From the web page
http://www.techsupportalert.com/best.htm

The 46 Best-ever Freeware Utilities

There are a lot of great freeware programs out there. Many are as good or
even better than their commercial alternatives.
This is my personal selection of the best of the best.  I've used every
single product in this list and found each to be a gem.  Of course other
folks may differ but, hey, this is MY selection ;>)
Last updated June, 2003.
The Best Freeware List
Best Free Anti-Virus Software
I normally recommend the Norton Anti-virus suite but I'm fully aware that
some folks simply can't afford to buy it.  If you fall into this category
then you should check out AVG Antivirus 6.0 Free Edition. This product has
been continuously refined since it was first released in 1991 and now
offers very impressive protection capabilities. Additionally, it's
relatively small, light on resources, has regular automatic updates and
handles email scanning. There is a free and a pro version, the only
difference being that the free version has a few non-critical features
disabled and has no technical support. Even so, it's an impressive package
and a offers the financially challenged a real alternative to the major
anti-virus suites.(5MB)
http://www.grisoft.com
Best Free Browser Accelerator
There are dozens of products that claim to speed up your surfing
but most have little effect. NaviScope is different - it actually works!
Not only does it speed up your surfing it also offers optional ad, pop-up,
cookie and JavaScript blocking, an extensive set of diagnostic tools and
more bells and whistles  than you can imagine. My only beef is that the
tool bar is very
obtrusive so once you set up NaviScope, you should select the option to
turn off the toolbar.  If you need it, you can always bring it up again
through the quick launch icon. (614KB)
http://www.naviscope.com/
Best Free File Manager
Windows Explorer is fine for simple file management activities but when you
have some serious work to do, you need a two pane file manager. I use
Directory Opus which is excellent but costs $59.  Recently I discovered 2X
Explorer.  It offers most of the functionality of Directory Opus and is
totally free. As a bonus, its user interface is very similar to Windows
Explorer, so most users will find this tool easy to learn and use.(392KB)
http://netez.com/2xExplorer/intro.html.
Best Free Anonymous Surfing Service
There are lots of reasons folks have for wanting to surf anonymously,
ranging from simple paranoia to possibly being murdered by a malevolent
foreign government. Whatever the reasons, commercial services that offer
anonymity are doing real well. However one of the best services, JAP, is
totally free and it's level of secrecy is better than many commercial
systems. However expect your surfing to slow down as you'll be relayed
through a chain of servers. You'll also need to change your browser
settings to work through a proxy.
http://anon.inf.tu-dresden.de/index_en.html
Best Free Software Suite
GNUWin II is a free software compilation for Windows. This huge suite
features dozens of programs including free alternatives to many expensive
commercial products.  There is Abi Word as an alternative for MS Word,
OpenOffice for MS Office XP, The Gimp for Adobe Photoshop, Gzip for WinZIP
are dozens more.   Taken collectively this suite provides more than enough
software to completely set up a PC without spending a cent on applications
or utilities.  The suite is available or CD or you download the
CD image and cut your own.
http://gnuwin.epfl.ch/en/index.html
Best Free Notepad Replacement
There are lots of text editors and Notepad replacements. Some of these
aspire to be programming editors while others try to be word
processors.  What I love about EditPad is that, unlike the others, it
concentrates on simply being a better plain text editor and it succeeds
brilliantly.  It has a Notepad like interface combined with tabbed document
windows and the ability to open as many documents as you like with no file
size limitations. I use it every day for tasks as diverse as writing
Support Alert Newsletter to examining my web log files. Some of the latter
can be up to 100MB, yet EditPad handles these huge files with
ease.  (849KB). http://www.editpadlite.com/editpadlite.html
Best Free Hotkey Utility
Hotkeycontrol XP is a free utility that allows you to define your own
hotkeys so that a single key press can launch an application, insert
commonly used text, change your volume, or just about anything
else.  Hotkeycontrol works with all versions of Windows from 98 onwards,
though some features will only work with Win2K or XP. (0.91KB)
http://www.digital-miner.com/hkcontrol.html
Best Free Registry Cleaner
To keep the registries on my PCs in top running order I use Fix-It
utilities and Norton Utilities as well.  Both of these are commercial
products so I was delighted when subscriber Robert McMahon suggested the
freeware product; JV16 Power Tools. This offers a powerful set of registry
maintenance tools, too powerful in fact for inexperienced users. However if
you are technically savvy, go grab this free program now.
http://www.vtoy.fi/jv16/shtml/jv16powertools.shtml
The Best Bookmark Cleaner
Check&Get scans your bookmark file for dead links or for changed content.
When I tried it on my huge favorites file I discovered 17% of my links were
dead. I've now got a much leaner set of favorites and the comfort of
knowing that the links actually work. Check&Get is available on free
license but you need to register.
http://activeurls.com/
Best Free Route Tracer
3D Traceroute  graphically displays  Internet route information. You can
use it for technical tasks such as diagnosing slow connections or for
general purpose snooping like determining the location and owner of a web
site or tracing spammers. (996KB)
http://www.hlembke.de/prod/3dtraceroute/
The Best Free Screen Capture Utility
I've used over half a dozen screen-capture utilities and none of them has
really satisfied. Until now.  Gadwin screen capture does exactly what I
want in the way I want. Further, it avoids the trap of providing lots of
useless and confusing features. It's the little things that count like
making the hot key PrtSc so I don't have to remember it, and automatically
sequentially naming the output files for multiple screen shots. Gadwin will
stay on my PC permanently. (976KB)
http://www.gadwin.com/printscreen/?prnscr
The Best Free Search Bar
Dave's Quick Search Bar is a free utility that gives you the same easy
access to Google searches as Google's own search bar but wait, there's
more.  It also provides access to the excellent Teoma, FAST and other
search engines. Because it resides in your task bar, it's accessible from
any application. Comes with a host of other features such as
dictionary/thesaurus access and even a calculator. If that's not enough for
you, it's totally customizable. One cool product. (380KB)
http://www.dqsd.net/
Best Free Web Site Ripper
Whether you call it a web site explorer or offline browsing facilitator,
this utility is really a web site ripper. It will speedily download
non-password sites in whole or in part to your hard drive. There are many
web rippers but WebReaper is amongst the best and yet it's free. (966kB)
http://www.webreaper.net/
Best Free DLL Cleaner
Over time most PCs become cluttered up with the unwanted remainders of long
deleted programs. DLL Archive is a free utility that will scan your PC for
DLLs that are no longer referenced. You can then archive the unwanted
programs away or delete them entirely. Archived items can easily be
restored to their original location if any problems arise. (227KB)
http://www.analogx.com/contents/download/system/dllarch.htm
Best Free File Cleaner
I've tried quite a few commercial products designed to clean unneeded
temporary files off your hard disk but must say that the free utility
"Empty Temp Folders" ranks with the best. It takes a few minutes to set up
but after that, all you need do is press a button to recover many megabytes
of disk space. (667KB)
http://www.danish-shareware.dk/soft/emptemp
Best Free Resource Meter
This is cute. TinyResMeter is an itsy-bitsy system monitor. Unlike many
other monitors, it doesn't consume a lot of CPU utilization in order to
tell you your CPU utilization. In addition to CPU usage you can optionally
monitor cache, RAM, page file and swap file usage, running processes and
threads, disk space utilization and a number of other parameters as well.
Also built-in, is a screen grabber that saves the current screen to disk
when you press PrintScreen. How they fit all this into 96KB beats me.
http://pesoft.fr.st/
Best Free Spam Filter for the Average User
Mailwasher is for most folk, the easiest way of dealing with Spam.  It's a
free email preview utility that allows you to check your email on your mail
server before you download it to your PC. The advantage of this approach is
that you can kill unwanted messages including spam, viruses and large
attachments before they get anywhere near your computer. But Mailwasher
does more. It automatically flags for you any messages containing viruses
and possible spam which makes for quick and easy identification. It also
will send a message back to the spam mail sender saying that their message
could not be delivered. Hopefully this will encourage some spammers to take
your name off their mailing list. MailWasher works with any POP email
account and any email client and will also check your Hotmail accounts.   (
1.35MB)
  http://www.mailwasher.net
Best Free Spam Filter for Experienced Users
When it comes to effectiveness, POPFile beats the pants off every other
spam filter I've tried. But this effectiveness takes a little time to
develop. POPFile is a statistical filter so it has to be trained to
recognize your spam from your normal mail.  It takes a week or so before it
starts becoming accurate and best results may take a month or
more.  POPFile works as a proxy mail server so that means that it can be
used with any POP email client. Setup is reasonably straightforward for
experienced users but beginners should stick with Mailwasher.
http://popfile.sourceforge.net/old_index.html
Best Free PopUp Stopper
The Proxomitron is not like your average popup stopper. It operates by
filtering and transforming all your Web pages on the fly. As a result you
can not only stop pop-ups but pop-unders, ads, flash animations, status bar
scrollers and just about anything else. Besides, next time you are asked
what pop-up stopper you use, you can answer; "why, I use The Proxomitron"
and how cool is that.
http://home.arcor.de/six/
Best Free Download Accelerator
Star Downloader 1.32 is not only free of charge, it's free of ads, spyware
and other undesirable extras packed into most free  download accelerators.
On top of that, it is blindingly fast and  has a raft of features including
automatic mirror site detection, automatic resumption of failed downloads,
download  scheduling, anti-virus integration and more. If you are not yet
using a download accelerator, go get this product and start counting the
time you save. The faster your internet connection, the more you will gain.
Users with slow modem connections will, unfortunately, benefit least. (1.3MB)
http://www.stardownloader.com
Best Free Sticky Notes Utility
Some people hate these programs others swear they can't work effectively
without them. I used to be in the first category but with so many things on
my plate these days, I'm slowly being converted.  The function that I find
really useful is the reminder that pops up at a designated time and date.
Simple things like "put up the latest issue on the web site." Turbonote
is a freeware utility that provides me with just about every function I
need. The same company sells an enhanced version but the free version
(v3.9) will suit most folks, me included.
http://www.turbonote.com
Best Free Secure Erase Utility
Eraser is a free, GNU license utility that will securely erase files,
folders or even whole disks from any Windows or DOS PC. Eraser overwrites
data area with selectable random data patterns and also wipes data in the
paging file, Internet cache, temporary files, Internet cookies, unused disk
space and a number of other places where data can secretly lurk.  It
handles FAT16, FAT32 and NTFS partitions as well.  Erasing files with high
security will always be a difficult and time consuming task and can never
offer absolute 100% safety. However Eraser makes the task about as easy as
it be, with a security level beyond most conceivable requirements. An
impressive package. (2.6MB)
http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/
Best Free Outlook Express Backup
This free utility allows you to do a full or selective backup of OE's
critical files including mail folders, newsgroups, address book and
identity settings. Simple, effective ... neat.  (2.1MB)
http://www.oehelp.com/OEBackup/Default.aspx
Best Free Process Viewer
PrcView displays detailed information about all running Windows processes
including memory used, threads and DLL usage. For each process and DLL,
full path and version information is also displayed. Individual processes
can be killed or their priorities changed. It even allows you to
automatically run a script to check if a process is running and kill it.
All this is crammed into a tiny 100KB package.  Works for all versions of
Windows.
http://www.teamcti.com/pview/prcview.htm
Best Free Inventory Tool
AIDA32 is arguably the best system inventorying tools I've used regardless
of price.  It will document just about every aspect of your hardware and
software configuration. Throw in the fact that it checks out networks,
gives memory benchmarks and that it is totally free, and you end up with a
product that should be in everyone's toolkit. Download from the link below
but remember to download the documentation as well. Corporate users need to
register - there is no charge.
http://www.aida32.hu/aida-features.php?bit=32
Best Free Adware/Spyware Remover  Spybot Search and Destroy quickly hunt's
down all those odious applications that are secretly bundled in with many
"advertiser-supported" utilities. It also provides active protection
against browser hijackers, auto-dialers and other surreptitiously
downloaded scumware products.  Some folks don't care about revealing their
surfing and consumption behavior to advertisers. Personally I am paranoid
which is why I love S&D and run it regularly.  ( 2.5MB)
http://spybot.safer-networking.de/
Best Free Search and Replace Utility
I've been a long time user of Funduc Software's excellent Search and
Replace utility, now in version 4. However, I have to admit that after
using HandyFile's free Find and Replace program, my loyalties are torn.
Granted, it does pretty much the same thing, but it's faster as changes are
made in memory rather than by writing to disk. This feature also provides a
degree of safety. If you need to do text file replacements over multiple
files, I suggest you give this tiny free utility a spin.(361KB)
http://www.silveragesoftware.com/handytools.html
Best Free Outliner
I'm not a great fan of outliners - my brain doesn't work that way. Some
folks however, swear by them and if that includes you, then you should
check out Keynote, an Open Source freeware program that has a dedicated
band of followers.  Its major design attribute is its ease of use. Words
like "natural" and "seamless" come close to the mark but really don't
capture the essence of what is really a great design. What do you do with
it? Well to quote the web site "KeyNote is used by screenwriters to draft
screenplays, by medical doctors to keep patient databases, by developers to
store source code snippets - and to everyone it serves as a place to put
all the random pieces of information that have no particular structure of
relationship to other data, and do not fit easily in task-specific
applications such as word-processors, databases or spreadsheets."  (1.7MB)
http://www.tranglos.com/free/index.html
Best Free Rename Utility
Lupas Rename 2000 is a small Windows utility that globally renames all the
files in a directory and its subdirectories. It can convert names to
upper/lower case, change the case of the first letter, add text, left crop,
right crop and just about anything else you can think of. And unlike DOS
based utilities, it will work on hidden files as well. Add in a nice GUI
interface, an undo feature, full preview of changes and the fact that it's
free and you have a utility that should be in every toolkit.
http://www.geocities.com/lupas2000/zips/lupasrename.zip
Best Free Windows Driver Backup
WinDriversBackup is a nifty free utility that identifies all your Windows
driver files and saves them to a nominated location. This utility is great
for simplifying operating system reinstalls,  particularly for PCs whose
exact hardware configuration is not fully known or documented. Works across
a network as well. Recommended.
http://www.jermar.com/wdrvbck.htm
Best Free Digital Image Utility
Irfanview is a free multimedia viewer and editor that supports a huge range
of file formats. Each new version seems to add more capabilities but to me,
its most powerful features are its speed and its batch processing
capability.  If you want to resize sets of digital images for the web or
for transmission by email, Irfanview is the best free solution
available.  It's also a mighty fine image viewer as well. I just can't
believe something this good is free.
http://www.irfanview.com/
Best Free File Comparison Utility
WinMerge is a free Windows utility that compares two files and identifies
the differences. The differences can then be merged from one file into the
other. This is the sort of product that is ideal when you have several
different versions of a file and are not sure of how they differ. The
product is geared to text files so it won't be much use to you with Word
Processing or other complex formatted documents  But for text reports or
computer programs, WinMerge is ideal. (514KB)
http://winmerge.sourceforge.net/
Best Free Email Accessory
  As well as my normal POP email account, I have multiple Yahoo webmail
accounts. Managing the latter used to be easy until Yahoo started charging
to forward webmail to my POP account.  To overcome the problem, I now use a
nifty free product called YahooPOPS!  that allows you to collect your Yahoo
webmail from within your POP email client such as Outlook or Eudora. I use
Outlook and must say YahooPOPS! works seamlessly from within the
program.  I just press "Send/Receive" and collect all my email at the one
time. One of those rare  programs where you offer a silent "thanks" to the
developer every time you use it.   ( 3.7MB)
http://yahoopops.sourceforge.net/
Best Free Outlook Accessory
I hate opening HTML email. Despite multiple layers of protection I just
know that one day some cunning new exploit is going to get me.  That's why
I'm so enthusiastic about PocketKnife Peek, a small free Outlook add-in
that allows you to preview your HTML email as text.
http://www.xintercept.com/pkpeek.htm
BEST OF THE REST
These specialist free utilities don't fit into any particular product
category but are great products that fill a real need:
Restore Missing Toolbars
Inexperienced PC users just always seem to be losing their Windows and
Internet Explorer toolbars. I've never quite worked out exactly how they do
it but they sure manage it somehow. Luckily, this free utility makes
recovery a snack.
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/ToolbarRepair.Exe
Locate Required DLLs
This free utility can be a lifesaver. It identifies all the DLL  and
OCX  support files required to operate any Windows 32 bit executable file.
http://linos-software.com:23/Depend.html
Free NFO Viewer
Many freeware files are distributed with descriptive NFO  and DIZ files as
part of the distribution package. These are just plain text files so you
can view them with Notepad or other text editor but often the formatting is
lost.  Try  this tiny little viewer that's built for the job. It's free and
once associated with the NFO and DIZ file types, works seamlessly, a true
"install and forget" product.
http://www.damn.to/software/nfoviewer.html
Lock Down Your Icons
Sick of Windows moving your icons around on the desktop? Lock them down
with this nifty free utility. (400KB)
http://www.sillysot.com/
Monitor Your User's Backup Needs
BackupWatcher is a free tool that allows LAN administrators to measure the
backup requirements of network users.  It does this by monitoring the file
churn rate on each PC since last backup. Full reporting facilities are
provided that allow problem areas to be easily identified. Quite a neat way
of reducing unnecessary backups and ensuring necessary ones are actually
carried out. (2.57MB)
http://bw.rippletech.com/
Free Utility Kills Instant Messaging Viruses
If you use IRC or instant messaging then you should check out SOFTWIN, a
company that provides a number of totally free anti-virus utilities than
scan all data transfers associated with IM products.  All the utilities
make use of the virus signature databases from the BitDefender Professional
anti-virus product so signature file updating is simple. There are versions
for MSN Messenger, NetMeeting, ICQ, mIRC, and Yahoo! Messenger.
http://www.bitdefender.com/html/instant_messaging.php
Photoshop Replacement for Nix
Oriens Enhancer is a graphics processing program similar in function to
Photoshop and Paintshop. The big difference is that it's free, the others
cost big bucks.  But don't think free means limited. On the contrary this
product can read more than 40 file formats, has filters, textures and color
effects to burn and can even handle layers. If that's not enough for you,
let me say that on my PC it was both fast and stable. I'm giving this one
Gizmo's JCBTIF certification. (Just Can't Believe This Is Free) (4.05MB)
http://www.oriens-solution.com/enhancer.asp
Free Utility Stops Browser Hijacking
There's a browser hijacking plague at the moment. All it takes is a visit
to a pushy web site or a loaded shareware install and next minute your
Internet Explorer homepage has been changed, your default search setting
altered or phantom bookmarks added to your favorites. This free monitor
will let you know when something's trying to change your settings and pass
control back to you. (394KB)
http://www.wilderssecurity.com/bhblaster.html
Batch Process Digital Images
ThumbNail Refinery LE is a free utility that will quickly process and
resize your digital images so you can send them by email or mount them as
thumbnails in a gallery. It can write all popular formats including JPG and
PCX and allows control over a variety of parameters including rotation,
size, color depth, sharpness, brightness and contrast. It's fast, it's
stable, and it's free.  (1.55MB)  Editor's note: Looks like this is now
shareware
http://download.com.com/3000-2068-8516959.html
Hides Personal Files from the Boss
Camouflage is a free utility that will hide your personal or confidential
files within another file. The neat thing is that the container file looks
and works like a normal file of that format. So, by way of example, you
could embed a secret message in a Word file which could be opened by anyone
and appear to be just a normal Word file. The intended recipient could use
their
copy of Camouflage to open the file, enter the password and extract the
embedded information. This free program is not intended to provide military
strength protection but rather a convenient way to sneak information past
unnecessarily prying
eyes. (2.65MB)
http://arxspace.com/Camouflage/
Outlook Add-in Gives Email Account Flexibility
RealAccount is a freeware plug-in for MS Outlook 2002 that allows you to
designate a default email account and signature for any Outlook Folder. The
program is a late beta but has proved totally stable on my Windows XP Pro
PC. Yet another free utility that provides functionality that should have
been included in the original product. (338K)
http://www.realpopup.it/realaccount/
Share Bookmarks between Browsers
BookMarkBridge is a free open source utility that allows you to share and
synchronize your bookmarks between several browsers. I've got 3 browsers
installed at the moment: IE 6, Opera 7 and Netscape 4.7.  BookMarkBridge
correctly identified and synchronized the first two but it couldn't cope
with the old version of Netscape.(2.69MB)
http://bookmarkbridge.sourceforge.net/
The CD "read only" Problem Solved
Anyone who has restored data from a CD onto their hard drive has faced the
problem that all the restored files are marked as "read only" and cannot be
modified. Changing these settings in Windows is a real pain particularly if
a large number of files is involved. With this free utility you can change
the file settings for dozens of files or even whole folders with a single
click. Actually while the product is free of charge, the developer requests
your feedback. None-the-less, ReadOnly should be on every PC. (315KB)
http://www.sente.co.uk/downloads.htm (towards bottom of page)
Gizmo, June 2003.

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