OT: What freeware do you use?

[sterdeus]

My tastes have changed over the years and I've been paying for more software. But there's still a few areas where freeware does a better job over paid for my needs.

FTP - Filezilla
Browser - Chrome
Media player - VLC
HTPC media player - Plex
Archive - 7-Zip
Ebook management - calibre
Audio editing - Audacity
Blu Ray remastering - BD Rebuilder
CD/DVD burning - ImgBurn

[kijinbear]

Some people like to distinguish "freeware" (closed source, but free as in free beer) from "free software" (open source, so free as in free speech), but since most people don't seem to care, here you go...

On my Ubuntu box, nearly everything is free software.

On my Windows box, I use: (Asterisk means open-source, I may have left out a few)

- Web browsers: *Firefox, Chrome, Opera
- Email: *Thunderbird
- File management: *7-Zip, *FreeFileSync, TeraCopy, *FileZilla
- Text editor: *Notepad++
- Office: *LibreOffice (I also have MS Office that I paid for, but LibreOffice is better at some tasks)
- E-books: *Calibre
- Burning CDs and DVDs: CDBurnerXP, imgBurn
- Virtual CD drives to mount ISO files: VirtualCloneDrive
- Making PDF files: Bullzip PDF Printer (best one I found so far, much better output than PDFCreator)
- Multimedia: The KMPlayer (if you like VLC, try this too)
- Downloading: uTorrent
- Maintenance and Cleanup: Piriform CCleaner (highly recommended, don't trust any other program that claims to clean up your registry)
- Antivirus: Microsoft Security Essentials (it's even included by default if you use Windows 8, and remains one of the best free antiviruses for Windows 7 and XP as well), Malwarebytes Anti-Malware (free version doesn't do real-time protection, but it's OK for occasional scans)
- Other: *VirtualBox (run a computer inside a computer), TeamViewer (access other computers), TrueCrypt (full-disk encryption), Startup Delayer (makes Windows startup faster, despite the name)

I also use Ninite to install free programs whenever possible. It automatically downloads the latest versions, automatically says "No" to any installer that tries to put useless toolbars on your PC, and does it much faster than you could ever manage manually. Extremely highly recommended.

[dantheman]

After so many years of browser testing, Firefox is still my no.1 browser

Although i do use EssentialPIM Desktop Pro and Cintanotes paid versions, i would not hesitate to recommend their free versions as either PIM or Evernote replacements.

BTW, what are the features that LibreOffice has that outperform MS Word?

[FredOnline]

I use the following regularly every week, sometimes every day:

Coffee Cup Free HTML Editor
Foxit PDF Reader
Gmail Notifier Pro
IrfanView
KeePass
MailStore Home
Nova PDF Lite Desktop 7
Paint.NET
uTorrent
VLC Media Player

[Adrian Bell]

Avast
Firefox
FireFTP
fre:ac
FreeOCR
Mp3tag
Opera (V12.14)
PhotoFiltre
ShisenSho
SpywareBlaster
Thunderbird
VLC Media Player

[kijinbear]

Originally Posted by dantheman

BTW, what are the features that LibreOffice has that outperform MS Word?

For me, the difference is most noticeable when importing multilingual and unconventionally formatted CSV files into LibreOffice Calc. I can customize the import behavior to match the file exactly. Excel sucks at CSV handling.

LibreOffice Writer, on the other hand, remains little more than a pathetic attempt at recreating Word 2003. It can't even get something as basic as line spacing right when importing Word documents.

So I use MS Word for word processing and LibreOffice Calc for spreadsheets.

[robert@fm]

Am I correct in thinking that Libre Office is the software which began life as Star Office, then became Open Office because the developers decided to use "Star Office" as the name of the paid version?

[somdcomputerguy]

According to this entry in wikipedia, LibreOffice forked from OpenOffice.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libreoffice

[Bamb0]

Quite alot actually I use........

Regseeker
Process Explorer
Disk Cleaner

Those are just 3 i love!!!

[robert@fm]

There are a few free programs I use on Android, my favourites are:

WPS Office (aka Kingsoft Office) — good MS Office clone


DroidEdit (free code editor) (André Restivo Productivity) — handy text editor with syntax highlighting, handy for turning your phone/tablet into a PDA

(Note that on KitKat, the above two are only really useful if the infuriating "feature" whereby writing to the external SD card is blocked, is disabled, as it is on my phone (by default) and my tablet (by jailbreaking); Google for some reason decided that being able to do useful work on Android is somehow a "security risk". Fortunately, negative feedback has shown them that this was a dumb idea, and this flaw has been removed from Lollipop.)


Sunrise Sunset (Alok Mandavgane) — what it says, plus moon/planet information


Random Mahjong (Paul Burkey) — apart from the usual naming error (it's not mahjong, it's Shanghai), quite a good little puzzle game, jelpful for whiling away a few minutes

NeoReader — multi-format 1D/2D (including QR codes) barcode reader

[fuffy]

- Web browsers: Chrome and Opera
- Email: Yahoo
- Text editor: *Notepad++
- Video and Audio: Free Video Converting Software: Handbrake
- Drawing: SAI + PS
- Multimedia: The VLC

[David]

Welcome to the forums fuffy

[Bamb0]

Boy Dave.. I love that purple title you have now

[David]

Thanks: I was actually hoping someone would beat me to it, but did not want to stop posting