Free Software
Below are the coolest free software
programs encountered on the Web. Everything listed here
is free and they're all worth the download time. Many of
these programs are in compressed form (to speed up the
download time).
- Start Menu
Cleaner - This
helpful free program will clean your Windows
"Start" menu by removing unneeded
shortcuts and folders. Many applications tend to
leave such debris on your Start menu---clutter
that stays there even after you remove the
program. Using this utility will give you a
smaller, cleaner, more efficient menu.
- Yankee
Clipper Plus - This helpful free clipboard utility
can save you loads of work if you do a lot of
repetitive typing. Yankee Clipper remembers the
last 20 text entries to the clipboard. It also
can save your clips between sessions. You may
also make boilerplate/template files with your
favorite clips and much more.
- DISKdata
- This freeware
program is an Explorer-like application for
Windows that analyzes your hard drive and reveals
data that Windows doesn't. It reports its
findings in a chart format. It's a handy way to
find out exactly what's clogging up your hard
drive.
- WorldFlash
News Ticker - This
useful free program delivers lots of information
to your desktop, including news headlines, stock
quotes, and weather data. It can also check for
your incoming E-mail (POP3 compatible only) and
display E-mail headers in a scrolling window.
(The install program is 1.2 megs in size and is
for Win 95 and NT only).
- PeopleLink
- This new free
software service enables you to communicate
instantly with people online. PeopleLink gives
you "interactive messaging", a new
medium that combines the best features of E-mail
(ease-of-use, safety and selectivity) with the
one major advantage of chat, interactivity. (For
Windows and Mac).
- Free
Bible program - This awesome program contains the
King James Bible, with over 12,000 topics to
select from in both the Old and New Testaments.
Also included in this free package are parables,
Easton's Bible Dictionary, Matthew Henry
Commentary, a bookmark feature, scripture search,
maps and much more. For Windows.
- Freeware
themes installer - OK, here's the deal. You've been
checking out all these cool free desktop themes
for Windows that are all over the Web, And you
wish you could install them on your machine, but
you don't want to purchase Microsoft Plus! Well,
here's the solution. Free Themes is a freeware
program that will load themes without the Plus!
program.
- Bits:
a programmer's aid - This free program helps you convert
easily from RGB to HEX values, for selecting
colors for a Web site. Bits also allows
programmers to manipulate bits in a value or
convert values. BITS makes it easy to shift or
perform other operations on a 32-bit value, and
to see the results visually.
- Netdate
- This is an
excellent utility for setting your computer's
internal clock over the Internet. You can run it
as an icon in the taskbar's tray. This free
program is the best way to ensure that your
computer is set to the correct time. (For
Windows).
- PureVoice
Player/Recorder - This free application offers a
player and recorder for voice messages that you
can use with your E-mail software. PureVoice
offers excellent sound quality and its files are
10 times smaller than .wav files. There's a
plug-in specifically for Eudora software, and a
separate application for other E-mail products.
- ASP1-A3
- The next time
you're downloading pictures of pastoral landscape
scenes from your favorite newsgroup, you'll
appreciate this cool free utility. ASP1-A3
automatically downloads images for you while
filtering out spam. The freeware version is
supported by ads.
- Mini
Clipboard - Are
you a clipboard addict? Check out this free
little Win 95 utility. It's a small clipboard
that sits in the tray. It has three different
cut/paste sections, and a section showing you
what currently resides in the clipboard. Also, it
has an internet URL section, an E-mail section
and a Telnet section that you can paste to.
- Net
Vampire - If
you surf around a lot and spot files here and
there that you'd like to download, then you need
this program. Just drop-and-drop the URLs to Net
Vampire and you can do all your downloading in
one batch. Net Vampire resumes broken connections
and restarts downloads. It's also specially
designed to deal successfully with noisy servers
and unreliable links.
- TrayMenu
- TrayMenu lets you
access your favorite shortcuts from the tray. You
can also organize shortcuts in menus and navigate
folders through cascaded menus.
- freeDUM
- Here's a nifty free
utility that replaces Windows 95's lame dial-up
manager. Features an Explorer-like interface, a
custom dailer and records log profiles, phone
numbers, time online and disconnect info, (if
you're bumped off-line.) freeDum will also
automatically launch applications for you.
- WebTurbo
- This freeware
program (supported by ads) works within your
browser to speed up your Web travels and make it
easier for you to search the Net. It also
automatically organizes the sites you find. The
program's "Web Previewer" feature lets
you quickly view an outline of the contents and
links on a page without having to download the
page itself. Useful!
- ShoeString's
PictureDicer - This is a freeware tool that chops
any image file into several smaller images,
suitable for creating mouseover effects and
pseudo-imagemaps on Web pages. It also generates
the HTML for a table to contain the partial
images and display them so they appear as the
original uncut image.
- Celebrity
Calculators - Are
you tired of your boring Windows calculator? Why
not replace it with one of your favorite
celebrity? Celebrity Calculators are a good way
to spice up your Windows environment. There's
currently over 75 celebrities available here,
from The Spice Girls to Brad Pitt.
- Web-O-Rama
Web page editor - This HTML editor offers far more
features, for free, what even commercial editors
charged 60 bucks or more only a few months ago
(in fact, some still do). This is a full-featured
editor with a nice interface and many useful
features, including intuitive forms for adding
images, tables, links, lists, sounds, hex values,
frames and more. All forms can be kept on top as
floating toolbars.
- AlphaCONNECT
StockVue - This
is a useful, well-done program that'll let you
track your financial information on the Internet.
Using it, you can receive unlimited free quotes
for stocks and mutual funds and much more.
- Go!Zilla
- If you download a
lot of files, then you really ought to get this
freeware download manager utility. Go!Zilla
allows you to recover from download errors and
manage and categorize files to download later
(and get those files from the most responsive
site.) Go!Zilla will even resume a failed
download.
- SchizoSigz!
- This is a handy
E-mail signature generator that works with any
E-mail program that utilizes ASCII based
signature files. SchizoSigz! takes a header file,
footer file, and a file filled with quotes,
taglines, or whatever, and generates an E-mail
signature file at a specified interval. It runs
from the Win 95/NT task bar.
- Alexa
- This is a useful
tool can enhance your Web travels. For starters,
there's a helpful desktop reference, that allows
you to research the Encyclopaedia Britannica and
Merriam Webster's Dictionary & Thesaurus
without leaving the page you're on. And if you
are a Webmaster, you'll like Alexa's features. It
allows you to determine all kinds of information
about Web sites (not just your own). With Alexa,
you can get information about a site's popularity
and find out how often other people visit a site
and how deep they click through it. You can also
see how often a site is updated, how fast it
loads, and the total number of pages within the
site. Available for Windows; Mac version
"coming soon."
- NetLab
- Here's a very
useful Win 95/NT program that does everything but
take out your garbage. NETLAB is like a Swiss
Army knife, it's so versatile. It offers a finger
service, a "Whois" service, a daytime
service (to get the time of day), a Clock
Synchronization service, a ping service, a
"traceroute" service (used to get a
route a connection to a remote host takes), a
"Quote of the Day," a DNS lookup and a
Port Scan.
- Arachnophilia
- Don't spend $50 on
a commercial Web authoring program until you've
tried this cool free program. Arachnophilia is an
outstanding Web editor, bursting with features.
It'll import fully formatted text, tables, and
outlines from any Win 95-compliant application
and automatically convert it to HTML. It also has
a built-in FTP client that automatically uploads
changed files. Powerful keyboard macros can
include system commands---even other macros, for
maximum flexibility. For Win 95/NT.
- Super
Fred - First
there were virtual pets; now there are
"Desktop Buddies." Super Fred is a
hilarious superhero cartoon character for your
Windows desktop. Watch Fred walk, fall, whistle,
pick his nose, sleep, drink and do dozen other
silly things right on your desktop even when you
work on something else.
- WebWerx
- This is a good,
solid freeware Web authoring program that offers
goodies like intelligent tag insertion, intuitive
shortcut keys, easy access for your preferred
browser, and more.
- Driver
Detective - Do
you ever wonder if your computer's hardware
drivers are up-to-date? Hardware drivers are
hidden from you by Windows95, making them hard to
find and even harder to get information on. To
solve this problem, check out this cool free
utility, which will not only show you ALL the
hardware drivers used by Windows on your system,
but it will also make getting all the vital
information on them as easy as clicking on that
driver.
- Start
2 Finish - Looking
for a project manager? This program offers lot of
features: job costing, unit cost, time tracking,
employee productivity, alarms, multiple projects
and more. Also features stunning U.S. space
program photos that liven up your desktop as you
work Described as "free" shareware, but
registering will get the advanced features turned
on. For Win 95/NT.
- Alice
- Are you interested
in 3D graphics, but find the whole process too
involved and complicated for a novice? Then check
out Alice. It's a 3D "Interactive Graphics
Programming Environment." The goal of Alice
is to make it easy for novice programmers to
develop interesting 3D environments.
- WordWeb
- This utility could
well help improve your writing skills. WordWeb is
a free feature-packed thesaurus/dictionary for
Windows 3.1 or Windows 95 that can be used from
your word processor or as a stand-alone program.
- Hide
It - Here's a
cool freeware Windows program that allows you to
hide any application window and its button in the
taskbar. The application is also removed from the
Alt-Tab chain, so it won't disturb your task
switching, it is just as if it wasn't there.
- Spammer
Slammer - If
you've spent very long on the Net, you've no
doubt been the victim of a spammer (someone who
sends unsolicited junk E-mail.) Now you can fight
back with this cool program, called Spammer
Slammer. It's an easy-to-use client that works
with any POP3 e-mail software. It also works for
multiple accounts on the same machine. Another
plus: there's no blacklist, huge domain lists, or
spammer list to maintain.
- SuperZip
- If you're new to
downloading programs off the Net, you may have
noticed that many of them are in "ZIP,"
or archived form. You need a program to unzip
these files before you can use them. SuperZip is
an easy-to-use and handles virtually all the of
ZIP files you'll come across, as well as offering
many other nice features.
- Dipstick
- If you download a
lot of files (like us) you really need this
essential freeware utility. Among other things,
Dipstick will query various mirror sites and tell
you which will give you the fastest download.
- Lorenz
Graf's HTMLtool - Here's a nice, free HTML editor that
makes it easy to develop great-looking Web pages
with knowing everything about every tag. This
program offers tons of features, including a
JavaScript "Script Wizard," a table
assistant, a URL assistant, preview function and
a "JavaKit," with ready-to-run applets.
- WebMarks
- A free Win 95 and
NT application that catalogs and stores your
favorite sites. Its capabilities far surpass the
bookmarking features found in Netscape and IE. It
solves a problem that many of us have: the need
to use both browsers. It also stores all your
bookmarks in a single file that makes it easy to
move your bookmarks from system to system.
- WebFerret
- A great search
utility. It's easy to use: You can find Web pages
by simply entering a keyword, and clicking
"Find Now." It's also unbelievably fast
and finds results almost immediately. The whole
process from launching WebFerret to receiving
results takes just a few seconds.
- Servers
Alive - This
is a freeware network monitor tool. This program
will check a host to see of a particular
service/deamon is still running. It can check
HTTP, FTP, SMTP, POP3, NNTP, Echo server, DNS,
IMAP4, Gopher, Telnet or it can just ping the
server. For Windows 95 or NT.
- Digital
Pad - A nifty
freeware utility, Digital Pad offers you a smart
alternative to pen and paper. Don't write
messages for other on paper, just leave a note on
the computer. This utility features multi-user
support, so different people can use it, with
their own accounts (which can be protected by
passwords), and a well designed, graphical
interface.
- Pegasus
Mail - One of
the Net's all-time classic freeware products,
Pegasus is the best E-mail client out there, bar
none. It has tons of great features, including a
spell checker, multiple signatures, checking of
multiple mailboxes, etc. If you download Pegasus,
then be sure to check out the Guide to Pegasus Mail
Add-ons,
which is a good collection of enhancement
programs for this E-mail client.
- Notespad
- An incredibly
useful program that replaces Windows' flimsy
Notepad text editor. Notespad is a free,
full-fledged text editor with tons of wonderful
features. You'll wonder how you managed without
it! Allows opening of many files simultaneously,
bookmarking of favorites, customized colors and
fonts, macros, a file editor, lots of right-click
goodies and tons more.
- Super
NoteTab - Another
great text editor, this program features a tabbed
interface that lets you open and edit a virtually
unlimited number of documents of any size.
There's also an "Editor Clipbook" with
templates for HTML tags, smilies, acronyms, etc.,
as well as management of favorite files and
folders.
- IrfanView32
- Great freeware
graphics viewer. We use this as our system's
default image viewer and converter because it
loads quickly, is easily customizable, has Drag
& Drop support and supports many file
formats: JPEG, GIF files, including animated
GIFs, BMP, RLE, DIB, PCX, PNG, TGA, RAS, TIFF,
ICO, AVI, WMF and more.
- WebArchitect
- Great freeware Web
authoring program that offers tons of features,
including multiple document interface, MS
Office-like toolbar, a commands guide, table
editor, frame wizard, home page wizard, ActiveX
control wizard and much more.
- HTML
Builder - A
useful free 32-bit Web authoring tool. Offers
HTML 3.2 capabilities, forms support, drag &
drop, spell checker and much more.
- The
Mortgage Manager - This is free software for managing
your home mortgage. This site also has
"facts and information your lender doesn't
want you to know."
- ViruSafe
WEB - Essential
freeware virus scanner plug-in, compatible with
all Web browsers. Checks for viruses every time
you download files from the Internet. Whenever
you download a file, ViruSafe WEB will
automatically scan it for viruses, before it is
saved to the disk. ViruSafe WEB can scan
programs, ZIP files and Word documents.
- WS_FTP
- The most
widely-used FTP client on the Net. If you have a
Web site, you'll need this program to upload your
pages to your server. Free for home and academic
uses.
- RFtp
- RFtp is a free
GUI-based FTP client for Windows 95 and NT 4.0.
While having the load-time and footprint of an
"applet", it retains the features and
functionality of a full-sized application.
- Eudora
Light - Our
favorite E-mail program. Eudora offers you tons
of features: filtering your mail & organizing
it into folders, multiple signatures, search
functions, nicknames and much more.
- Free
Agent - Free
Agent is an essential newsgroup reader that
features an easy-to-use interface with lots of
icons and pull-down menus. Free Agent provides
multipane viewing, flexible article purging
options, database compacting, carbon copying for
E-mail and article posting, editing of all
fields, and canceling of posts. For full E-mail
support and more advanced features, you can
upgrade to the full-featured commercial version.
For Windows.
- Real
Player - An
essential client, RealPlayer plays RealAudio and
RealVideo content on the Web, all without
download delays. It offers stereo at 28.8,
near-CD quality at higher bitrates, AM-quality at
14.4 -- newscast-quality video at 28.8 and
full-motion at higher bitrates. Free for
individual use.
- CU-See
Me- A free
videoconferencing program (the only one of its
type) that allows you to videoconference with
anyone with a Macintosh or Windows and a
connection to the Internet. By using a reflector,
multiple users can participate in a group CU-See
Me session.
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