Comments on: The 10 free programs I can’t live without

By: Ranger Six

Ranger Six — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 16:14:03 +0000

I have a few items of my own to add to the list:

COMODO Internet Security – Does just about everything that subscription-based software does, plus it’s A) free [at least for the personal edition], B) not a memory hog, and C) extremely resistant to malware-initiated shutdown.

Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware – a great backstop program for dealing with crapware that might slip past your front-line defenses.

By: David Gunn

David Gunn — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 06:05:46 +0000

Netbeans for your development needs.

By: Rhidian

Rhidian — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 16:56:08 +0000

Firefox? I’ve gone off it a bit, IE 8 seems fine on W7 (and I’m converted to OPera since I saw Opera Mobile 10 for Symbian, which is a brilliant browser.) Agree with negativity about Adobe Reader though; it reminds me a bit of Word since Word 6 (when word was just a good word processor). AR and Word are now trying to do too much; all I want to do normally is read PDFs, if I wanted more plugins I’d go get them…

By: Bass-Playing Chemist

Bass-Playing Chemist — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 13:53:40 +0000

I can heartily recommend Unison as a backup/synchronisation tool. It is a linux app that has been ported to windows. You’ll need to install GTK on windows or point your union installation to GTK to get the GUI working but that’s easy. It can synchronise two collections of files both ways either via a third collection on an external HD or directly by SSH.

I also wouldn’t be without Firefox, Thunderbird (for mail and RSS, with Sunbird calendar/task plugin installed) and OpenOffice (Novell Edition). I’ve tried the iPlayer but much prefer (says quietly) iplayer-dl. Skype comes in handy, too.

By: PeteV

PeteV — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 13:39:19 +0000

Avast online scanner is pretty good too, I was advised by the Spybot team to get it after they helped me get rid of a nasty dose of Virtumonde.

By: David Bradbury

David Bradbury — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 11:37:07 +0000

Our list of free essentials also includes “dban – boot and nuke” for when your PC finally dies, “Display Fusion” for our dual screen users, “PDFsam” (split and merge) and “PDFcreator” for ALL our creative PDF work (we have a paid for copy of Devlib Decrypt PDF for those tricky encrypted ones that arrive occasionally) and “UltraVNC”. We give users a choice of IE, Firefox or Opera

By: MadaboutDana

MadaboutDana — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 10:23:47 +0000

Hm, some interesting choices. Could do with categorisation, though, ‘cos this “10 fave apps” thing is a bit useless, really. On the Info Management front, don’t forget EssentialPIM and the amazing Xmind; on the File Management front there are FreeCommander and WinSCP (the latter also one of the best FTP clients around) – I’d also mention Recuva, by the lovely people who do CCleaner; on the Multimedia front there’s FastStone Image Viewer (better than Picasa, IMHO); in the Utilities bag we find NotePad++, Snipping Tool and Screenshot Captor, not to mention the amusing Wonderwebware Screen Ruler. Oh, and Launch Menu, which turns the Windows Quick Launch menu into a thing of use and beauty; on the Web tools front there’s the amazing – utterly amazing – DFM2HTML, one of the best web editors anywhere, ever. Life wouldn’t be complete without some Writing Tools, including QuotePad, TreeSheets and SuperNoteCard. Oh, and Linux’s TomBoy notes, which is available for Windows, too. Let’s not forget Collaboration Tools, including the wonderful Collanos WorkPlace, not to mention Yuuguu (fantastic tool that gives you remote desktop access through your browser, and integrates with Skype); then there’s the E-mail Client side, where we find the inspired EverDesk Optima, which exists in a Lite version (treats files and e-mails as identical: once you’ve used it, you’ll regard anything else as old-fashioned). There’s so much wonderful free groupware/wiki software around it’s silly, but my favourites are MindTouch (reliable, solid, constantly being upgraded), Foswiki (bit complex, but fast improving), Alfresco (flawed but powerful) and Cyn.in (built on Zope and showing signs of being best of all). Sorry, did you say something about “10″…?

By: Andy Gegg

Andy Gegg — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 17:55:30 +0000

MalwareBytes anti malware (which has seriously saved my bacon before now)

By: Mike Baldwin

Mike Baldwin — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 10:24:52 +0000

Just had a thought.Why does’nt PCPro start a list of the best free software out there for each catagory,and ‘A’ list the best.

By: Mike Baldwin

Mike Baldwin — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 10:21:26 +0000

One thing not mentioned above to all of you photographers out there.Try Raw Therapee.It’s free,Its a raw converter and basic image editing.and its superb.Oh of course and the old perenial.Open office.