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From the Actrix Online Informer September 2007
by Rob Zorn
 Some good, free downloads
This month we thought we might do a quick round-up of some free
programmes you can download from the Internet to use instead of others you
might normally have to pay for.
Just a couple of matters before we get underway. Firstly, if you haven't
downloaded programs from the Internet before, check out this month's Forum question
about how best to save them before installing. Secondly, the inevitable
disclaimer. It is our opinion these programs are safe to install and use
according to manufacturer's instructions. However, we can't be responsible
if something goes wrong with the install and causes other problems on your
computer. In other words, you download these programs at your own risk, and if you have any
doubts about installing them, don't.
Because they're free, and therefore don't have large development budgets,
many of these programs won't always do things as well or as easily as their
paid-for rivals, but usually they'll do the basics fine, and it'll be with
the more advanced features that differences are noticeable.
Why are programs free?
Sometimes these programs are developed by people just for fun, or because
they're part of a community (such as the Open Source lot) that shares an
interest in a particular type of software. Sometimes free software is a
scaled down version of a commercial product and they're hoping you'll like
the freebie enough to pay them to get the more advanced features. Sometimes
the free programs will have ads included in them. The developers make money
from the ads, or from the payment you make them to remove the ads.
What about spyware and stuff?
Some free software will come will spyware or adware bundled inside,
especially those free offers that pop up while you're surfing. such as
wallpapers and smilies. Stay away from those. If you have any doubt about a
program, Google its name and the word "spyware" at the same time and see
what comes up. You can also check with Wikipedia which often
carries articles on software with bundled malware.
 Open Office
(www.openoffice.org): Open Office
works on most platforms (PC, Mac and Linux) and comes as a free
bundle of word processing, spreadsheet, presentation and html editor
programs. The interface is very similar to the pre-Office 2007 Microsoft
programs and most users should be able to adjust with relative ease. It will open and save documents in
Microsoft format, so you can share your stuff with Microsoft users without
problems. As you'd expect, it's a pretty big download: 93 Megabytes.
 VLC Media Player
(http://www.videolan.org/vlc/):
This is a highly portable multimedia player
that will play just about anything and everything. You can use it instead of
Windows Media Player or Real Player. What I especially like about it is that
it will play partially downloaded .avi files you might be downloading from a
file-sharing network (a legal one of course) before they are fully
downloaded. 9.2 Megabytes. Most other media players will simply refuse to do
this until the very last frame has been downloaded.
 TweakNow Registry
Cleaner
(www.tweaknow.com/products.html):
Your registry is like a hypothalamus telling your computer what to do, so
you don't want to fiddle around with it if you don't know what you're doing.
However, if you're installing and uninstalling lots of programs, it can get
a bit slow and overloaded with unnecessary leftovers. TweakNow removes all
the junk, which may help speed up your PC and make it more stable. The
scaled-back
free standard version will do nicely, but it only works for Windows. 1
Megabyte.
 Picasa
(www.picasa.google.com):
Google's Picasa makes sorting and viewing your photos easy. It scans your
hard drive when it first starts up and shows your photos chronologically,
then lets you organise them almost any way you like, including writing up
hidden labels so you can see all your pictures of a certain theme in one go.
It comes with handy basic image editing tools too, like red-eye reduction
and photo resizing. The Online Informer has covered Picasa in more
details
here. It's 4.5 Megabyte download.
 Gimp
(www.gimp.org): Short for
'GNU Image Manipulation Program', Gimp is a free alternative to big,
expensive programs like the famous
Photoshop. It can handle photo retouching, image composition and image
authoring and works on most operating systems. The Gimp website only has the
source code (and most of us won't want to bother with that). To get yourself a
version for Windows go to
http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/. It's a 7.5 Megabyte download.
 Anti-virus:
Having anti-virus software on your computer is nothing short of essential
these days, and there are all sorts of ways you can get them, even directly
across the Net. There are a number of free anti-virus programs out there that
will give you basic protection from Net nasties including viruses, worms and trojans.
They just provide the basics, so if you're new to computers we'd recommend
using a paid-for product that gives you wider coverage and an easy-to-use
interface. If you don't want to pay, though, these three are
pretty good:
AVG: (http://free.grisoft.com/doc/2/)
25.7 Megabytes.
Avast (www.avast.com):
15.55 Megabytes.
ClamWin (www.clamwin.com): 16.1
Megabytes.
 FileZilla
(http://filezilla.sourceforge.net/): FTP
programs are used to transfer files up to websites (or to transmit
files between any computers which is essentially what uploading a site is
all about). FileZilla has recently made quite a reputation for itself as
being fast, reliable, secure and and very easy to use.
If you've been using WS_FTP, and you're thinking about a change, you may
want to check it out. On the download page select
FileZilla_2_2_32_setup.exe (3.3 megabytes). FTP is short for "file transfer protocol", by
the way.
 FreeRIP
(www.mgshareware.com/frmmain.shtml): FreeRip is a freeware Windows application that lets you save the tracks
on your CDs to MP3 so that you can play them on your portable media devices
(this process is known as "ripping") such as your iPod or whatever
else you use. It can also handle conversions to and
from other formats such as WAV, WMA, Ogg Vorbis or FLAC, which may also be
useful for some people. It also connects to an online database and can often
work out what CD you're ripping and automatically put titles and artists in
the mp3 file names. It's a 1.7 Megabyte download.
 NVU Html Editor
(www.nvu.com/index.php):
It's pronounced NView, and is one of the few free rivals to
FrontPage and Dreamweaverthat is of any
real value. It's a true WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) interface with a number of features such as an
internal spell-checker and the ability to call W3C's HTML validator from within the product.
Those wanting just a simple text-based editor for their html could try
PSPad or
Crimson Editor which are more
like Notepad with colours to help sort your code better.
 PDFCreator
(http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/):
PDFCreator allows you to make a PDF (portable document file that can be read
by any computer with Acrobat reader on it) out of just about any other
document. It adds a virtual printer on your computer, so just select File,
then Print in the document you're working on (e.g. a Word or Open Office
document), and choose PDFCreator instead of your default printer. Hey
presto, out comes a PDF!
 RoboForm
(www.roboform.com/):
This program was suggested by John Mayes after a recent article on password security. It's a great approach to the problem of generating and remembering a variety of passwords. The passwords are accessible direct from the browser in encrypted form and it is only necessary to remember a master password. There is a limited free version
but the paid version is cheap. According to the website it was named PC Magazine Editor's Choice, and CNET Download.com's Software of the Year. It's spyware free, and people tend to say good things about it if you Google it. 2.7 Megabytes
to download.
 Spybot - Search & Destroy
(www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html):
Spybot - Search & Destroy detects and removes spyware, the nasty programs that track your surfing behaviour to create a marketing profile that is transmitted without your knowledge to the compilers and sold to advertising companies. There's a pretty good tutorial at the website to show you how to make the program work, and there's also a list of all the application's features. It can also clean usage tracks if you don't want others using your computer to see what you have been working on.
About 7 megabytes to download.
 FreeMind
(http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page):
Here's something a little out of the ordinary, but still quite useful. Freemind is a mind mapping software program which lets you brainstorm and link together ideas quickly, creating maps of concepts similar to what you might do on a whiteboard. It could be quite useful when putting together ideas for a new project or organising a brainstorm into a piece of writing.
Much better than a pencil and paper, and there's a lots of information about
the program's features at the web page.
7.8 megabytes to download.
 Gadwin
PrintScreen
(www.gadwin.com/printscreen/?prnscr):
Although you can easily capture an image of whatever is on your screen by
just pressing the PrintScreen key, the image you're left with usually has to
be edited down to get just the part of it you want. With a program like
Gadwin PrintScreen, you can easily do this without having to worry about
using another editing program. With Gadwin PrintScreen running, just press
the PrintScreen Key, and up pops a console with your screen grab all ready
to be edited. A number of nifty editing tools are included so you can crop,
colour and re-size your image before saving it in a number of formats.
Change the source to rectangular area and the program lets you select just a
portion of the screen to capture. 4.5 megabytes to download.
 Clipomatic
(http://www.mlin.net/Clipomatic.shtml):
Ever been working away and copied something to your computer's memory, only to find that you've forgotten and copied something else there when you go to paste it? Clipomatic is a clipboard cache program. It remembers what was copied to the clipboard and allows you to retrieve it, even after you've copied something else there instead. Clipomatic will automatically monitor your clipboard and record its changes. When you want to paste an old item, you just put the keyboard cursor where you would like to paste and press Ctrl-Alt-V. A menu pops up with your clips - you can select one with the mouse or with a single keystroke. The menu then disappears, and the item is pasted.
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