Free Windows Apps Hall of Fame
From time to time, I’ll be adding mini reviews of what I consider to be the best (read: most useful) free Windows applications of all time. Here’s a starter list below.
Got a recommendation? Join the small but highly valued group of go-getters who have actually posted a response to this blog!
System Tools
UltraVNC - Remote PC control software par excellence. Simple to use and configure, low overhead, and a total life-saver for people like me who spend half their time servicing the computers of their friends and family.
AVG - Who could possibly need (or want) the bloated monstrosities of Norton or McAfee living inside your machine when you can have a silent and stealthy virus assassin like AVG instead?
Xport - Serial COM port splitter, especially helpful for situations where USB GPS devices in CarPC installs have trouble resuming properly from hibernation. Can also help with video lockups during resume.
Poweroff - need to remotely shut down, hibernate, or wake up another computer on your network? Look no further.
Auto Hotkey - “AutoHotkey is an open source scripting language for Windows that can automate and customize almost any action on your PC.”
NirCmd - Extremely handy command-line tool for streamlining and simplifying all those pesky multi-step actions like hiding all of your windows, muting volume, and so much more.
Regcleaner - It takes almost no time at all for the Windows registry to get bogged down with obsolete entries. This free tool will help keep your system running at full speed.
TweakUI - part of the PowerTools pack for Windows, this app gives you access to system settings that are not exposed in the Windows XP default user interface, including mouse settings, Explorer settings, taskbar settings, and more. One setting in particular - keep windows from stealing focus — is very helpful in configuring a frontend.
Media
Exact Audio Copy - One of the most venerable and well-respected cd rippers ever coded. When accuracy is a must and ever bit counts.
Media Player Classic (Home Cinema) - one of the best free video players out there just got even better, with more secondary screen control for those of you who (like me) use a projector or flatscreen TV in addition to a standard monitor with your HTPCs.
Video Lan Client (VLC) -cross-platform, open-source multimedia framework, player, and server. When all other video player apps fail to play a given file, usually VLC can come through.
ffdshow - not for the faint of heart, this extremely powerful free app (to quote Wikipedia) “is a media decoder and encoder mainly used for the fast and high-quality decoding of video in the MPEG-4 ASP (e.g. encoded with DivX, Xvid or FFmpeg MPEG-4) and AVC (H.264) formats, but supporting numerous other video and audio formats as well. It is free software released under the GPL license, runs on Windows and is implemented as a DirectShow and VFW decoding filter.”
Winamp - “It really whips the llama’s ass!” Forget the latest greatest incarnation and head over to oldversion.com to get a leaner ancestor of this venerable and versatile digital music player (2.95 is a personal favorite). Then grab you some Milkdrop (use 1.04 or earlier with older winamps) and slurp the trippy visuals, brah.
Foobar2000 - The unexciting but very intuitive default interface of this excellent music player belies all the power under the hood. Essentially, get foobar’ed if you want none of the frills and all of the functionality (and then some) of Winamp. Also converts file types and even burns CDs with ease.
Xlobby - The latest official version of this powerful and yogi-flexible media frontend is no longer free (or even available to the consumer market, per se), but the old free version is still capable of running circles around frontends that cost more than your computer.
Graphics and Word Processing
Open Office - Freeing the world from Word (and Powerpoint, Excel, etc), one computer at a time. Works cross-platform, available in dozens of languages, it will even save your files in a Word format if you have clients or colleagues that absolutely must have their docs as .docs.
Gimp - the only free alternative to Photoshop that even comes close to offering a similar feature set.
Wordweb - this free dictionary and thesaurus has been a trusted tool of mine for years.
This entry was posted on Friday, September 18th, 2009 at 10:07 am and is filed under Handy Little Apps. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.
