This page has been completely revised on September 17, 2004. It includes contributions from several Board members. However it is our hope that this is only a start and that this will become a live document. For this to happen, we will need contributions from other members of GBSCG as well. If you have a favorite freeware program not listed here, please share it with your fellow members by sending me a short description together with the URL from which it can be downloaded. I will add it to this page. Happy Downloading!

Freeware Sites

There are many, many sites that specialize in freeware. In my opinion, the best one is Priceless Ware. It is a compilation of the best freeware in each category as voted by members of the newsgroup alt.comp.freeware.
Another excellent site, although not exclusively freeware, is Major Geeks.
Finally, there's that old standby Nonags.

I've just become aware of a fantastic site called The 46 Best-ever Freeware Utilities. Highly recommended. The guy who wrote it issues a monthly newsletter which I find invaluable. Subscribe at http://www.techsupportalert.com/subscribers_area.htm

Browser

Most people use Internet Explorer as their browser. But just for that reason, IE is the subject of most hacker attacks. Another browser that's gotten a lot of press lately is Firefox. I've been using it for the last month and I like it better than IE. It's faster and it has tabs, which means you can rapidly go back and forth among several websites. Also it's open source, which means that lots of people can contribute customizing "extensions". To date there are some 150 extensions available. If you like to tinker, you'll love Firefox.

Virus Protection

One of the best antivirus programs is AVG Anti-Virus.. It's completely free and won't slow down your system the way some commercial anti-virus programs do. It gets updated with new virus signatures every couple of days.

Spyware Protection

Unfortunately spyware is becoming more and more ubiquitous. It won't actually damage your computer but it "phones home" and makes you the target of unwanted e-mail. Two excellent anti-spyware programs are Ad-Aware and Spybot Search and Destroy. They're both very good but each occasionally misses a spyware file. It's best to use both of them.

Spyblaster claims it prevents spyware from being installed in the first place. Not a bad program to have but not a substitute for the other two.

A program that monitors changes to your computer in real time is WinPatrol. I've just installed it but it looks very useful and is simple to use.

Firewall

No computer should ever log unto the Internet without a working firewall that will block unauthorized connections both into and out of the computer. An excellent free one is Sygate Personal Firewall.

Uncompressing

All files are downloaded in a compressed format. If they have a .exe extension, they are self-extracting and just need to be double clicked. Others will have a .zip or sometimes a .rar extension and require an extracting program. There are many free programs that will do this. One that is recommended by Priceless Ware is Extract Now.

Image Viewing

Without a doubt,, the best free image viewer is Irfanview. It gets better every year and is still completely free. Great for resizing pictures, converting from one format to another and for batch processing.

Real Time Audio and Video

Very often audio and video that you can listen to and watch while it is downloading, comes in "real" format. Unfortunately the free version of the Real Player is loaded with ads and is also spyware. An excellent alternative is Jet Audio. No ads, no spyware and free.
Another well regarded program for playing streaming video including MPEG-4, as well as viewing DVD's, is VLC Media Player

Text Editor

There are many free text editors, most of them better than Notepad. I like Metapad, but that's just me.

Password Management

Many web sites, particularly financially sensitive ones, require the use of a password. How to manage and remember all these passwords in a secure manner becomes a real challenge. Any Password solves this problem by storing the information in an encrcypted file. All you need to remember is the password for that file.

People Search

Little known, but very powerful, Argali White and Yellow combines the results from some twenty-three search engines to find addresses, phone numbers and e-mail addresses. Comes in very handy.

System Information

Occasionally even the best maintained computer catches the flu. When that happens it helps to know what exactly is happening in every component of the PC. Aida32 is an excellent system information, diagnostics and benchmarking program.

We have lots more, but this should do for a start. Let me have some feedback if you found this list useful. And by all means, send me your own favorite programs and we'll add them to the list.

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