What free utilities do you use?

Like many people, I enjoy using free things. It's even better when they work well. The following are all freeware and very handy (for me):

-Bible Database: The coolest part is its "Multibible," which lets you read through any of dozens of Bible versions in many languages.
-Bink's RAD Video Tools: Fast, easy video editing/conversion software.
-Celestia: A 3D interactive model of the known galaxy.
-CoolMon: Overlays stats like memory/CPU usage, free HDD space, DL/UL speed, and other info onscreen.
-DefilerPak: An easy codec pack that'll make more videos playable.
-FlaskMPEG: Powerful, effective video editing/conversion software.
-GraphCalc: A fast, easy, and powerful graphing calculator.
-ID3-TagIT 3: Batch modify your mp3 files' ID3 tags.
-Irfanview: A great photo viewer.
-Karafun: Create and view karaoke on your computer.
-Microsoft GIF Animator: Make a little .gif animation. This is what I used to make my current avatar.
-Open Office: The free alternative to MS Office.
-Opera: A free alternative to Internet Explorer.
-Rename Master: Batch rename files.
-Spybot Search & Destroy: Malware scanner.
-Stellarium: Awesome virtual planetarium.
-StrokeIt: Mouse gestures! I use it constantly.
-Undelete Plus: Not much experience, but it supposedly recovers files pretty well.
-VirtualDub: Powerful video editing software.
-Virtual Moon Atlas: A virtual atlas, of, well, the moon. It could come in handy if you wanted to impress some nerds: "Yeah, the moon is full enough tonight to see all the way from Grimaldi Crater to Mare Smythii."
-Winamp: A handy little music player that can handle lots and lots of formats. You can also do the usual playlists and equalization and such.

Well, what do you folks use?

Password Safe for encrypted storage of many usernames and passwords
Internet Explorer Privacy Keeper to clean up cookies and history, also works with Firefox
Powerbullet Presenter to create Flash slideshows from a collection of pictures
TrueCrypt to encrypt files and folders
PDF Creator to "print" from any application to a pdf file
AVG Antivirus and Antispyware self explanatory
in addition to several you listed.

Hello :wave:

These are some free Windows/DOS programs I keep with me in my USB stick all the time (in addition to some you guys listed):
Photorec - File Recovery
Testdisk - Partition Recovery
Ad-Aware 2007 - Anti-malware software
Avira AntiVir - Great free antivirus
HDAT2 - Hard Disk diagnostics and repair utility
NTPasswd - Offline NT Password & Registry Editor (works w/ XP and Vista too)
PortableApps Suite - Many utilities to be run directly from USB

Other than that, a small customized Linux and its own programs.

will these work on vista? tia.

I know of and use some of the ones above. Some of you are going to love these:

1. Convert Convert is a free and easy to use unit conversion program that will convert the most popular units of distance, temperature, volume, time, speed, mass, power, density, pressure, energy and many others, including the ability to create custom conversions!

2. Locate32Locate32 is software which can be used to find files from your harddrives and other locations. It works like updatedb and locate commands in Unix based systems. In other words, it uses databases to store information about directory structures and uses these databases in searches. The use of these databases provides very fast searching speed. The software includes a dialog based application as well as console programs which can be used to both update and access databases. Supported operation systems are Windows 98/ME/NT4/2000/XP/Vista.

I had used 90% of the utilities mentioned in this thread when I was using Windows. Then I realized that if I liked free software ON Windows, why not try free software to REPLACE Windows.

I have now been using Ubuntu Linux for about 6 months, and I have to say that booting into Windows occasionally (to install software to my Smartphone) seems like a drag in comparison... literally - Windows is much much slower and less responsive.

So to answer the question "what free utilities do you use?"
-> everything I use is free.

I am a UNIX geek, so I use Linux for most things.

Common cross platform freeware:
GIMP image editor.
AVG antivirus.
GYGWIN; Unix utilities on WIndows
OpenOffice Suite.

Then there are all the web apps:

Google maps (on linux, win and palm)
Google in general

Many, many more.

Daniel

Open Office is terrific for creating PDF files from documents. It does a very nice job.

I also use SamSpade and WSPingPro for network troubleshooting.

If you like Convert, you should try GraphCalc. It can do the mentioned conversions as well as some others, and it can also graph in 2D (Euclidean, polar, parametric) and 3D (Euclidean and polar).

My dad also uses Cygwin. Is that the easiest way to be able to use grep in XP? I looked for a free utility to just add that function to my computer, but all the "grep for Windows" software I could find was trialware.

How could I have forgotten: free utilities NOT to use!
-Yahoo! Desktop, a.k.a. X1 Desktop Search. It works okay, but every week or two, it went crazy and took all my unused RAM (about 3-400MB) until I killed the process. I quickly uninstalled it.
-I'm sure there are others. Please share those as well! :laughing:

What makes Convert nice is that it doesn't need to be installed, and can just run directly from the executable, even off a flash drive or, heaven forbid, a floppy!! Plus, such it is so simple of a file, many Linux distros have no trouble using it also.

AVG Free Virus scanner
Magicdisc virtual cd/dvd drive
Microsoft Powertoys picture resizer
Microsoft Powertoys Tweak UI
Microsoft Powertoys Webcam timershot

And a lot more I cant remember right now

The only one I can think of right off the bat is the IrFanView graphics viewer.

It can crop and resize images, and is what I use on a virtually daily basis for photographs, spectrographic charts, battery discharge analyses, and beam cross-sectional analyses that get published on my website.

I have Photoshop at my disposal, but very rarely use it for any graphics that appear on my website.
The only ones I can think of right at the moment are most of the icons like , , , and among others.

tweak UI and pic resizer like maycooper
google earth
zoomplayer
among others

nice thread, thanks!

CCleaner for deleting temp files, tracking cookies, and other files from your hard drive. This can also be scheduled to activate periodically to keep your PC clean of "crap".

Process Explorer which replaces Task Manager for more details of the processes running on your Windows XP PC.

Great thread. All the free utilities I use are listed on one or more of the above posts. One alternative to a pdf writer is CutePDF here :www.cutepdf.com/Products/CutePDF/writer.asp

LOL great name for a program in first post...

stroke it.

I'm another Linux geek, I'm running Ubuntu Linux and its free along with the 1000's of programs written for lnix. It's fast, looks great and does the job. A little reading can be required though to get it set up and going but its worth it! For those tech savvy types give it a go!:thumbsup:

Just remembered another one - Startup Control Panel from Mike Lin. An easy way to get better control of the programs that try to startup automatically at boot. Good stuff! It saves many Registry Editing headaches.

CuteFTP, I prefer it over using FTP via MS IE.

PhotonWrangler said:

Just remembered another one - Startup Control Panel from Mike Lin. An easy way to get better control of the programs that try to startup automatically at boot. Good stuff! It saves many Registry Editing headaches.

Click to expand...

Try
Start > Run > "msconfig"