Favorite Software
Favorite Software Bookmark Converter (1.0 MB - Shareware - $8) Lets you convert Netscape Bookmarks into Internet Explorer Favorites, and vice versa.
BACKUP TOOLS - Karen's Replicator (1.3 MB - Freeware) One of the most important pieces of freeware that anyone can own. Here's how its author describes it: "Automatically backup files, directories, even entire drives. Karen's Replicator copies selected files from one drive/folder to another. Source and Destination folders can reside anywhere on your network. Files larger than 2 GB are supported. Options include repeated copies at intervals as short as a few minutes, or as long as several months, copy only files that have changed, and the replication of file deletions." Backup4all (1MB - Freeware) According to its Web site, "You can define custom backup configurations to meet your personal needs. Setting up a backup configuration is made easy by the backup wizard. Backup4all provides powerful file filters and schedulers. You can set up multiple backups and schedule them any way you like." I haven't used this one. OEBackup (2.6 MB - Freeware) will backup and restore all of your MS Outlook Express email folders, address books, and settings. I haven't used this one, since I don't use Outlook Express. As long as you're backing up your important files, use WinDriversBackup Person Edition (2.44 MB - Freeware) to automatically backup all of your Windows hardware driver files. I haven't used this one.
BOOT MANAGEMENT - Ranish Partition Manager (60 KB - Freeware) is a tiny DOS program that allows you to move and resize your hard drive's partitions without having to reformat the drive, and without losing any data. I haven't used it, since I had already bought PowerQuest's Partition Magic for $69 before I ever heard of this free alternative. Ranish Partition Manager also includes boot manager software that allows you to install several different operating systems on your computer and then choose which one you want to run each time you boot up. Startup Control Panel lets you easily configure the startup programs that run each time Windows starts.
CacheMan (495 KB - Freeware) Optimizes your Windows memory caches, to speed up your PC.
Catch-UP (786 KB - Freeware) Scans your PC, then gives you a customized list of available updates and upgrades for your software applications, drivers, DLLs and other system files. You can then have Catch-UP automatically download the upgrades and updates that you want. I haven't used this one.
CD BURNER - DeepBurner (1.8 MB - Freeware) is very small, full-featured CD and DVD burner software that "supports all certified formats for burning CDs/DVDs, thus allowing you to create audio, video, data, archive, etc., CDs and DVDs with... an intuitive and full-featured user interface, allowing you to do all the common tasks with just a few clicks."
COPY MACHINE - Copying Machine (1.3 MB - Freeware) This really works. It turns your scanner and printer into a photocopier. Make black-and-white, grayscale, or color copies, depending on your printer. You can even choose to save copies so you can print them again later without having to re-scan them. And if your PC has fax software (see FAX SOFTWARE, below), Copying Machine can scan your document and then use your fax software to send it for you.
CrackUp (200 KB - Freeware) A drive fragmention monitor that is more accurate than the one that is built into the Windows 95/98 Defragmenter. CrackUp, from PC Magazine, will run continuously in the background, automatically monitoring your drives' fragmentation, and warning you if they reach a specified level.
CSS Code Assember - (250 KB - Freeware) Uses drop-down menus to help you quickly create Cascading Style Sheets for your Web site. Can also be used as an online tool. I haven't used this one.
DOWNLOAD ACCELERATION - Star Downloader (906 KB - Freeware) Speeds up your downloads up to 400%, by utilizing multiple simultaneous connections to the download server. It checks for the fastest download site for anything you want to download. It can also resume most downloads if you get disconnected. It has its own unzip capabilities, and it integrates with your antivirus software to scan anything you download for viruses. And it is free from all spyware and doesn't display any advertisements.
DUN Monitor (147 KB - Freeware) 'DUN' stands for 'Dial-Up Networking'. DUN Monitor shows you exactly how fast your downloads are progressing.
E_Cloaker (231 KB - Freeware) Spammers use "spambot" software to automatically scan your Web pages and collect any email addresses they find. To hide your email address from "spambots," but still keep it visible to your site's visitors, use E_Cloaker to encode your email address in a special way before displaying it on your Web pages. Web browsers will still be able to display it to your site's visitors, but most spambots will ignore it. According to its Web site, "E_Cloaker 2.0 is a simple utility that converts the characters of email addresses and text into browser-readable Unicode, making it more difficult for spam extractor 'bots to harvest email addresses from your web page. Using Unicoded addresses throughout your site can significantly reduce the amount of spam you receive." To be even more secure, use the really easy JavaScript method that I use, as described in the article SpamProof Your Site.
EMAIL CHECKING - PopTray (700 KB - Freeware) Checks all of your POPmail accounts at specified intervals; tells you how many new email messages have arrived in each account; allows you to see the title, author and size of each message; and allows you to preview, delete, or reply to any message. Use PopTray every time you're online, so you can delete spam messages without downloading them. I've tested a lot of different POPmail checkers over the years, and PopTray is one of the best one I've found. Version 3 of PopTray adds spam-control features, like blacklisting, whitelisting, rules, spam marking, and both manual or automatic deletion of spam from your email server. For even more free email checker choices, read ZDNet's How To Make Email Easier.
Emergency Boot CD (3.81 MB - Freeware) According to its Web site, "EBCD is a bootable CD, intended for system recovery in the case of software or hardware faults. It is able to create backup copies of normally working system and restore system to saved state. It contains the best system software ever created, properly compiled and configured for the maximum efficient use. You may download image (.ISO file) of EBCD disk and write it to CD-R or CD-RW, and then everytime you'll need convinient and powerful system tools they'll be just at hand."
EndItAll 2 (745 KB - Freeware) Lets you quickly and easily close all non-essential foreground and background programs before installing new software, uninstalling software, burning CDs, and running certain programs that can't finish their jobs if any other programs are running. Don't worry -- it won't let you shut down any essential programs. If you've ever had either ScanDisk or Disk Defragmenter restart itself over and over without ever finishing its job, run EndItAll 2 first and that should solve the problem. I haven't used this one.
FAX SOFTWARE - CallCenter (5.2 MB - Freeware) If your computer has a fax/modem, CallCenter lets you send faxes from any Windows application that can print. Send faxes immediately or schedule them to be sent at a different time or on a different day. Send multiple faxes to multiple recipients, with or without cover pages. Receive faxes. You can even use your computer and modem as an answering machine. This full 32-bit program has a great graphical user interface and a wizard that takes you step-by-step each time you send a fax. The only downside is that it displays a small "nag screen" right before you send each fax, reminding you that you can upgrade to CallCenter Pro for $29.99 and get even more features.
FILE SPLITTING - MaxSplitter (224 KB - Freeware) is a freeware utility that can take any large file and split it into smaller pieces. It can also create a batch (.bat) file that can recombine the pieces on any computer running DOS or Windows without needing the splitting software installed. You can use either one to move large files from one computer to another by floppy disk.
FIND AND REPLACE TOOLS - Handy File Find and Replace (361 KB - Freeware) According to its Web site, "Handy File Find and Replace is a free tool meant to assist you quickly Find and Replace Text in as Many text (txt, html, xml, php, asp, perl, js, css, c++, pas etc.) Files as you want. Case sensitive Find and Replace, Diverse File Filters, Different Search Attributes, Robust Regular Expressions with extended syntax give you full control over complex text processing in all the desired files with a few clicks." I haven't used this one yet.
FIREWALLS - ZoneAlarm (1.5 MB - Free for personal and non-profit use) Personal firewall software, designed to protect PCs on the Internet. ZoneAlarm blocks unwanted access to your PC from the Internet, and also warns you if any Web site or virus ever attempts to send information from your PC out to the Internet. It is highly recommended by Steve Gibson, President of Gibson Research and creator of the security check Web site, Shields Up. as well as by Fred Langa, author of The LangaList newsletter. It took me about 20 minutes to download ZoneAlarm, another five minutes to get it up and running, and another half-hour to get it completely configured the way I wanted. Ten minutes later, I connected to the Internet. ZoneAlarm immediately asked me if I wanted to let "Files32.vxd" have access to the Internet. I told it, "No," and then I did a little checking to figure out what "Files32.vxd" was. It turned out that "Files32.vxd" was a worm virus, called "Pretty Park," that would have emailed itself to everyone in my email address book if ZoneAlarm hadn't called my attention to it. Yay for ZoneAlarm. For more information, see ComputerBob's Guide To Firewalls. There is also ZoneAlarm Plus, an even more powerful version that you have to pay for, but I've always used the free version.
FixNews (485 KB - Freeware) For Netscape Navigator or Communicator ONLY. FixNews allows you to specify a phony email address when you post to public newsgroups, reducing the chance that you'll receive tons of spam from companies that collect email addresses from newsgroups. Plus, it lets you filter out newsgroup messages by subject and author, so you can filter out that one guy in every newsgroup who writes twenty or thirty annoying newsgroup message every day.
FREE AND OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE COLLECTION - TheOpenCD. According to its Web site, TheOpenCD is a collection of high quality Free and Open Source Software. The programs run in Windows and cover the most common tasks such as word processing, presentations, e-mail, web browsing, web design, and image manipulation. We include only the highest quality programs, which have been carefully tested for stability and which we consider appropriate for a wide audience. You can download TheOpenCD for free, or you can purchase it on CD-ROM for minimal cost from several sources that are listed on the Web site.
FTP TOOLS - FileZilla (4 MB - Freeware) is the FTP software that I use. It is free, small, really fast, easy to use, and has every feature that I need. WS_FTP LE (1.1 MB - Freeware) A special free-to-students "limited edition" version of one of the standards in FTP software. SmartFTP (5 MB - Freeware) Has many features and a friendlier user interface than WS_FTP. I used SmartFTP for a few years and it worked great, but I switched to FileZilla when I got tired of SmartFTP's constant messages, nagging me to update to its newest version. I was pleased to discover that FileZilla is much faster than SmartFTP.
HARD DRIVE UTILITIES - Xen (122 KB - Freeware) Wow. I thought I kept my hard drive pretty clean of extra files, temporary files, etc., but I ran Xen and it saved me an additional 58 MB of space. Xen provides over 20 functions to cleanup, optimize, backup, restore, and tweak the security of your hard drive and Windows Registry. Very impressive. (Thanks for the updated link to Xen, OuchToo!) Drive Rescue (1.2 MB - Freeware) According to its creator, Drive Rescue can "Find any lost and deleted data on your hard disk even if the partition table is lost. Discover important file system tables of your hard disk, including paritition table, boot record, FAT and file/directory records." I haven't used this one. CleanIt (1.4 MB - Freeware) Cleans up your C:\Windows\Temp directory, deleting old email attachments and other temporary files that are no longer needed, saving hard drive space and possibly speeding up your PC.
HTML TAG VALIDATOR - TagCheck (265 KB - Freeware) Checks your HTML and XML code, to make sure that you've nested and closed all tags properly.
IMAGE VIEWING AND MANIPULATION- IrfanView (812 KB - Freeware) A highly rated viewer that supports over 75 static and animated graphics formats, including BMP, GIF, JPEG, PCX, PNG, multipage TIFF and multiple ICO. Resize, tweak colors, optimize, crop, convert to other formats, and much more.(Thanks, Alois Posch!)
InCtrl (760 KB - Freeware) In Control software is a popular utility from PC Magazine that lets you monitor the changes to your PC that are made when you install new software. That makes it easier to troubleshoot problems caused by software that makes changes to your PC's files and Windows Registry. I've downloaded this one, but I haven't used it yet.
IncrediMail (5 MB - Freeware) Are you tired of boring email? IncrediMail software gives you a much more personalized interface and lets you put sounds, animations, backgrounds, Ecards, handwritten signatures and more into your email messages. I haven't used this one. (thanks, Dennis Green!) NOTE, October 11, 2002: IncrediMail has been criticized by many people, and I no longer recommend it, for the following reasons: 1) It sends very "bloated" HTML messages, which can take much longer to send and receive than text-only messages; 2) Unlike text-only messages, HTML messages can contain malicious programming, so they are a far less secure method of communicating than text-only messages; 3) According to the LangaList newsletter, the IncrediMail User Agreement states, "... IncrediMail is free to use any ideas, know-how, concepts or techniques you... post on the Service for any purpose, without any compensation to you or any other person."
INTERNET CONNECTION OPTIMIZING - CableNut (823MB - Freeware) According to its Web site, "CableNut is a tool for optimizing your Windows TCP/IP stack i.e. your Internet Connection." In other words, it allows you to tweak your computer's networking settings to speed up your Internet connection as much as possible. iSpeed For Windows (500 KB - Freeware) Fine-tune your TCP/IP settings to maximize your modem's speed.
INTERNET FILTERING helps protect children by filtering out objectionable material on the Internet. There are several retail Internet Filtering software packages, but We-Blocker software (2.2 MB - Freeware) is free, and allows parents to enter a password to access Web sites that they do not allow their children to access. I haven't used this one.
JPEG Resizer (695 KB - Freeware) Here's what it says on their Web site: "Do you need to send a lots of photos to your Chief? Do you want to create a thousands of thumbnails for your site by one click? Have you a digital camera? Do you run a website and have graphics that take a long time to load? This little program will resize your graphics so that they load faster and are optimized for internet use." I haven't used this one, but I think it will probably come in handy because my personal Web site's pages use a lot of thumbnail images and Dreamweaver doesn't have an automatic thumbnail feature.
LINK CHECKER - Xenu's Link Sleuth (Freeware) If your Web site contains links to other sites, your site is going to have broken links every time those other sites move, rename or delete the pages to which you've linked. That's why I try to avoid linking to any Microsoft Web pages, because MS constantly moves, renames, and deletes their Web pages. Link Sleuth quickly checks all of your Web site's internal and external links, giving you a report that shows which links are good and which are broken. This site contains more than 1200 links, but it took Link Sleuth only 11 minutes (over a slow dial-up modem connection.) to check all of them and generate a report that listed every broken link, every redirected link and much more.
MEDIA PLAYERS - Quintessential Player (2.3 MB - Freeware) Plays sound files in MP3, Ogg, WAV, and CD formats. Includes high-speed CD ripping. I haven't tried this one. (Thanks, Carbonize!) vuplayer (1.8 MB - Freeware) A multi-format audio player. I haven't tried this one. (Thanks, Carbonize!)
MEMORY TESTER - Memtest86 (62 KB - Freeware) According to its Web site, "Memtest86 is a standalone memory diagnostic tool that runs from a floppy disk on system boot. It executes a series of numbered test sections to check for errors." I haven't used this one.
MODEM INTERROGATION TOOL - COM Inspector (Size Unknown - Freeware) According to its Web site, "COM Inspector is a serial communications test application designed to detect the current serial port settings of any DCE connected to an RS-232 port of a Microsoft Windows PC. COM Inspector is a great tool for anyone who needs to connect to a serial device, but does not know what the current settings of the device may be." (Thanks, Brian McKeon!) I haven't tried this one.
NETWORK ADMINISTRATION - Qcheck (??? KB - Freeware) According to NetIQ, Qcheck " slices, dices, and checks network response time, throughput, and streaming performance. It even runs anywhere-to-anywhere traceroute." I haven't used this one.
Notify CD Player (119 KB - Freeware) An enhanced CD player that adds a CD icon to your system tray, next to the clock. This little gem has all the normal CD playing and programming features, plus it will scan each of your music CDs, then connect to an online CD database, to find, remember, and display all of the album and track info for each of your music CDs. You'll see the name of each CD, and the name and length of each song, instead of "Track One" and "Track Two".
OpenOffice (50.5 MB - Freeware) A free alternative to the Microsoft Office suite. You can download it, or you can purchase a CD of it. OpenOffice includes a word processor (like MS Word), a spreadsheet (like MS Excel), a presentation tool (like MS PowerPoint), and an HTML editor (like MS FrontPage), and a drawing tool. The main differences between OpenOffice and Microsoft Office are that OpenOffice is free, and has no Windows Product Activiation copy protection. In fact, OpenOffice can even read and write Microsoft Office files, so you can use it to access your existing MS Office files. According to Fred Langa of the LangaList newsletter, "OpenOffice will run on almost any PC running any version of Windows 95 or above, or any version of Linux using the 2.2.13 kernel, or higher. It needs just 64MB of RAM, and about 250MB of disk space." According to Rob Pegoraro, Washington Post Technology Columnist, (May 12, 2002), "OpenOffice.org 1.0 arrived, and Microsoft Office's long winning streak may finally screech to a halt." OpenOffice is available in over 20 different languages. NOTE: In November, 2002, I wrote a review of OpenOffice 1.0.1.
PASSWORD MANAGEMENT - RoboForm (1.2 MB - Freeware) According to its Web site, RoboForm is a "password manager, form filler, password generator (that can) fill forms, save passwords, and autologin." I haven't used this one. (Thanks, Jeanne Levrier!)
PDF TOOLS - Adobe Acrobat Reader (4 MB - Freeware) One of the standards. Allows you to view the Adobe PDF files used for online documentation by many pieces of software. pdf995 (4.2 MB - Adware) According to its Web site, "pdf995 is the fast, affordable way to create professional-quality documents in the popular PDF file format. Its easy-to-use interface allows you to create PDF files by simply selecting the 'print' command from any application, creating documents which can be viewed on any computer with a PDF viewer." I haven't used this one. (Thanks, Jeanne Levrier!)
Picture Dicer (450 KB - Freeware) Splits large graphics images into pieces that you can display in a table on your Web page. The pieces load much faster than the large graphic image would load, and they get re-assembled back into the entire large graphic. I haven't used this one.
Picture-Shark (750 KB - Freeware) Lets you add a watermark to your Web site's images, to prevent pirates from stealing your images.
PrintFolder (525 KB - Freeware) Allows you to right-click on any folder in Windows Explorer and either print or save a list of the contents of that folder. Why didn't Microsoft include this in Windows 95/98?
ReadPlease (6.9 MB - Freeware) Most text-to-speech software reads things out loud in an emotionless robotic voice that makes it difficult to understand. ReadPlease is better because it is free, and has 4 different expressive voices that change pitch naturally and put emphasis on the correct syllables, to make it easier to understand. It also lets you control each voice's speed and pitch. If your PC has a sound card and speakers, you can use ReadPlease to read any plain text, any Rich Text Format file, and any text that you copy from a Web site into the Windows clipboard. I haven't used this one.
Real Player (2.6 MB - Freeware) Real Player lets you view live video and listen to live audio over the Internet. Choose from news, comedy, music, and other channels, plus hundreds of radio stations all over the world. I used Real Player to listen to the House Judicial Committee's Impeachment debates on National Public Radio, and sometimes I use it to play music in the background while my students are working on their projects. You'll have to look carefully on the Web site to find the link to the FREE version of Real Player, because they really push the shareware version ($29.95) that gives you more features and higher quality audio.
SCREEN CAPTURE - Gadwin PrintScreen (845 KB - Freeware) is simple and easy to use.
Screen Ruler (94 KB - Freeware) JR Screen Ruler puts a ruler on your screen, to help you measure graphics or other objects in pixels, inches, picas, or centimeters. I haven't used this one.
SEARCH and REFERENCE TOOLS - Copernic (2.3 MB - Freeware) Incredibly fast and powerful search engine tool. Copernic lets you search for anything, wherever you want to search for it (web sites, newsgroups and emails.) You enter your search string into Copernic, and it immediately and automatically submits your string to a whole list of online search engines, all at the same time, showing you the results as it goes. Turbo Start (331 KB - Freeware) This little search engine utility installs into your Web browser and lets you search your choice of 140 search engines all at the same time. You can also save the results for future reference. Web Ferret (848 KB - Freeware) Tired of doing individual searches through several search engines? Web Ferret lets you type in your search string, and then it quickly and automatically submits it to several major search engines, one at a time, giving you a clickable list of the matching links it found. GuruNet Free (1.4 MB - Freeware) According to ZDNet, "GuruNet is a free tool that automatically analyzes the context of selected text. Using a simple, non-linked "Answer Bar" window, GuruNet delivers reference information from a dictionary, thesaurus, or encyclopedia. It also provides real-time information, such as news, sports, weather, or stock quotes from online sources. It works in e-mail programs, PIMs, browsers, and other applications such as Microsoft Office. GuruNet also features language translations, enhanced financial links, up-to-date weather, U.S. area codes, and more." I haven't used this one. (Thanks, Jeanne Levrier!) Quick Info (500 KB - Freeware EXE file) According to its Web site, "Quick Info is a reference lookup tool for three things: U.S. telephone area codes and time zones, international direct phone-dialing codes and time zones, and Internet domain suffixes. With more than 2000 cities worldwide, 320 area codes, and 250 national Internet suffixes listed, you're sure to find some piece of information that you need to get your hands on quickly." I haven't used this one. (Thanks, Jeanne Levrier!) PC Webopaedia Lite (2.1 MB - Freeware) A very large and extensive, but very easy-to-read, hyperlinked source of definitions for all things PC.
SECURITY, PROTECTION, PRIVACY - Wilders has descriptions of and links to many free security software tools and services designed to help protect your PC, including anti-virus, firewalls, ad blockers, and much, much more. SnapFiles has freeware and shareware security tools, plus lot of other software and tips. (Thanks, Bob Niemann!) PC Magazine's CookieCop 2 (1.5 MB - Freeware) blocks ads, stops pop-ups, stops referrer tracking, speeds up your browsing, manages your browser cookies, and more. I haven't tried this one yet. (Thanks, Starmancer!) AdSubtract (2.5 MB - Freeware) Are you tired of seeing advertisements on nearly every Web page you visit? AdSubtract automatically blocks ads from loading, and that makes Web pages that have ads load a lot faster. In its first few minutes of operation on my PC, AdSubtract blocked 37 ads from loading on only two CNet.com pages and 50 ads from loading on only two CNN.com pages that I visited. It can also block cookies from Web sites to prevent Web sites from tracking your browsing habits. PopUpKiller (2.7 MB - Freeware) is billed by its creators as "the ultimate popup killing machine." It prevents popup windows from appearing whenever you're browsing, including those annoying Geocities boxes. I haven't used PopUpKiller. Ad-Aware (1.6 MB - Freeware) is one of the best-known tools to get rid of spyware on your computer. According to its developer, Internet Sweeper (649 KB - Freeware) "Will erase information stored in Windows about Internet sites visited. FREE and fully functional. Although donations are appreciated. Automaticallys runs when computer boots, user logs in, or browsers closed. Works with all 32-bit Windows, Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator, and Opera. Erases the Cache, History, Cookies, Addresses, Passwords and Temporary Files. Closes those annoying javascript browser popup windows." I haven't used Internet Sweeper yet. LeakTest (27 KB - Freeware) Because your PC's connection to the Internet is a "two-way street," it is possible that your firewall can do a great job of keeping the bad guys on the Internet out of your PC while not doing anything to prevent information that is already on your PC from being sent out onto the Internet without your knowledge or consent. Therefore, if you already have a firewall, you should test it by downloading and running Steve Gibson's tiny excellent LeakTest utility. You don't have a firewall? You would be wise to read ComputerBob's Guide To Firewalls, and then download ZoneAlarm (see FIREWALLS, above). WebWasher (1 MB - Free for home/education use) Provides 3 functions: Filtering of content, protection of privacy and access control. Can block advertisements, block cookies, block Web bugs, block access to unwanted Web pages, stop pop-up windows from appearing, block scripts from executing, and much more. WebWasher has many powerful features, but it is not for beginners, due to its many configuration options. (Thanks, TJ!) NOTE: WebWasher does not work with America Online software. To reduce the possibility of Web publishing problems, disable AdSubtract or WebWasher before publishing your Web site to your Web host's server, then re-enable it after you've published your site.
Sip Notes (500 KB - Freeware) Lets you put virtual Post-It notes on your PC desktop.
SPAM CONTROL - MailWasher (1.4 MB - Freeware) is one of the best POPmail checkers for deleting and preventing spam messages. This very popular and highly rated software can check your POPmail accounts for new messages, preview new messages, recognize spam messages, delete spam messages from your email server, and even bounce those messages back to their senders, to fool them into thinking that your email account no longer exists (DON'T USE MailWasher's 'Bounce' FEATURE. NEARLY ALL SPAM HAS FORGED HEADER INFORMATION, SO YOUR 'BOUNCED' MESSAGE WILL NOT GO TO THE SPAMMER, BUT WILL INSTEAD GO TO SOME INNOCENT PERSON WHOSE EMAIL ADDRESS WAS USED IN THE HEADER OF THE SPAM MESSAGE WITHOUT THEIR PERMISSION.) MailWasher lets you create your own email filters, and/or a friends list, and/or a blacklist, and it can even reference online lists of known spammers. Spamihilator (1.4 MB - Freeware) "works between your E-Mail client and the Internet and examines every incoming E-Mail. Useless spam mails (Junk) will be filtered out. This process runs completely in the background." I haven't tried this one. (Thanks, Carbonize!)
Sync URLs from PC Magazine (340 KB - Freeware) Switching from Netscape to Internet Explorer or vice versa? Use one browser at home and the other at work? Easily synchronize your Netscape Bookmarks and your Internet Explorer Favorites. SyncURLs will import all of your shortcuts from each browser into one file and will then export all of them to both of your browsers.
Teach Me HTML (310 KB - Freeware) A tutorial that will teach you the basics of HTML coding, step-by-step, in about an hour. It includes 14 lessons that are presented at a very basic level that is perfect for HTML beginners.
TEXT EDITOR - NoteTab Light (1.71 MB - Freeware) Replace the wimpy Windows NotePad with an excellent, award-winning text editor that can edit multiple large files in separate tabs, and has lots of great features. PSPad (3 MB - Freeware) Very powerful, award-winning text editor that can edit multiple large files in separate tabs, with many, many features, including file compare, file search and replace, and FTP transfers. (Thanks, Carbonize!)
THUMBNAILS - Easy Thumbnails (990 KB - Freeware) Will create thumbnails from many different image formats. Can process an entire folder full of images at one time. Can also create Web pages of thumbnails, using supplied templates.
TIME SYNCHRONIZATION - Dimension 4 (293KB - Freeware) Highly recommended by users. Automatically connects to your choice of Internet time servers all over the world, and sets your PC's clock to within 5/100ths of a second of the correct time.
TRACEROUTE TOOLS - NeoTrace Pro (1.56 MB - Shareware - free to try, then $29.95) A graphical traceroute tool, showing you a map that lets you visually trace the source of any Web site or IP address. 3DTraceroute (766 KB - freeware) A powerful, three-dimensional traceroute tool. I haven't used this one.
TweakUI (80 KB - Freeware) Microsoft's tiny utility for tweaking Windows' graphical user interface (GUI). The download link is to a non-Microsoft site because Microsoft has a habit of moving or removing TweakUI from its own Web site.
Ultimate Paint (1.9 MB - Freeware) The very best free paint program I've found. Lets you view and create professional-looking graphics, using many tools and features, and then save your creations in many different file formats. This is the last freeware version of Ultimate Paint -- they also have a newer shareware version that has even more features.
UNDELETE FILES - Just try to find a free file undelete tool when you really need one. You'll spend countless, infinitely frustrating hours, downloading and then wading through "trial versions" of shareware that will let you see that your deleted files are recoverable, but won't let you recover them until you pay for the full version of the software. It took me a couple of hours to find it, but Restoration (192 KB - Freeware) is tiny, fast, easy to use, and free. It saved me from having to re-create hours of work when I accidently erased my entire Web site while I was redesigning it. Restoration can even run from a floppy disk without even being installed on your computer. Do yourself a huge favor and download it now, so you'll have it when you really need it. Because some day, you will really need it. Trust me.
WINDOWS PRODUCT KEY FINDER - The Magical Jelly Bean Key Finder (251 KB - Freeware) According to its Web site, "The Magical Jelly Bean Keyfinder is a freeware utility that retrieves your Product Key (cd key) used to install windows from your registry. It has the options to copy the key to clipboard, save it to a text file, or print it for safekeeping. It works on Windows 95, 98, ME, NT4, 2000, XP, Server 2003, Office 97, and Office XP."
WinMorph (700 KB - Freeware) Remember those commercials in which one person's face turns into another person's face, or an animal turns into a car? That effect is called "morphing" and this software lets you create your own morphed images. I haven't used this one.
WinRescue 95 For Windows 95 ONLY (866 KB - Shareware - 30 Day Free Evaluation, then $19.95) Manually or automatically backs up "your Windows 95 Registry, the Start Menu, the Desktop, Favorites,and Recent items, plus any additional files that you specify." Plus, it creates a bootable floppy disk that makes it easy to restore your Windows 95 PC if you ever do anything that totally trashes it. (for Windows 98, see WinRescue 98 below) When I was running Windows 95, I used WinRescue 95 regularly, to back up my Win95 Registry and configuration files, plus I used Mr. Mirror (see above) mirror my entire data drive to my backup drive.
WinRescue 98 For Windows 98 ONLY (853 KB - Shareware - 30 Day Free Evaluation, then $19.95) Manually or automatically backs up "your Windows 98 Registry, the Start Menu, the Desktop, Favorites,and Recent items, plus any additional files that you specify." Plus, it creates a bootable floppy disk that makes it easy to restore your Windows 98 PC if you ever do anything that totally trashes it. (for Windows 95, see WinRescue 95 above)
Yankee Clipper (1 MB - Freeware) You know how frustrating it can be, that Windows 95/98 only allows you to cut or copy one item at a time into its Clipboard? Yankee Clipper fixes all that, allowing you to have more than 400 items in the Clipboard at the same time, and showing you a categorized list of them so that you can choose the one you want to paste back into your application.
BACKUP TOOLS - Karen's Replicator (1.3 MB - Freeware) One of the most important pieces of freeware that anyone can own. Here's how its author describes it: "Automatically backup files, directories, even entire drives. Karen's Replicator copies selected files from one drive/folder to another. Source and Destination folders can reside anywhere on your network. Files larger than 2 GB are supported. Options include repeated copies at intervals as short as a few minutes, or as long as several months, copy only files that have changed, and the replication of file deletions." Backup4all (1MB - Freeware) According to its Web site, "You can define custom backup configurations to meet your personal needs. Setting up a backup configuration is made easy by the backup wizard. Backup4all provides powerful file filters and schedulers. You can set up multiple backups and schedule them any way you like." I haven't used this one. OEBackup (2.6 MB - Freeware) will backup and restore all of your MS Outlook Express email folders, address books, and settings. I haven't used this one, since I don't use Outlook Express. As long as you're backing up your important files, use WinDriversBackup Person Edition (2.44 MB - Freeware) to automatically backup all of your Windows hardware driver files. I haven't used this one.
BOOT MANAGEMENT - Ranish Partition Manager (60 KB - Freeware) is a tiny DOS program that allows you to move and resize your hard drive's partitions without having to reformat the drive, and without losing any data. I haven't used it, since I had already bought PowerQuest's Partition Magic for $69 before I ever heard of this free alternative. Ranish Partition Manager also includes boot manager software that allows you to install several different operating systems on your computer and then choose which one you want to run each time you boot up. Startup Control Panel lets you easily configure the startup programs that run each time Windows starts.
CacheMan (495 KB - Freeware) Optimizes your Windows memory caches, to speed up your PC.
Catch-UP (786 KB - Freeware) Scans your PC, then gives you a customized list of available updates and upgrades for your software applications, drivers, DLLs and other system files. You can then have Catch-UP automatically download the upgrades and updates that you want. I haven't used this one.
CD BURNER - DeepBurner (1.8 MB - Freeware) is very small, full-featured CD and DVD burner software that "supports all certified formats for burning CDs/DVDs, thus allowing you to create audio, video, data, archive, etc., CDs and DVDs with... an intuitive and full-featured user interface, allowing you to do all the common tasks with just a few clicks."
COPY MACHINE - Copying Machine (1.3 MB - Freeware) This really works. It turns your scanner and printer into a photocopier. Make black-and-white, grayscale, or color copies, depending on your printer. You can even choose to save copies so you can print them again later without having to re-scan them. And if your PC has fax software (see FAX SOFTWARE, below), Copying Machine can scan your document and then use your fax software to send it for you.
CrackUp (200 KB - Freeware) A drive fragmention monitor that is more accurate than the one that is built into the Windows 95/98 Defragmenter. CrackUp, from PC Magazine, will run continuously in the background, automatically monitoring your drives' fragmentation, and warning you if they reach a specified level.
CSS Code Assember - (250 KB - Freeware) Uses drop-down menus to help you quickly create Cascading Style Sheets for your Web site. Can also be used as an online tool. I haven't used this one.
DOWNLOAD ACCELERATION - Star Downloader (906 KB - Freeware) Speeds up your downloads up to 400%, by utilizing multiple simultaneous connections to the download server. It checks for the fastest download site for anything you want to download. It can also resume most downloads if you get disconnected. It has its own unzip capabilities, and it integrates with your antivirus software to scan anything you download for viruses. And it is free from all spyware and doesn't display any advertisements.
DUN Monitor (147 KB - Freeware) 'DUN' stands for 'Dial-Up Networking'. DUN Monitor shows you exactly how fast your downloads are progressing.
E_Cloaker (231 KB - Freeware) Spammers use "spambot" software to automatically scan your Web pages and collect any email addresses they find. To hide your email address from "spambots," but still keep it visible to your site's visitors, use E_Cloaker to encode your email address in a special way before displaying it on your Web pages. Web browsers will still be able to display it to your site's visitors, but most spambots will ignore it. According to its Web site, "E_Cloaker 2.0 is a simple utility that converts the characters of email addresses and text into browser-readable Unicode, making it more difficult for spam extractor 'bots to harvest email addresses from your web page. Using Unicoded addresses throughout your site can significantly reduce the amount of spam you receive." To be even more secure, use the really easy JavaScript method that I use, as described in the article SpamProof Your Site.
EMAIL CHECKING - PopTray (700 KB - Freeware) Checks all of your POPmail accounts at specified intervals; tells you how many new email messages have arrived in each account; allows you to see the title, author and size of each message; and allows you to preview, delete, or reply to any message. Use PopTray every time you're online, so you can delete spam messages without downloading them. I've tested a lot of different POPmail checkers over the years, and PopTray is one of the best one I've found. Version 3 of PopTray adds spam-control features, like blacklisting, whitelisting, rules, spam marking, and both manual or automatic deletion of spam from your email server. For even more free email checker choices, read ZDNet's How To Make Email Easier.
Emergency Boot CD (3.81 MB - Freeware) According to its Web site, "EBCD is a bootable CD, intended for system recovery in the case of software or hardware faults. It is able to create backup copies of normally working system and restore system to saved state. It contains the best system software ever created, properly compiled and configured for the maximum efficient use. You may download image (.ISO file) of EBCD disk and write it to CD-R or CD-RW, and then everytime you'll need convinient and powerful system tools they'll be just at hand."
EndItAll 2 (745 KB - Freeware) Lets you quickly and easily close all non-essential foreground and background programs before installing new software, uninstalling software, burning CDs, and running certain programs that can't finish their jobs if any other programs are running. Don't worry -- it won't let you shut down any essential programs. If you've ever had either ScanDisk or Disk Defragmenter restart itself over and over without ever finishing its job, run EndItAll 2 first and that should solve the problem. I haven't used this one.
FAX SOFTWARE - CallCenter (5.2 MB - Freeware) If your computer has a fax/modem, CallCenter lets you send faxes from any Windows application that can print. Send faxes immediately or schedule them to be sent at a different time or on a different day. Send multiple faxes to multiple recipients, with or without cover pages. Receive faxes. You can even use your computer and modem as an answering machine. This full 32-bit program has a great graphical user interface and a wizard that takes you step-by-step each time you send a fax. The only downside is that it displays a small "nag screen" right before you send each fax, reminding you that you can upgrade to CallCenter Pro for $29.99 and get even more features.
FILE SPLITTING - MaxSplitter (224 KB - Freeware) is a freeware utility that can take any large file and split it into smaller pieces. It can also create a batch (.bat) file that can recombine the pieces on any computer running DOS or Windows without needing the splitting software installed. You can use either one to move large files from one computer to another by floppy disk.
FIND AND REPLACE TOOLS - Handy File Find and Replace (361 KB - Freeware) According to its Web site, "Handy File Find and Replace is a free tool meant to assist you quickly Find and Replace Text in as Many text (txt, html, xml, php, asp, perl, js, css, c++, pas etc.) Files as you want. Case sensitive Find and Replace, Diverse File Filters, Different Search Attributes, Robust Regular Expressions with extended syntax give you full control over complex text processing in all the desired files with a few clicks." I haven't used this one yet.
FIREWALLS - ZoneAlarm (1.5 MB - Free for personal and non-profit use) Personal firewall software, designed to protect PCs on the Internet. ZoneAlarm blocks unwanted access to your PC from the Internet, and also warns you if any Web site or virus ever attempts to send information from your PC out to the Internet. It is highly recommended by Steve Gibson, President of Gibson Research and creator of the security check Web site, Shields Up. as well as by Fred Langa, author of The LangaList newsletter. It took me about 20 minutes to download ZoneAlarm, another five minutes to get it up and running, and another half-hour to get it completely configured the way I wanted. Ten minutes later, I connected to the Internet. ZoneAlarm immediately asked me if I wanted to let "Files32.vxd" have access to the Internet. I told it, "No," and then I did a little checking to figure out what "Files32.vxd" was. It turned out that "Files32.vxd" was a worm virus, called "Pretty Park," that would have emailed itself to everyone in my email address book if ZoneAlarm hadn't called my attention to it. Yay for ZoneAlarm. For more information, see ComputerBob's Guide To Firewalls. There is also ZoneAlarm Plus, an even more powerful version that you have to pay for, but I've always used the free version.
FixNews (485 KB - Freeware) For Netscape Navigator or Communicator ONLY. FixNews allows you to specify a phony email address when you post to public newsgroups, reducing the chance that you'll receive tons of spam from companies that collect email addresses from newsgroups. Plus, it lets you filter out newsgroup messages by subject and author, so you can filter out that one guy in every newsgroup who writes twenty or thirty annoying newsgroup message every day.
FREE AND OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE COLLECTION - TheOpenCD. According to its Web site, TheOpenCD is a collection of high quality Free and Open Source Software. The programs run in Windows and cover the most common tasks such as word processing, presentations, e-mail, web browsing, web design, and image manipulation. We include only the highest quality programs, which have been carefully tested for stability and which we consider appropriate for a wide audience. You can download TheOpenCD for free, or you can purchase it on CD-ROM for minimal cost from several sources that are listed on the Web site.
FTP TOOLS - FileZilla (4 MB - Freeware) is the FTP software that I use. It is free, small, really fast, easy to use, and has every feature that I need. WS_FTP LE (1.1 MB - Freeware) A special free-to-students "limited edition" version of one of the standards in FTP software. SmartFTP (5 MB - Freeware) Has many features and a friendlier user interface than WS_FTP. I used SmartFTP for a few years and it worked great, but I switched to FileZilla when I got tired of SmartFTP's constant messages, nagging me to update to its newest version. I was pleased to discover that FileZilla is much faster than SmartFTP.
HARD DRIVE UTILITIES - Xen (122 KB - Freeware) Wow. I thought I kept my hard drive pretty clean of extra files, temporary files, etc., but I ran Xen and it saved me an additional 58 MB of space. Xen provides over 20 functions to cleanup, optimize, backup, restore, and tweak the security of your hard drive and Windows Registry. Very impressive. (Thanks for the updated link to Xen, OuchToo!) Drive Rescue (1.2 MB - Freeware) According to its creator, Drive Rescue can "Find any lost and deleted data on your hard disk even if the partition table is lost. Discover important file system tables of your hard disk, including paritition table, boot record, FAT and file/directory records." I haven't used this one. CleanIt (1.4 MB - Freeware) Cleans up your C:\Windows\Temp directory, deleting old email attachments and other temporary files that are no longer needed, saving hard drive space and possibly speeding up your PC.
HTML TAG VALIDATOR - TagCheck (265 KB - Freeware) Checks your HTML and XML code, to make sure that you've nested and closed all tags properly.
IMAGE VIEWING AND MANIPULATION- IrfanView (812 KB - Freeware) A highly rated viewer that supports over 75 static and animated graphics formats, including BMP, GIF, JPEG, PCX, PNG, multipage TIFF and multiple ICO. Resize, tweak colors, optimize, crop, convert to other formats, and much more.(Thanks, Alois Posch!)
InCtrl (760 KB - Freeware) In Control software is a popular utility from PC Magazine that lets you monitor the changes to your PC that are made when you install new software. That makes it easier to troubleshoot problems caused by software that makes changes to your PC's files and Windows Registry. I've downloaded this one, but I haven't used it yet.
IncrediMail (5 MB - Freeware) Are you tired of boring email? IncrediMail software gives you a much more personalized interface and lets you put sounds, animations, backgrounds, Ecards, handwritten signatures and more into your email messages. I haven't used this one. (thanks, Dennis Green!) NOTE, October 11, 2002: IncrediMail has been criticized by many people, and I no longer recommend it, for the following reasons: 1) It sends very "bloated" HTML messages, which can take much longer to send and receive than text-only messages; 2) Unlike text-only messages, HTML messages can contain malicious programming, so they are a far less secure method of communicating than text-only messages; 3) According to the LangaList newsletter, the IncrediMail User Agreement states, "... IncrediMail is free to use any ideas, know-how, concepts or techniques you... post on the Service for any purpose, without any compensation to you or any other person."
INTERNET CONNECTION OPTIMIZING - CableNut (823MB - Freeware) According to its Web site, "CableNut is a tool for optimizing your Windows TCP/IP stack i.e. your Internet Connection." In other words, it allows you to tweak your computer's networking settings to speed up your Internet connection as much as possible. iSpeed For Windows (500 KB - Freeware) Fine-tune your TCP/IP settings to maximize your modem's speed.
INTERNET FILTERING helps protect children by filtering out objectionable material on the Internet. There are several retail Internet Filtering software packages, but We-Blocker software (2.2 MB - Freeware) is free, and allows parents to enter a password to access Web sites that they do not allow their children to access. I haven't used this one.
JPEG Resizer (695 KB - Freeware) Here's what it says on their Web site: "Do you need to send a lots of photos to your Chief? Do you want to create a thousands of thumbnails for your site by one click? Have you a digital camera? Do you run a website and have graphics that take a long time to load? This little program will resize your graphics so that they load faster and are optimized for internet use." I haven't used this one, but I think it will probably come in handy because my personal Web site's pages use a lot of thumbnail images and Dreamweaver doesn't have an automatic thumbnail feature.
LINK CHECKER - Xenu's Link Sleuth (Freeware) If your Web site contains links to other sites, your site is going to have broken links every time those other sites move, rename or delete the pages to which you've linked. That's why I try to avoid linking to any Microsoft Web pages, because MS constantly moves, renames, and deletes their Web pages. Link Sleuth quickly checks all of your Web site's internal and external links, giving you a report that shows which links are good and which are broken. This site contains more than 1200 links, but it took Link Sleuth only 11 minutes (over a slow dial-up modem connection.) to check all of them and generate a report that listed every broken link, every redirected link and much more.
MEDIA PLAYERS - Quintessential Player (2.3 MB - Freeware) Plays sound files in MP3, Ogg, WAV, and CD formats. Includes high-speed CD ripping. I haven't tried this one. (Thanks, Carbonize!) vuplayer (1.8 MB - Freeware) A multi-format audio player. I haven't tried this one. (Thanks, Carbonize!)
MEMORY TESTER - Memtest86 (62 KB - Freeware) According to its Web site, "Memtest86 is a standalone memory diagnostic tool that runs from a floppy disk on system boot. It executes a series of numbered test sections to check for errors." I haven't used this one.
MODEM INTERROGATION TOOL - COM Inspector (Size Unknown - Freeware) According to its Web site, "COM Inspector is a serial communications test application designed to detect the current serial port settings of any DCE connected to an RS-232 port of a Microsoft Windows PC. COM Inspector is a great tool for anyone who needs to connect to a serial device, but does not know what the current settings of the device may be." (Thanks, Brian McKeon!) I haven't tried this one.
NETWORK ADMINISTRATION - Qcheck (??? KB - Freeware) According to NetIQ, Qcheck " slices, dices, and checks network response time, throughput, and streaming performance. It even runs anywhere-to-anywhere traceroute." I haven't used this one.
Notify CD Player (119 KB - Freeware) An enhanced CD player that adds a CD icon to your system tray, next to the clock. This little gem has all the normal CD playing and programming features, plus it will scan each of your music CDs, then connect to an online CD database, to find, remember, and display all of the album and track info for each of your music CDs. You'll see the name of each CD, and the name and length of each song, instead of "Track One" and "Track Two".
OpenOffice (50.5 MB - Freeware) A free alternative to the Microsoft Office suite. You can download it, or you can purchase a CD of it. OpenOffice includes a word processor (like MS Word), a spreadsheet (like MS Excel), a presentation tool (like MS PowerPoint), and an HTML editor (like MS FrontPage), and a drawing tool. The main differences between OpenOffice and Microsoft Office are that OpenOffice is free, and has no Windows Product Activiation copy protection. In fact, OpenOffice can even read and write Microsoft Office files, so you can use it to access your existing MS Office files. According to Fred Langa of the LangaList newsletter, "OpenOffice will run on almost any PC running any version of Windows 95 or above, or any version of Linux using the 2.2.13 kernel, or higher. It needs just 64MB of RAM, and about 250MB of disk space." According to Rob Pegoraro, Washington Post Technology Columnist, (May 12, 2002), "OpenOffice.org 1.0 arrived, and Microsoft Office's long winning streak may finally screech to a halt." OpenOffice is available in over 20 different languages. NOTE: In November, 2002, I wrote a review of OpenOffice 1.0.1.
PASSWORD MANAGEMENT - RoboForm (1.2 MB - Freeware) According to its Web site, RoboForm is a "password manager, form filler, password generator (that can) fill forms, save passwords, and autologin." I haven't used this one. (Thanks, Jeanne Levrier!)
PDF TOOLS - Adobe Acrobat Reader (4 MB - Freeware) One of the standards. Allows you to view the Adobe PDF files used for online documentation by many pieces of software. pdf995 (4.2 MB - Adware) According to its Web site, "pdf995 is the fast, affordable way to create professional-quality documents in the popular PDF file format. Its easy-to-use interface allows you to create PDF files by simply selecting the 'print' command from any application, creating documents which can be viewed on any computer with a PDF viewer." I haven't used this one. (Thanks, Jeanne Levrier!)
Picture Dicer (450 KB - Freeware) Splits large graphics images into pieces that you can display in a table on your Web page. The pieces load much faster than the large graphic image would load, and they get re-assembled back into the entire large graphic. I haven't used this one.
Picture-Shark (750 KB - Freeware) Lets you add a watermark to your Web site's images, to prevent pirates from stealing your images.
PrintFolder (525 KB - Freeware) Allows you to right-click on any folder in Windows Explorer and either print or save a list of the contents of that folder. Why didn't Microsoft include this in Windows 95/98?
ReadPlease (6.9 MB - Freeware) Most text-to-speech software reads things out loud in an emotionless robotic voice that makes it difficult to understand. ReadPlease is better because it is free, and has 4 different expressive voices that change pitch naturally and put emphasis on the correct syllables, to make it easier to understand. It also lets you control each voice's speed and pitch. If your PC has a sound card and speakers, you can use ReadPlease to read any plain text, any Rich Text Format file, and any text that you copy from a Web site into the Windows clipboard. I haven't used this one.
Real Player (2.6 MB - Freeware) Real Player lets you view live video and listen to live audio over the Internet. Choose from news, comedy, music, and other channels, plus hundreds of radio stations all over the world. I used Real Player to listen to the House Judicial Committee's Impeachment debates on National Public Radio, and sometimes I use it to play music in the background while my students are working on their projects. You'll have to look carefully on the Web site to find the link to the FREE version of Real Player, because they really push the shareware version ($29.95) that gives you more features and higher quality audio.
SCREEN CAPTURE - Gadwin PrintScreen (845 KB - Freeware) is simple and easy to use.
Screen Ruler (94 KB - Freeware) JR Screen Ruler puts a ruler on your screen, to help you measure graphics or other objects in pixels, inches, picas, or centimeters. I haven't used this one.
SEARCH and REFERENCE TOOLS - Copernic (2.3 MB - Freeware) Incredibly fast and powerful search engine tool. Copernic lets you search for anything, wherever you want to search for it (web sites, newsgroups and emails.) You enter your search string into Copernic, and it immediately and automatically submits your string to a whole list of online search engines, all at the same time, showing you the results as it goes. Turbo Start (331 KB - Freeware) This little search engine utility installs into your Web browser and lets you search your choice of 140 search engines all at the same time. You can also save the results for future reference. Web Ferret (848 KB - Freeware) Tired of doing individual searches through several search engines? Web Ferret lets you type in your search string, and then it quickly and automatically submits it to several major search engines, one at a time, giving you a clickable list of the matching links it found. GuruNet Free (1.4 MB - Freeware) According to ZDNet, "GuruNet is a free tool that automatically analyzes the context of selected text. Using a simple, non-linked "Answer Bar" window, GuruNet delivers reference information from a dictionary, thesaurus, or encyclopedia. It also provides real-time information, such as news, sports, weather, or stock quotes from online sources. It works in e-mail programs, PIMs, browsers, and other applications such as Microsoft Office. GuruNet also features language translations, enhanced financial links, up-to-date weather, U.S. area codes, and more." I haven't used this one. (Thanks, Jeanne Levrier!) Quick Info (500 KB - Freeware EXE file) According to its Web site, "Quick Info is a reference lookup tool for three things: U.S. telephone area codes and time zones, international direct phone-dialing codes and time zones, and Internet domain suffixes. With more than 2000 cities worldwide, 320 area codes, and 250 national Internet suffixes listed, you're sure to find some piece of information that you need to get your hands on quickly." I haven't used this one. (Thanks, Jeanne Levrier!) PC Webopaedia Lite (2.1 MB - Freeware) A very large and extensive, but very easy-to-read, hyperlinked source of definitions for all things PC.
SECURITY, PROTECTION, PRIVACY - Wilders has descriptions of and links to many free security software tools and services designed to help protect your PC, including anti-virus, firewalls, ad blockers, and much, much more. SnapFiles has freeware and shareware security tools, plus lot of other software and tips. (Thanks, Bob Niemann!) PC Magazine's CookieCop 2 (1.5 MB - Freeware) blocks ads, stops pop-ups, stops referrer tracking, speeds up your browsing, manages your browser cookies, and more. I haven't tried this one yet. (Thanks, Starmancer!) AdSubtract (2.5 MB - Freeware) Are you tired of seeing advertisements on nearly every Web page you visit? AdSubtract automatically blocks ads from loading, and that makes Web pages that have ads load a lot faster. In its first few minutes of operation on my PC, AdSubtract blocked 37 ads from loading on only two CNet.com pages and 50 ads from loading on only two CNN.com pages that I visited. It can also block cookies from Web sites to prevent Web sites from tracking your browsing habits. PopUpKiller (2.7 MB - Freeware) is billed by its creators as "the ultimate popup killing machine." It prevents popup windows from appearing whenever you're browsing, including those annoying Geocities boxes. I haven't used PopUpKiller. Ad-Aware (1.6 MB - Freeware) is one of the best-known tools to get rid of spyware on your computer. According to its developer, Internet Sweeper (649 KB - Freeware) "Will erase information stored in Windows about Internet sites visited. FREE and fully functional. Although donations are appreciated. Automaticallys runs when computer boots, user logs in, or browsers closed. Works with all 32-bit Windows, Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator, and Opera. Erases the Cache, History, Cookies, Addresses, Passwords and Temporary Files. Closes those annoying javascript browser popup windows." I haven't used Internet Sweeper yet. LeakTest (27 KB - Freeware) Because your PC's connection to the Internet is a "two-way street," it is possible that your firewall can do a great job of keeping the bad guys on the Internet out of your PC while not doing anything to prevent information that is already on your PC from being sent out onto the Internet without your knowledge or consent. Therefore, if you already have a firewall, you should test it by downloading and running Steve Gibson's tiny excellent LeakTest utility. You don't have a firewall? You would be wise to read ComputerBob's Guide To Firewalls, and then download ZoneAlarm (see FIREWALLS, above). WebWasher (1 MB - Free for home/education use) Provides 3 functions: Filtering of content, protection of privacy and access control. Can block advertisements, block cookies, block Web bugs, block access to unwanted Web pages, stop pop-up windows from appearing, block scripts from executing, and much more. WebWasher has many powerful features, but it is not for beginners, due to its many configuration options. (Thanks, TJ!) NOTE: WebWasher does not work with America Online software. To reduce the possibility of Web publishing problems, disable AdSubtract or WebWasher before publishing your Web site to your Web host's server, then re-enable it after you've published your site.
Sip Notes (500 KB - Freeware) Lets you put virtual Post-It notes on your PC desktop.
SPAM CONTROL - MailWasher (1.4 MB - Freeware) is one of the best POPmail checkers for deleting and preventing spam messages. This very popular and highly rated software can check your POPmail accounts for new messages, preview new messages, recognize spam messages, delete spam messages from your email server, and even bounce those messages back to their senders, to fool them into thinking that your email account no longer exists (DON'T USE MailWasher's 'Bounce' FEATURE. NEARLY ALL SPAM HAS FORGED HEADER INFORMATION, SO YOUR 'BOUNCED' MESSAGE WILL NOT GO TO THE SPAMMER, BUT WILL INSTEAD GO TO SOME INNOCENT PERSON WHOSE EMAIL ADDRESS WAS USED IN THE HEADER OF THE SPAM MESSAGE WITHOUT THEIR PERMISSION.) MailWasher lets you create your own email filters, and/or a friends list, and/or a blacklist, and it can even reference online lists of known spammers. Spamihilator (1.4 MB - Freeware) "works between your E-Mail client and the Internet and examines every incoming E-Mail. Useless spam mails (Junk) will be filtered out. This process runs completely in the background." I haven't tried this one. (Thanks, Carbonize!)
Sync URLs from PC Magazine (340 KB - Freeware) Switching from Netscape to Internet Explorer or vice versa? Use one browser at home and the other at work? Easily synchronize your Netscape Bookmarks and your Internet Explorer Favorites. SyncURLs will import all of your shortcuts from each browser into one file and will then export all of them to both of your browsers.
Teach Me HTML (310 KB - Freeware) A tutorial that will teach you the basics of HTML coding, step-by-step, in about an hour. It includes 14 lessons that are presented at a very basic level that is perfect for HTML beginners.
TEXT EDITOR - NoteTab Light (1.71 MB - Freeware) Replace the wimpy Windows NotePad with an excellent, award-winning text editor that can edit multiple large files in separate tabs, and has lots of great features. PSPad (3 MB - Freeware) Very powerful, award-winning text editor that can edit multiple large files in separate tabs, with many, many features, including file compare, file search and replace, and FTP transfers. (Thanks, Carbonize!)
THUMBNAILS - Easy Thumbnails (990 KB - Freeware) Will create thumbnails from many different image formats. Can process an entire folder full of images at one time. Can also create Web pages of thumbnails, using supplied templates.
TIME SYNCHRONIZATION - Dimension 4 (293KB - Freeware) Highly recommended by users. Automatically connects to your choice of Internet time servers all over the world, and sets your PC's clock to within 5/100ths of a second of the correct time.
TRACEROUTE TOOLS - NeoTrace Pro (1.56 MB - Shareware - free to try, then $29.95) A graphical traceroute tool, showing you a map that lets you visually trace the source of any Web site or IP address. 3DTraceroute (766 KB - freeware) A powerful, three-dimensional traceroute tool. I haven't used this one.
TweakUI (80 KB - Freeware) Microsoft's tiny utility for tweaking Windows' graphical user interface (GUI). The download link is to a non-Microsoft site because Microsoft has a habit of moving or removing TweakUI from its own Web site.
Ultimate Paint (1.9 MB - Freeware) The very best free paint program I've found. Lets you view and create professional-looking graphics, using many tools and features, and then save your creations in many different file formats. This is the last freeware version of Ultimate Paint -- they also have a newer shareware version that has even more features.
UNDELETE FILES - Just try to find a free file undelete tool when you really need one. You'll spend countless, infinitely frustrating hours, downloading and then wading through "trial versions" of shareware that will let you see that your deleted files are recoverable, but won't let you recover them until you pay for the full version of the software. It took me a couple of hours to find it, but Restoration (192 KB - Freeware) is tiny, fast, easy to use, and free. It saved me from having to re-create hours of work when I accidently erased my entire Web site while I was redesigning it. Restoration can even run from a floppy disk without even being installed on your computer. Do yourself a huge favor and download it now, so you'll have it when you really need it. Because some day, you will really need it. Trust me.
WINDOWS PRODUCT KEY FINDER - The Magical Jelly Bean Key Finder (251 KB - Freeware) According to its Web site, "The Magical Jelly Bean Keyfinder is a freeware utility that retrieves your Product Key (cd key) used to install windows from your registry. It has the options to copy the key to clipboard, save it to a text file, or print it for safekeeping. It works on Windows 95, 98, ME, NT4, 2000, XP, Server 2003, Office 97, and Office XP."
WinMorph (700 KB - Freeware) Remember those commercials in which one person's face turns into another person's face, or an animal turns into a car? That effect is called "morphing" and this software lets you create your own morphed images. I haven't used this one.
WinRescue 95 For Windows 95 ONLY (866 KB - Shareware - 30 Day Free Evaluation, then $19.95) Manually or automatically backs up "your Windows 95 Registry, the Start Menu, the Desktop, Favorites,and Recent items, plus any additional files that you specify." Plus, it creates a bootable floppy disk that makes it easy to restore your Windows 95 PC if you ever do anything that totally trashes it. (for Windows 98, see WinRescue 98 below) When I was running Windows 95, I used WinRescue 95 regularly, to back up my Win95 Registry and configuration files, plus I used Mr. Mirror (see above) mirror my entire data drive to my backup drive.
WinRescue 98 For Windows 98 ONLY (853 KB - Shareware - 30 Day Free Evaluation, then $19.95) Manually or automatically backs up "your Windows 98 Registry, the Start Menu, the Desktop, Favorites,and Recent items, plus any additional files that you specify." Plus, it creates a bootable floppy disk that makes it easy to restore your Windows 98 PC if you ever do anything that totally trashes it. (for Windows 95, see WinRescue 95 above)
Yankee Clipper (1 MB - Freeware) You know how frustrating it can be, that Windows 95/98 only allows you to cut or copy one item at a time into its Clipboard? Yankee Clipper fixes all that, allowing you to have more than 400 items in the Clipboard at the same time, and showing you a categorized list of them so that you can choose the one you want to paste back into your application.