21 Best Free Digital Editor
I use to recommend The Gimp [1] but after dozens of letters from newbies who couldn't manage to install it or work out the idiosyncratic user interface, I've decided to confine that recommendation to more experienced users. If that's you and you patient enough to learn the product's sometimes quaint ways then you may not need to consider anything else. If you are used to Photoshop you might like to look at GIMPShop [2] , which changes the user interface of GIMP to something more familiar though frankly, I prefer the original.
For other less experienced users there is Paint.net, an amazingly sophisticated piece of work from computer science students at Washington State University. It's not quite as powerful as The Gimp but a lot easier to use and install. It's also getting better; the new V3 beta continues this product's impressive development record. However V2.x is only for Windows 2000 while V3 requires XP SP2. You will also need Microsoft's bulky .NET framework installed on your PC.
Another possibility is PhotoPlus 6.0 from a company called Serif [4] . It's an impressive piece of work; again it installs easily and it's loaded with features including layer support. In fact, it looks and feels like a "lite" and slightly clunky version of Adobe PhotoShop. Note: You need to register with your email address to get PhotoPlus and you may receive promotional material as a result.
Recently I've had a lot of positive reader feedback about a French product called PhotoFiltre [5]. It's available in a number of languages including English and ( for a digital editor) is a tiny 1.6MB download. Like PhotoPlus it looks and works like an old version of PhotoShop. It can read and save files to JPEG, GIF, BMP, TIFF, PNG, RLE, comes with an impressive range of tools, brushes and filters. However it can't handle layers. That said, it offers a lot of functionality for a small program.
All of the above products are for editing rasterized images. If you want a vector based editor the top choice is the Open Source Inkscape program. To quote the website "Inkscape uses W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format. Supported SVG features include shapes, paths, text, markers, clones, alpha blending, transforms, gradients, patterns, and grouping. Inkscape also supports Creative Commons meta-data, node editing, layers, complex path operations, bitmap tracing, text-on-path, flowed text, direct XML editing, and more. It imports formats such as JPEG, PNG, TIFF, and others and exports PNG as well as multiple vector-based formats."
Equally attractive is its small size compared to most other vector based editors, a mere 24MB versus several hundred for Illustrator. It's a product in its early stages; the current release is only at V0.45 and doesn't, for example, yet support SVG filter effects, animation, and SVG fonts. It is, however, totally usable. That usability is enhanced by an excellent user interface and the impressive set of tutorials that come with the product that help wean the user away from the world of digital images to the nodes, lines, curves and shapes that form the basis of vector editing. Overall a top product that will only get better.
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| [1] http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/stable.html (7.7MB) [2] http://www.gimpshop.net/ (7.4MB) [3] http://getpaint.net/index2.html Freeware, Win2K and later, 3.6MB [4] http://www.freeserifsoftware.com/software/PhotoPlus/default.asp Freeware, all Windows, 19.4MB [5] http://www.photofiltre.com/ Free for personal use, Windows 98 and later, 1.6MB [6] http://www.inkscape.org/ Free Open Source, Available for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X, 20.7MB. |
22 Best Free Digital Photo Organizer
It’s rare for me to be utterly wowed by a product but this one certainly did it. When you first run Picasa 2 it offers to scan your whole hard drive (or designated locations) for photos and videos. Scanning is surprisingly quick and when finished you’ll have all your shots neatly organized into folders on a time line basis. Now you can view you shots one at a time, in slideshow or traversing the time line.
The editing features are limited compared to professional image editors yet they provide you with every function amateur photographers need including one click red eye reduction. Similarly adding labels to photos is a cinch while a simple but effective star rating system allows you to flag favorite snaps. Individual folders can also be password protected. Facilities are provided to import your images from your camera in multiple formats including RAW. You can send photos to your choice of web printing service, cut a CD, print to a local printer or share with others via your own blog or instant messaging. Simply sensational. Windows 2000 or later, 300MHz Pentium with 128MB memory or better, 4.6MB.
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| http://picasa.google.com/ |
23 Best Free Text Editor
There are lots of text editors. Some of these aspire to be Notepad replacements while other are full-on programming editors.
My top choice in the first category is EditPad Lite [1]. It has a Notepad-like interface combined with tabbed document windows, the ability to open as many documents as you like, no file size limitations and unlimited un-do capability. It's main downside is that it's for personal use only.
If you need a free Notepad replacement that you can use commercially I suggest NotePad2 [2]. It's small, fast but unfortunately lacks the tabbed Windows that are so handy in EditPad. NoteTab Lite [3] is another possibility but personally I find it a tad slow and the single level undo a severe limitation.
If however you are looking for a text editor that can serve both as a Notepad replacement and a source editor you might like to check out Notepad++ [4]. It performs impressively in both roles. Its loaded with features to make your programming more productive including syntax and brace highlighting for many languages, search and replace using regular expressions, macro recording and more. It is also highly configurable through plug-ins, has a wide range of themes and offers multi-language support.
More specifically geared to programming is PSPad [5]. It supports syntax high-lighting for most popular languages, has an inbuilt spell checker, hex editor, macro recorder, FTP client and more.
Other source code editors worthy of evaluation are ConTEXT [6] and my personal favorite, Crimson [7].
Choosing the best programming editor is too controversial a topic even for me so I suggest you try all these and see what works best for you.
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| [1] http://www.editpadpro.com/editpadlite.html Free for non-commercial use, Windows NT and later, 2.9MB [2] http://www.flos-freeware.ch/notepad2.html Freeware, Windows 98 and later, 241KB [3] http://www.notetab.com/ntl.php Freeware, All Windows versions, 1.4MB [4] http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm Open Source Freeware, All Windows versions, 1.03MB [5] http://www.pspad.com/ Freeware, all Windows versions, 3.4MB [6] http://www.context.cx/ Freeware, All Windows versions, 1.6MB [7] http://www.crimsoneditor.com Freeware, All Windows versions, 1.2MB |
24 The Best File Archiver/Zip Utility
I checked out six utilities: QuickZip, ICEOWS, IZArc, TUGZip, ZipGenius and 7-Zip. The product that impressed me the most was the Open Source program 7-Zip. It was the only product in the group that could unpack a multi-part RAR volume embedded in a ZIP archive and the only product to give a meaningful error message when an attempt was made to unpack a 256bit encrypted WinZip archive. My only reservation is that it handles fewer archive types than some of the other products; it only supports 7z, ZIP, CAB, RAR, ARJ, GZIP, BZIP2, Z, TAR, CPIO, RPM and DEB . If that's really important to you than I'd recommend IZArc. It can read nearly 50 archive types including media formats like ISO, BIN and IMG and can write (and convert) to 12. Furthermore it can handle multi-part zip files while 7-Zip can't. You couldn't go wrong with either product. 7-Zip is a little more robust while IZArc is a little more flexible. If you already use WinZip you'll find either 7-Zip or IZArc make excellent companion products. They can can read just about all the major archive formats WinZip can't, including the widely used RAR. Note
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| http://www.izarc.org/download.html Windows 9x and later, 3.1MB http://www.7-zip.org/ Windows 9x and later, 1.05MB |
25 Best Free Hotkey Utility
For sheer power you can't beat AutoHotkey [1]. It can automate just about anything by capturing keystrokes, mouse clicks and even joystick movements and linking them to just about any action you want including application launching, surfing to a particular website or inserting text or code snippets. Combined this with a powerful scripting language and you have a product of awesome capability. Indeed calling this product a mere "hotkey" utility is like calling Westminster cathedral a chapel. This power does come at a cost; AutoHotkey is no product for beginners. That said, it is the product I use and an easy first choice for the technically literate.
A good choice for average users is PS Hot Launch VVL [2] 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 audio volume, or just about anything else. Hotkeycontrol works on all versions of Windows and is an excellent performer even on slow machines.
A second alternative is qliner's free Open Source "hotkeys" utility [3]. It's strength is ease of use, wide support for international keyboard layouts plus a handy reminder key that flashes up your current hotkey assignments. On the minus side, it's not quite as flexible as PS Hot Launch and it's only available for Windows XP.
A final option is not really a hotkey utility at all but achieves the same result by using "magic words." SlickRun [4] places a tiny text box on your screen and when you type specially assigned words into the box, it will launch a program, go to a web site or whatever. For example if you type "mail" it can launch your mail reader. Type in "46" and it can take you to the web page of the "46 Best-ever Freeware Utilities." Of course, it's up to you to define these magic words and you can have as many as you want. It all works very neatly with some really nice touches like auto-complete for your magic words which means you only have to type in two or three letters and SlickRun will complete the rest. Nice too, is an eyedropper tool that allows you to identify a program you want to "hotkey" just by clicking in its application window. There's also a built-in note jotter and a calendar date display.
Hotkey utilities overlap with another class of programs: program launchers. For details of this category see item 90 in the "extended list" of free utilities.
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| [1] http://www.autohotkey.com/ Freeware, all Windows versions, 1.75MB [2] http://www.pssoftlab.com/pshl_info.phtml Freeware, all Windows versions, 707KB [3] http://qliner.com/hotkeys/ Freeware, Windows XP, 804KB [4] http://www.bayden.com/SlickRun/ Freeware, all Windows versions, 170KB |
26 Best Free Registry Cleaner In my mind the best registry cleaner is one which reliably fixes problem entries but doesn't itself cause problems in the process. The products most likely to possess these qualities are those that are conservative in operation and confine their cleaning to removing definite and unambiguous errors. I say this because I have seen as many problems created by registry cleaners as problems solved. This view flies in the face of many who consider, for whatever reason, that the best registry cleaner is the one that finds the most problems. To me such products are dangerous and not worth owning. That said, my top recommendation is Toni Helenius' free EasyCleaner [1] . It's a good reliable, conservative performer that will fix all major problems with a low risk of creating problems of its own As a bonus, it will also detect duplicate files and help you clean up temp files to make more disk space. One of its best features is a regularly updated "blacklist" of registry values that should not be cleaned. I'm sure this contributes to the products excellent record of causing few problems. Remember though, as with every Registry cleaner, to back up your Windows Registry before use. A reasonable alternative is Eusing Free Registry Cleaner [2]. I've only had a couple of reports of it causing problems but it has an easy to use backup and recovery feature that will help you out should you get into trouble. Many folks like RegSeeker [3] which combines registry cleaning with some registry management features. It's a nice product but its cleaning function is too aggressive and problem prone to allow general recommendation. CCleaner (see section 37) , the class-leading disk cleaner has an inbuilt registry cleaner as well. However I'd never leave anything as critical as registry cleaning to a general purpose product; for this you really need a specialist utility. To keep the registries on my PCs in top running order I use the Registry Cleaner in jv16 PowerTools. It's now a commercial products though you can still find the last free version of jv16 [4] on the web.
27 Best Free BitTorrent Client It's amazing how quickly BitTorrent has become one of the major download formats. With good reason, too: it's fast, equitable and efficient. If you haven't yet installed a BitTorrent client on your PC, you should as there are some great free clients available. I recommend the Open Source program Azureus [1]. It's beautifully implemented, well supported and, being Java based, is available for multiple platforms. It's very feature rich and supports embedded tracker so you can host your own torrents, UPnP, a distributed decentralized database for decentralized torrents and DHT (Distributed Hash Table) which distributes indexing responsibility across multiple clients rather than relying on a single web-based tracker plus many other features too numerous to mention. There are also a lot of plug-ins available for Azureus including a competent RSS feed scanner. One downside with Azureus is that the Java code will eat up your CPU cycles so you need a reasonably fast PC. A good alternative is uTorrent [2] which comes in at a tiny 170KB. Small it may be but it's very fast and will show Azureus a clean pair of heels of most downloads. It's also lean on resources, easy to use and requires no installation. It formidable feature list includes trackerless downloads, multiple simultaneous downloads, multi-scrape, UPnP and has an inbuilt RSS reader which is an impressive achievement for such a tiny package .One downside is that uTorrent has recently been acquired by BitTorrent.com, a company that many torrent users feel is uncomfortably close to digital copyright owners and their RIAA enforcers. A new arrival on the scene is BitTyrant, a hot-rodded version of Azureus.. The modification is fiendishly clever. While most clients only consider the number of peers available for downloading, BitTyrant also considers the capacity of each peer and the data rate required to ensure reciprocation. It then utilizes this information using a dynamic algorithm to send only to the highest capacity peers data at the minimum rate for them to reciprocate. In plain English this translates to your downloads running faster, much faster; around 65% on my tests. Now, the standard Azureus client may be one of the most full featured clients available but it's certainly not the fastest kid on the block. With the BitTyrant mods, though, it's a speed demon. In fact, it's the fastest client I've tried. But there's a downside: this kind of mod breaks down some of the fairness characteristics of the BitTorrent protocol. If you are not comfortable with that then don't use BitTyrant.
28 The Best Free FTP Client I used WS_FTP Pro as my principal FTP client for years. What started out as simple but effective product gradually with each new version became more feature-bloated and less effective for simple routine tasks. With the release of Version 9 it was clear to me that the product had totally lost its way so I started looking for an alternative. After trying seven different FTP clients I decided that the best for me was the Open Source utility FileZilla [1]. It uses a simple layout based on a two pane interface that looks a bit like the early versions of WS_FTP. But this simplicity is deceptive, it is actually a quite powerful product There's a full featured site manager, firewall and proxy support, SSL and Kerberos GSS security, restart, drop and drag and a lot more. The only significant feature that's missing is site-to-site transfer but that's of no importance to me. What is of importance is that FileZilla is fast, totally reliable, secure and and very easy to use. There's also a free FileZilla FTP server which I haven't used but I hear that it's just as good as the client. If you find FileZilla's user interface a little minimal you may want to try SmartFTP [2]. It's a commercial product but is free for personal, educational or non-profit use. If you want a SCP (secure copy) client for Windows that uses SSH and offers a rich feature set there's WinSCP [3]. It features a built-in terminal, it can launch Putty directly, allows remotely file editing edit files, direct transfer and transfer queuing and the ability to limit download speed rates. Me, I'll stick with FileZilla.
29 Best Free Bookmark Cleaner AM-DeadLink scans your browser bookmark file for dead links or duplicate links. 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. Freeware, all Windows versions, Internet Explorer, Opera, Mozilla and Firefox, 1.1MB.
30 Best Free Folder Synchronization Utility This is getting scary. First I recommend Microsoft Defender and now I'm going to recommend another Microsoft product as the best in this category. Well, equal best. It's called SyncToy v1.0 for Windows XP [1] and, as the name implies, is only for XP - SP2. This program is more than a syncing program; it can copy, move, rename, and delete files between any number of folders and even computers. The program operates on the principal of pre-defined folder pairs. You define and name these pairs and then when you want to perform a sync or other task, you recall one of these pairs and carry out the operation. Syncing can be in either direction and covers all options from complete sync to updating newer files only. The handling of files with changed file names is exceptional as is the backup of overwritten files. Overall, pretty well everything you ever wanted in a sync utility. Note that SyncToy requires V1.1 of Microsoft's .NET framework. Also highly recommended is 2brightspark's SyncBack [2]. It works for Windows 98 and later and has a number of features that SyncToy lacks such as the ability to sync to a remote FTP server.
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