Are you someone who prefers a supercharged Explorer interface? If so, check out Total Commander , which has been around for decades and works with Windows If you think you might have bad memory installed in your computer, you can check for bad memory using memtest Want to record your screen and live stream it too?
OBS Studio is a free app that does just that. TinyTake is another decent one, though the free version is limited. Darktable is an open-source photography workflow application. Speaking of Adobe, are there any good Adobe Illustrator alternatives? One good one for working with vector graphics is Inkscape.
Another good one is Vectr. Are you someone who needs to write something, but gets distracted easily? Check out FocusWriter and write without distractions. One of the worst things that can happen to your computer is for it to become infected with Spyware. HijackThis is an awesome program that you can use to find and remove spyware.
Another good option is AdwCleaner. One good option is Windows Defender Offline. It also has a portable version you can run off your USB stick. Are you a true nerd and still use IRC? Ever run into the problem where you are trying to delete a file in Windows and it says that the file is in use and cannot be deleted?
You can use Unlocker to delete any file that is locked by a process. Are you always thinking about stuff? Then you should probably use some free mind-mapping software.
Wikipedia also has a big list of mind-mapping software. Need to manage a small project, but need some project management software? Check out GnattProject and Taiga.
If you want to play around with virtual machines, download the free and excellent VirtualBox from Oracle. In 19 and 20, I talked about software to backup your computer, but forgot to mention DriveImage XML , an good program you can use to create an image of your hard drive.
Other good disk imaging tools include MacriumReflect and Clonezilla. GNUCash is free accounting and finance software. Ever head of Blender? It lets you create 3D worlds, 3D animations and 3D games. Check it out. If Blender is too complex for you, another great option for sketching in 3D is SketchUp. For space lovers, I always recommend Stellarium , which is basically a planetarium for your computer.
Looking for a really good partition manager? Check out GParted , probably the best not-heard-of partition manager out there. Looking for a file on your computer? Default Windows search sucks? Wish your clipboard could store more than one item at a time?
Got a spare computer with some extra storage on it? Want to learn a new language? The best program for Windows in my view is Duolingo. Recuva is a free data recovery tool by Piriform, the same company behind the excellent CCleaner and Defraggler utilities.
Recuva is a free and user-friendly tool for recovering deleted files, Recycle Bin content and deleted emails, as well as damaged or formatted hard drives. A quick start wizard allows you to perform simple file recoveries quickly, while a more powerful 'Deep Scan' is available for more thorough or troublesome operations. A lean, mean, little bittorrent client, qBittorrent has sort of flown under the radar, which is a disservice to this fast and resource efficient client.
Bandwidth limiting, torrent queuing, prioritizing, selective content download, a torrent creation tool, remote access and a built-in torrent search tool for of a number of torrent sites are among the many features of qBitTorrent. NET takes the other extreme, aiming for a light and extremely user-friendly tool inspired by the default Paint application included in Microsoft Windows.
For a 3. NET certainly punches above its weight class. This lightweight but powerful image editing and retouching tool is great for everyday editing and won't cost you a cent. LastPass is a browser-based password manager that works on most browsers.
After creating a LastPass account, this service begins to "listen in" on your activity, offering to save any usernames and passwords that you input into the LastPass Vault. The tool will remember everything so that it can auto-fill your credentials the next time you visit a site or service.
Passwords and forms can be managed in the Vault, and you can import data from other popular managers such as RoboForm. You can even sync your passwords across different computers using your LastPass account and a master password. Malwarebytes Anti-Malware Free is a solid anti-malware scanner that is fast, thorough, and easy to use. Sadly, there's no portable version, so you may want to pick another utility for cleaning up someone else's system.
Everything is a compact and extremely fast file search program that is incredibly quick at finding files and folders by name. A minimal resource footprint and really quick indexing make for a neat and reliable file and folder search tool. The downside? Everything can only search NTFS formatted disks, which is going to be a turn-off for some users. It also won't do things like search file contents or tags or perform metadata searches. Still, for basic filename or folder search, Everything is a great tool.
XBMC is a free, open-source, one-stop media center for your desktop or home theater PC that allows you to play, organize, and stream music, DVDs, video files, photos, and more.
Excellent file compatibility and playback, a very configurable and skinnable interface, a solid media library management system, and an active community continuously pushing development make XBMC a great all-around media center for your desktop or HTPC. Looking to do some advanced photo editing and digital painting , but can't justify the expense of Adobe Photoshop? A free, open-source graphics editing software packed with the ability to edit on layers and masks, GIMP offers a powerful set of editing and manipulation tools for amateur and budding pros alike.
Plugins and scripting support allow for automation of repetitive tasks and the ability to work with animation.
Mozilla's Thunderbird is a solid email client, but what really makes it shine is something it inherited from its cousin Mozilla's Firefox : add-on support. With Thunderbird's large library of add-ons, you can do everything from integrate with your Google Calendar to manage a SQLite database on your computer. Taken as stock, it's a solid email client.
But once you get busy with add-ons, such as Thunderbird Conversations threaded mail , Send Later , or TorBirdy , you'll begin to have an inkling of what this customizable mail client can offer.
Fast and light without suffering in performance, this is a great PDF viewer, with numerous extra features that are great for getting a little more utility out of the program.
The software can split the archive into multiple files. It enables you to compress files having limited resources. Tixati is a simple and easy to use BitTorrent client. It offers fast downloading algorithms that offer better bandwidth management and charting. It also provides peer selection and choking. It also offers RC4 connection encryption for added security.
WirelessNetView developed by Nirsoft is a small network monitoring program that can run in the background of your desktop or laptop. It monitors the activity of wireless networks around you. WinDirStat is a disk usage statistics viewer and cleanup tool for Microsoft Windows. This program scans disk drives and generates reports that show which files, directories, files, and file types are using the most space.
It allows users also to set up executable actions that will perform disk maintenance on demand. It is one of the best free programs which offers a built-in search engine and media player that supports private torrents, proxies, and encrypted connections.
Autodesk is free to use a drawing tool, creating a sketching tool, which helps you helps you to create quick conceptual sketches to fully finished artwork. It is one of the best software for PC that offers unique features like gallery file recovery and Dex support.
It allows you to access all the drawing and sketching tools on desktop and mobile platforms. Adobe Photoshop Elements is a photo editing software. This graphic drawing tool offers easy ways to get started, effortless organization, step-by-step guidance for editing. The tool allows you to auto-generate photos, videos, and slideshows. Snagit is a powerful screen capture tool that captures both still images and grabs a frame from the video.
The tool comes with Smart Windows Detection. It enables you to crop images so that you can select either the whole window or a part of the window. Adobe Illustrator Draw is easy to use vector drawing program.
It enables you to turn your ideas into a design. This application has built-in vector brushes. The software allows you to customize the toolbar so that you can keep only those brushes that you like. It has a simple online process for designing logos, t-shirts, business cards, etc.
Allows you to add your own copyright to your design. Bamboo Paper is an app that allows you to turn your mobile device into a paper notebook. It offers effortlessly sync Bamboo Paper and Smart pad content between different devices. Bamboo paper automatically syncs and accesses your sketches and notes from anywhere, at any time, across all your devices.
However, for that, you need to create a Wacom ID. Filmora is a video making application having an intuitive user interface and tons of video effects. This tool has advanced editing modes and much greater control.
This tool provides fast processing, proxy files, and adjustable preview quality, which help you be more productive. Renderforest is a free music visualizer that helps you to create visual content with ease. This easy to use application allows you to work across various browsers. This music visualizer online tool provides your final video in email.
After Effects is a motion graphics and digital visual effects application developed by Adobe. This tool helps you to easily remove elements in the film. This tool provides more than options for selecting effects. It allows you to animate titles. Spotify is a music streaming app. This application helps you to find the music or podcast.
It contains numerous episodes and tracks. You can use this program and browse artists, albums, celebrities, and more. Audible is an audiobook service by Amazon. It allows you to download audiobooks to your device over Wi-Fi or mobile data. You can also view audiobook details, rate your audiobooks, chapter navigation, bookmarking, etc. Foobar freeware audio player for the Windows platform.
It offers advanced tagging capabilities. Foobar has an open component architecture that allows you to extend the functionality of the player. It also supports ripping Audio CDs as well as transcoding. The VLC media player is an open-source, cross-platform multimedia player. The utility itself works well and has a number of useful features, including changing the default document properties and stamp, encrypt and digitally sign your files, merge multiple documents, and more.
If you do not want these components installed, make sure you deselect them. Foxit is my favorite PDF software for Windows.
It's light and lightning fast. It weighs only a few MB and loads in nanoseconds. Foxit Reader allows for annotating and saving unfinished PDF forms, converting to text, highlighting and drawing. Foxit Reader is also quite secure. You may also be interested in the older 1. The latest Foxit versions 3. Foxit Reader also has a portable version. Sumatra is a slim, lightweight PDF viewer for Windows. It can't get any simpler than that.
It has no fancy functions; it merely shows you the document you want to see. It's superb for handling unknown documents or for carrying around on a USB stick. Sumatra PDF also has a portable edition. Note: I'm well aware of several more good candidates for this categories. They will be presented in a separate document, as a sequel to the first part on PDF software, plus we will have an article on PDF security. While you eagerly wait for these articles to be published on Dedoimedo, you may want to spare a moment or two and read the first part; this should give you a good idea of what to expect from the sequels:.
Nevertheless, it is a namesake application that allows you to create bootable live Windows CDs, complete with tons of superb applications, many of which we have covered here. UBCD4WIN is first and foremost a disaster recovery, rescue, backup, repair, forensics, benchmarking, and diagnostics set of tools, running on top of a bootable Windows XP kernel.
This is slowly changing with Windows 7 , but there's no denying that most people work this way, most applications are written to work this way 2 most Windows users confuse security programs for actual security. Windows security has nothing to do with this or that program. The security can be enforced through the use of specific programs, but security programs per se mean nothing.
Security is about being secure - having the certainty to know what will happen - or won't - if you do this or that thing. Programs are only a means to an end. In this section, I could easily list tens of applications in each sub-category, but I'm not going to do that.
I will list only a handful of programs, a sort of a starting point if you will, while emphasizing the fact that security is a mindset more than any toolbox of programs. You can use the programs listed below; in fact, if you decide to use Windows security programs, then the list below is a great resource. But the programs cannot and will not guarantee your security or the integrity of your data.
If you have a sound security strategy that works irrespective of which program formula you use, then you have a good practice in place. But if you must have X or Y or Z to stay secure, you're doing the wrong way. To finance the cost of offering free software, some security programs come bundled with toolbars, which are unneeded. Ironically, non-bundled versions of these same toolbars are often detected by the very programs that bundle them as adware or even spyware, while their bundled versions are left untouched and undetected.
Most of the security products offer the third-party add-ons preselected during the installation process. If you pay attention, you'll be able to remove them without any problems and never have them installed.
Some software vendors bow to pressure and lawsuit threats from companies that feel their products have been misclassified as malware, removing the signatures for these products from their database.
This means that you may end up running a security program that will not detect certain traces of code, even if they are present on your system. As you can see, this present quite a moral problem, because recommending products is much more than their software quality. In the list below, I will list several products that fall into both these categories. You may wonder why I would do so. The answer is, I think the potential benefit for people who opt to use these products is greater than the above two issues.
Nagware can be disabled during the installation, which is something you should pay attention to. Missing signatures are a problem, but using several signature-based products will cover the gaps and provide a wider coverage, despite quite some overlap. Personally, I do not think you need most of the products listed below to remain safe! But, if you do decide to use signature-based products, you should use several, regardless of the efficiency of the task at hand.
What more, I am definitely not going to re-educate the entire Windows world in one fell swoop, so I might as well offer some help and guidance on the subject, even if the pinpoint security tactics, like signature-based scanning and real-time monitoring, are not as efficient as having an agnostic, general-purpose security strategy.
For each listed program, I will mention the possible ethical issues, including the third-party components, if they exist. I may miss some, so if you have additional information, feel free to email me. I will add a recommendation tag for specific products that I do think you should be using.
These products will necessarily be clean of third-party surprises. What more, they will toll few system resources and will provide you with a generic protection that does not rely on signatures, avoiding the blind, futile race of who gets there first, the malware writers or the security vendors. These products will also help you understand your system better. This little utility allows you to run programs with limited privileges while logged in as the Administrator.
It can be useful for neutering the potential hazard of online activities by reducing the rights of Internet-dependent programs like browsers, mail client, P2P software etc. Meanwhile, take a look at the Run Safer component in Online Armor see below. SuRun is the latest incarnation of programs that mimic the default UNIX system configuration: the user account is regular and limited; system access requires temporary elevation of privileges to the administrator root account, by the means of password authentication.
The user sudoes access to the system and relinquishes it when done. But on Windows, it has not. SuRun changes this. It is the first application that truly encompasses the principle of sudo on Windows.
SuRun works perfectly. SuRun is the opposite of DropMyRights, which lowers the privileges of programs in the admin account, whereas SuRun elevates privileges in the limited account. Note: This product is a personal recommendation of Dedoimedo.
It's probably the most important piece of security for XP users. Anti-malware software is not necessary to enjoy a healthy Windows computing. However, if you do run into trouble somehow, you may want to use a few scanner utilities with good detection and removal capabilities. Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware MBAM is a powerful, fast, thorough malware cleaner for Windows systems, capable of removing even the most stubborn infections.
The freeware version features only the on-demand scanner, which is nevertheless sufficient for getting rid of infections, should they occur. The payware version also has a real-time monitor. It can be used in conjunction with MBAM. Indeed, like MBAM, the free version offers on-demand scanning and cleaning, while the payware edition can be used in real time.
SAS is very effective against rootkits. Similarly, I think that anti-virus software is not really necessary. But most Windows users run one or more out of sheer habit, without really bothering to check whether the software is up to date, configured properly or doing its job, yet most almost panic if it were to be uninstalled from their systems.
Antivir is a free, real-time anti-virus, which includes scheduling and automatic updates. The free version does not have a mail scanner. Furthermore, the free version displays large splash ads every time it updates. AVG offers a free, real-time anti-virus, which includes scheduling, automatic update and email scanning. Please note that AVG also comes with LinkScanner, a real-time web scanning utility, which checks each web page you're trying to visit in your browsers for exploits and malicious code, plus it checks the page "greenness" status against the server database.
Personally, I recommend you disable web scanning and deselect LinkScanner during the installation as it will slow down your browsing experience. You can use the online version if you need it. Furthermore, if you're using Firefox, it has the built-in functionality to block reported web forgeries and known attack sites. ClamWin portable is a portable anti-virus utility, which can be particularly useful for scanning files in Internet cafes, on the go, away from your main machine.
If you do not want to run an anti-virus on your machine, there's a number of online services that you can use to scan suspected files. Jotti's malware scan some 15 anti-virus scanners. If you want to know whether the site you're visit is reputable, especially if you're going to exchange potentially sensitive information, like credit card payments, there's no need to run real-time scanners that will hog your system and slow down the browsing experiences.
Furthermore, almost every virus vendor has an online scan service. Others also offer live CD virus scanning and cleaning utilities based on BartPE or Linux, which the user can download and burn to disc, then use these utilities to perform while booted in the live session. Web anti-virus link-checker Firefox extension; this utility will scan down any page you're about to visit and any downloaded file on your machine using the Dr.
Web online services. It will slow down your browsing experience. Kaspersky Free Virus Scan plugin for Internet Explorer and Firefox; this utility offers only on-demand scanning of the filesystem without the ability to disinfect if threats are found. Note 2: If you have a compiled list of online anti-virus scanning services, I'd appreciate if you could send me a link.
Note 3: Several vendors also offer free anti-virus utilities for U3 devices. If you're familiar with these programs, feel free to email me. The Secunia Online Software Inspector is a fast way to scan your Windows installation for the most common programs and vulnerabilities, thus checking if your system has a minimum security baseline against known patched vulnerabilities.
Most Windows users feel a need to run a firewall with outbound control, because they do not trust their programs or they fear they might get infected and the malicious program may try to phone home. The best way to avoid any outbound-connection issues is to use programs you trust and avoid infections in the first place, thus elegantly preventing any scenario where unsolicited outbound connections are established from your computer to remote servers, without your knowledge or permission.
Still, if you must, here are a few candidates:. The free version of this program offers a very thorough security solution for the Windows users.
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