectable random data patterns and also wipes data in the paging file, Internet cache, temporary files, Internet cookies, unused disk space and a number of other places where data can secretly lurk. It handles FAT16, FAT32 and NTFS partitions as well. Erasing files with high security will always be a difficult and time consuming task and can never offer absolute 100% safety. However Eraser makes the task about as easy as it be, with a security level beyond most conceivable requirements. The author's site is sometimes unavailable but you can find Eraser at numerous download sites including MajorGeeks [2].
If Eraser is overkill for your needs try Simple File Shredder[3]. It's not as comprehensive a solution to secure deletion as Eraser but it's much easier to use.
Another rather different alternative is Darik's Boot and Nuke [3]. Its an Open Source program that's used to construct a floppy disk or CD that will automatically wipe the all hard drives of any PC booted from the disk. It's great for bulk disk cleaning of PCs and is useful too as an emergency tool for quickly removing sensitive information. However this power makes it a dangerous tool in the hands of beginners.