There is an impressive range of excellent freeware Windows enhancements and tweaks. This posting will present forty three excellent additions to Windows that you will like.

When I first thought of this post, I more or less knew what programs I wanted to list here. The common theme that brought these together was that they were all really cool Windows “enhancements”: i.e. apps that tweak or change the way we work with files, folders, applications, or the system environment itself (or, apps that brings functionality to the Windows environment that could or should have been a built-in option in Windows ).

Two more things to say before presenting the list itself; the first is that this list might not include some well known titles because in some cases I shied away from Windows enhancement apps that try to do many things at once in favor of simpler, more straightforward ones. The second is to be aware that many of these have overlapping functions and hotkeys that you wouldn’t necessarily want installed on the same system at the same time (you also dont want to overburden your PC, so install selectively).

Note: this post took a long time to write, so please Stumble or Digg!

Here’s the list:

1- Fences: do you ever wish that there was some way to organize your icons into general, clearly-labeled areas on your desktop that you could move or organize without needing to deal with each icon individually? If so, you’re in luck, as this is exactly what Fences does. You can create floating areas on your desktop, label them, and move icons of any type into them; you can then re-arrange these by moving entire units around, etc. Fences will do two more things for you (1) it will preserve/save icon locations on your screen, and (2) it will allow you to double click an empty area on the desktop to hide all icons.

Note that Fences is still in beta and seems to exhibit some bugs on some machines. It works fine on my XP (with XP’s Dr. Watson debugger disabled).

2- QTTabbar: ever imagined using explorer windows in a Firefox style tabbed interface? This is essentially what this (terrific) freeware does, but it also manages to deliver a range of nice functions, including the ability to browse contents of folders without clicking into them (see screenshot), the option to bookmark groups of open tabs, a searchbox for filtering files, image previews on mouse-hover, as well as a slew of others.

QTTabbar is extendible through a handful of plugins that provide extra functionality, including a “folder memo” plugin to add notes to folders.

3- Filebox Extender: this one adds new buttons on the title bar next to the minimize, maximize, and close buttons that provide favorite folders and recent folders access anywhere (including file open/save dialogs). Other functions: a “stay on top” pushpin button, and a window roll-up button that hides all but the title bar of a window.

There are many apps that are designed to access favorite folders and files, but this one is one of the most original and innovative.

4- Desktop Media: this may be familiar to you if you’ve worked with Liunx. Desktop Media is a free program that creates automatic shortcuts on the desktop whenever you plug in a USB drive, CD, or other media. The shortcuts will automatically disappear when the media is ejected.

This program also provides an interesting option whereby hardlink rather than shortcuts can be (optionally) created on NTFS drives (see “Link Shell Extension” below for more on hardlinks).

5- Sizer: allows you to you right click on the “maximize”button on the title bar in order to quickly change the size and/or placement of the active Window using a selection of pre-set profiles. You can add your own user-defined sizes and placements.

While this function hardly sounds revolutionary, I will tell you that once you start using this one you will wonder how you managed without it. Sizer will prove to be very useful and is in fact one of my first installs on a new machine.

6- Folder Menu: this is a terrific little free app that displays favorite folders anywhere on Middle mouse click or using a hotkey. It can even invoke favorite folders in Windows and MS Office open/save dialogs.

This is a new Autohotkey-based program that deserves to be more well known; since installing it it’s become one of my favorites, and I am betting that you will like it as well.

7- Folder Size: ever noticed that Windows’ detail folder view does not display sizes for folders? Well guess what, this free Windows extension adds a column to Windows’ “detailed” view that displays folder sizes. Check out my review for how to get this set up.

The latest information as I write this is that a new version 2.5 is about to be released, so watch out for that.

8- WinSplit Revolution: a freeware program that brings instant, versatile docking and resizing of windows to the sides of the and/or corners of the screen. But what is really nice is that the program allows you to control the placement of your windows by using hotkeys, by using a “virtual numpad” control that is prompted by clicking on the app’s icon in the system tray, or by so-called “drag’n go”, which involves moving your window around the screen while pressing Ctrl+Alt (whereupon it will display visual previews of the resize area as you move your window around – see screenshot).

For another interesting program that offers a similar function check out PowerResizer, which is also excellent.

9- Q-Dir: is a free dual-pane file manager that is simply terrific. It offers a slew of nice functions, including bookmarking favorite folders, a search box for filtering files and folders, the ability to save configurations of open panes and folders, and a whole host of other nifty options. What is quite innovative about Q-Dir are the nifty buttons on the toolbar that let the user access multiple configurations of file panes, quickly and easily.

I personally use Q-Dir as a replacement for Windows explorer, such that clicking on a folder in Windows will open it using Q-Dir; In that sense it is the ultimate Windows enhancement. (See my original review of the program for instructions on how to do this, find favorite feature #6).

10- Taskbar shuffle: this freeware Windows extension gives you the ability to reorder the tabs in your taskbar (on the bottom of your desktop) by dragging them at will. Very cool!

11- Standalone Stack: this freeware allows you to create folder shortcuts that, when clicked, open up as Mac-style hovering icon stacks. It supports two styles of icons “grid” and “fan”. The screenshot here depicts a grid-style such shortcut that I strategically placed in the “Quick Launch” area.

12- TaskSwitchXP: this is a freeware Alt+Tab replacement. It’s my favorite because it is straightforward and simply scrolls across the different open apps and windows while (reliably) displaying a screenshot of the selected app. It strength is function rather than form, and I like the fact that it bucks the 3D vista-style and the Mac Expose trends (but if you must have these, check out WinFlip, Shock Aero, and DExpose2).

13- Link Shell Extension: is a freeware app that allows you to right click on files and folders and create instant (and effortless) hardlinked clones, with the single stipulation that your hard drive should be NTFS formatted.

A clone is NOT a copy. A little known piece of information is that a file in Windows XP and Vista can be in two places at once (as long as the hard drive is NTFS formatted and not FAT). Suppose that you keep videos of “The Sopranos” in their “Sopranos” folder, but that you had set up a “Favorite TV shows” folder where you wanted to keep a list of some of the TV-show episodes you like the most. If your hard drive is NTFS formatted, you can keep a clone of that video in that folder that does not occupy extra space on your hard drive (rather than create a duplicate copy.

14- Launchy: this is a freeware launcher for apps and files where, instead of clicking on shortcuts or icons of the programs or files you want to open, you type in the name of the program you are seeking in a search box and select it from a list of results (the program will refine the list of selections as-you-type, which is a very nice effect).

By default this program will monitor (index) the execs and shortcuts in your start menu but can be configured to look anywhere for any file type you want. Lastly I will say that once you start using this I guarantee you will not want to use your computer without it. Some good Launchy alternatives (also free): Find and Run Robot, Key Launch and Keybreeze.

15- Freesnap: ever wanted to snap just one or two edges of your window that you’re working with right to the side of the screen? Freesnap is a freeware that lets you do just that (see screenshot). It will also let you use hotkeys to quickly send your window to any of the 4 corners of the screen (or the center), and perform a number of window-resizing operations.

16- Everything: this one is a free desktop file search program that works ONLY on NTFS formatted drives. The reason: it relies on the Master File Table of the NTFS volume to build its index of files, rather than constantly scanning and scouring the hard drive. What this means is that Everything will always be up to date with all file changes that occur on your hard drive.

The reason this one is included in this post is that more than any other program it has changed the way I work with Windows (with the possible exception of Launchy, above). I now find myself constantly right-clicking “Search Everything” on folders in order to locate the files that I am working with. Being able to right click on my computer in order to find a file or files anywhere on my drives is an extremely powerful thing to be able to do.

17- 3RVX: this freeware allows you to control your system’s volume (up/down/mute) through hotkeys. Its not the most feature-packed utility of its kind (Volumouse might have that distinction), but it just may be the most pleasant to use, looks really pretty (emulates the MacOSX volume bezel, but is skinnable and comes with many other cool skins).

This is another one of those apps I have to have installed on my machine.

18- OSD Mute: a very simple free app that does a very simple thing: displays a “Mute On” message on your desktop near the system tray when the system volume is muted. While this is not quite revolutionary, it is so useful that I install it on all my machine, and is really an option that should have come built into Windows.

19- Dexpot: this is without a doubt the best, most feature rich and advanced freeware virtual desktop program for Windows. It doesn’t offer some of the eye candy that you might find in some others (animated 3D cube transitions between desktops, for example), but what it lacks in style in makes up for in substance (e.g. rules, hotkeys, icon placements on different desktops). If you are unfamiliar with virtual desktops imagine being able to work on, say, your Office applications in one desktop, then flipping to another that has your browser/webmail, and then flipping to a third that displays, say, your media player.

One thing you can do with Dexpot that I have not found anywhere else is to actually designate different icons to different desktops. This alone makes it the undisputed number one virtual desktop app as far as I am concerned.

20- Infotag Magic: a freeware shell extension that tweaks Windows to display informational tooltips when hovering over a range of filetypes, including audio files, text files, shortcuts, and executables (see screenshot).

File extension types supported: wp3, wma, ape, and Ogg Vorbis (for audio), txt, ini, log, bat, diz, bak, and que files (for text files), exe, dll, ocx and lnk (for executables/shortcuts). I would have liked to have tooltips support for video files; if that’s something you want it is provided in the latest beta of MediaInfo.

21- AudioShell: a freeware shell extension that allows you to view and edit audio files tags directly in Windows Explorer (for individual files or groups of files). It adds tabs in the audio file’s right-click “properties” dialog that enable you to edit tag information on the fly. (Including album art, which you can easily import into the Audioshell tab and save it into the audio file itself.)

Audioshell will also display your audio file tag information inside tooltips when you mouse-over your audio files, and will add additional audio related columns that can be displayed in Windows explorer’s folder “detail” view (e.g. Title, Album, Artist, etc.)

22- Stick: is an interesting freeware app that places dockable tabs on the sides of your screen that can contain a variety of functions, such as notes, RSS feeds, shortcuts for apps or favorite folders, etc.

The nice thing about this one is that the “dockable tab” effect works really well, and its a very interesting innovation on the typical Windows user interface.

23- Xentient Thumbnails: a freeware that automatically changes the icons for image files to appear as little thumbnail previews of the images themselves.

This means that the even in icon or tile view each individual image will display a thumbnail for its icon that reflects a preview of the image itself. It also means that your image files will display little thumbnails for their icons even when placed on the desktop (a nifty and rather unusual effect).

24- Thumbview: you might have noticed that some image file types (e.g. JPG, GIF, BMP and a few others). display preview thumbnails in Windows Explorer while others do not . What Thumbview does is provide support for 19 additional image file types such that Explorer is able to provide thumbnail previews for those as well. It also adds tooltips for image files in Explorer such that hovering over an image file displays its type, dimension, bitdepth, and filesize.

25- WinCDemu: a small, free, extension that adds to Windows the ability to mount disk images as virtual drives simply by double clicking on the image files. Supports .ISO, .IMG, .CUE, .BIN and .RAW disk images and an unlimited number of virtual drives.

Runs in the background with no user interface, and seamlessly integrates disk image files into Windows.

26- Allsnap: imagine that your windows had a little “magnetic field” around them such that if they came sufficiently close to each other they would simply snap together. This effect, which we have all seen employed by various apps (such as Winamp for example) is exactly what this freeware does. Very cool, and also configurable so that you could set exactly how many pixels around each window this “magnetic field ” should be in effect.

There is also, interestingly, a portable version of this app which I just discovered.

27- TeraCopy: this free program integrates itself with Windows to deliver accelerated file copying in many instances as well as the ability to pause and resume copy operations. It comes especially handy when copying or moving a large number of files such that the entire process will not break down if it encounters, say, a file error.

You have the option to set whether to have TeraCopy perform all file copy operations by default (which is what I do), just when invoked by the user, or only when the “Caps Lock” key is on.

28- HOBComment: this free Windows extension adds a context menu entry that allows users to instantly add a comment to files and folders (yes, folders, which normally you wouldn’t be able to add comments to in Windows). I’ve been looking for a long time and this remains my favorite way to add comments to files and folders (despite relatively sophisticated freeware general file tagging apps such as Tag2Find and Taggedfrog.

The one conspicuous drawback that afflicts HOBComment though is that it is sometimes unable to add comments to some file types, such as .MSI and MS Office files (forcing me to resort to right clicking properties/summary/comment in Windows to do so).

29- StyleFolder: this freeware adds a simple entry to the Windows context menu that makes it possible to change folder icons. And while there are a handful such apps, I like StyleFolder because it is simple and unassuming; but, more importantly, it saves the icon info within the folder rather than simply pointing to it, which means that folders retain their new, customized icons when they are moved to portable media or across the network, etc.

30- Unlocker: have you ever tried to move, delete, or perform other operations on a file or folder only to be notified that it is locked because it is being used by another process? Enter freeware Unlocker to the rescue. This software can (a) identify the process(es) that are using your files/folders and holding them hostage, and (b) will let you “unlock” these or optionally to kill the offending process so its no longer running.

Unlocker installs a convenient entry in the Windows context menu that can be used to right click any file or folder and investigate the processes that might be working with it, if any.

31- Send To Toys: this app will breathe new life into the “send to” entry in Windows’ context menu by making it extremely useful and customizable. There are a number of commands that “Send To Toys” can introduce into the send to menu, including send to clipboard, send to command prompt, send to run, send to trash, and send to quicklaunch. But what makes this program really useful is the ability to add your favorite folders to the send to menu, whereby you can quickly copy or move any item to them (pressing Shift as you use the send to folder command will move your files/items rather than copy them, while pressing ctrl+shift will copy a shortcut).

32- RBTray: minimize any window to the system tray by right-clicking on the “minimize” button. Simple with fairly low resource consumption.

What I like about this one is that is coexists very well with other Windows enhancements (aforementioned Sizer, for example), when some other apps like it do not.

33- Trayconizer: this interesting free app is for those programs that you use that you wished would simply minimize to the system tray every time by default. Trayconizer can create special, modified shortcuts to these apps that, when run, will make these always minimize to the system tray without any further intervention by the user.

34- Flashfolder: this freeware apps makes it easy to access your favorite folders in Windows’ open/save dialog (as well as that of MS Office). What is notable about FlashFolder, aside from it being extremely useful, is that in terms of coolness/form factor alone it scores extremely high points with me (check out the toolbar that add overlays on top of the open/save dialog in the screenshot to the right).

Aside from favorite folders, Flashfolder can also quickly access recently used folders and a number of other functions.

35- Folder Guide: this freeware lets you right click to access your favorite folders. Works on the desktop, in Windows’ open/save dialog, as well as the MS Office open/save dialog.

There are two ways to add your favorite folders to “Folder Guide”; from the settings, you could browse to the folder of your choice, or simply right click on the folder you want to add and use the “Folder Guide” context menu entry.

36- Shock Bookmark: another freeware app that, similar to Folder Guide above installs your favorite folders in your right click context menu and enables quick access to these on your desktop and in the Windows open/save dialog (but, interestingly, not in the MS Office open/save dialog for this one). Shock Bookmark goes one further in that it lets you access favorite apps as well as favorite files in the context menu in addition to folders.

Like Folder Guide, Shock Bookmark allows you to right click on a folder in order to add it to the app’s context menu. However, it also features “copy to” and “move to” functions on right click for quickly moving or copying your files to your bookmarked folders (similar to “Send to Toys” above).

37-Open Target Shell Extension: [XP only]. This extension adds a right click context menu entry to Windows that shows up when you right-click on shortcut files, giving the option to instantly open the target folder where the item actually resides. This saves the user a few steps that would otherwise be required right-clicking properties then “find target” on XP.

Vista users do not need this as this functionality is already built into that OS.

38- MenuApp: this tiny free app lets you create shortcuts to folders that, when clicked on, display a browsable, cascading-style menu similar to the Windows Start menu. You can create a shortcut folder any folder(s) you like and place them in all sorts of convenient places, such as the quick launch menu area, on your desktop, or within your favorite launcher app, etc.

39- Visual Subst: this freeware presents an interesting way to access favorite folders by mapping them as virtual drives that you could access from “My Computer”.

The idea is that this makes it easier to access these using on or two clicks from open/save dialogs or by navigating from anywhere all the way back to the root drive.

40- Visual Task Tips: [XP only] a lightweight freeware utility that brings thumbnail previews to minimized task bar items in Windows XP. Simply hover over a minimized taskbar button to display a preview pop-up (Windows Vista already has this functionality built in).

Check out my original Freewaregenius site design template in the screenshot!

41- Explorer BreadCrumbs: [XP only] a free Windows explorer extension that add a “breadcrumbs navigation” toolbar for folders in XP. The breadcrumb navigation method is already built into Windows Vista; it comprises a flat path structure whereby each “node” in the path is interactive and can be navigated at will in order to quickly move back and forth across the folder structure.

Note: QT Address Bar is another freeware that delivers the same functionality.

42- VSO Image Resizer: delivers image conversion and resizing as a function within the Windows explorer context menu. What is interesting about VSO Image resizer, aside from the fact that it does a great job, is that it allows for the creation of different size/format/quality profiles that make it easy for the user to right click and quickly perform multiple, different resizing operation while accessing their commonly used settings. Also allows for image processing in batch.

43- XnView Shell Extension: freeware that embeds a number of image-related operations into the Windows context menu, including an interesting image preview inside the right click menu. Other functions include the ability to edit image IPTC metadata and to resize image and/or convert them to other image formats on-the-fly

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This article will describe an easy, straightforward way to convert DVD videos, including commercial/encrypted DVDs, into any of a handful of popular video formats; specifically iPhone/iPod/PSP (MP4 or M4V), as well as AVI. It will use two freeware titles in the conversion process: Handbrake and DVD43.

If you’re looking for an extremely easy and relatively fast method to convert your DVDs into video files for use on your computer or in your portable device then read on. The method described here is notable for the following reasons:

1. It is written in English (not geekese) for the layman and advanced users alike.
2. Unsure what decisions to make? Do not worry; I will suggest decisions for you based on my favorite configuration (see “important note” below”).
3. You will be able to convert commercial/encrypted DVDs (or at least 99% or them).
4. You will NOT need to rip (i.e. copy) your DVD to your hard drive first. Conversion will be done straight from your DVD, which means that (a) you will NOT need 5-8 gigs of free hard drive space to rip your DVD onto, and (b) you will save the time that otherwise would be spent waiting for the ripping process to finish.
5. Uses all freeware programs; Handbrake and DVD43. Both are excellent and have been around for a while. Handbrake now comes with all codecs/filters needed for the encoding process, so you will not need to install any codecs or filters separately.

Important note: this article will describe an example where I convert a DVD to iPhone MP4 format using a handful of settings that I like to use; however, I will also indicate what to do if converting to AVI as well. Also note that at any point you could customize the settings as they come along to something that may be more to your liking.

Download and install Handbrake and DVD43. Note, however, that if you do not intend to convert commercial DVDs (i.e. if you are converting DVDs that are copy protected) you will not need DVD43 and you can skip it altogether (and jump to step 3). Also note that both of these programs are 100% free. DVD43 will require a restart after installation. 

Step2

Run DVD43 (it automatically sets itself to start with Windows, so its probably already running; you can change that if you like using a program like Starter). You will see a yellow smiley in the system tray indicating that DVD43 is running. Insert your DVD into the drive; after some processing, the smiley icon will turn green, indicating that all is well and that DVD43 is successfully decrypting the DVD.

Troubleshooting step 2: if the green smiley doesn’t appear (or you get a message saying cannot decrypt), try the following

• Exit DVD43, take the DVD out of the drive; re-insert the DVD, run DVD43. Wait for it to re-process.
• If the above doesn’t work, try rebooting, then repeat the steps above.
• In some cases, DVD43 will simply not succeed because it cannot beat the protection (I haven’t ever come across this, though). If this happens, it would be for brand new blockbuster type movies whose encryption may be too new. If your DVD is not new and/or is some obscure title, the problem is likely not be the encryption; focus on troubleshooting other issues.

Run Hanbrake. Click “Source” in the top left and select the correct DVD source.

Go to the “Title” dropdown and select the title that you are interested in converting. Most DVDs will contain a handful of titles (these include the movie itself, previews, menus, interviews, behind-the-scenes extras, etc.) The DVD I am using for illustration contains no less than 28 different entries (see screenshot).You can convert any content you like; but you’ll have to figure out what’s what.

A really simple way to identify the title to select is through the displayed time duration. In my example here, it is obvious that the movie is “Title1″, since its time duration is 1:29:27, so that is the one I select.

For TV series or other DVDs that contain more than a single title of interest, your guiding principle would be the same: it will be fairly easy to identify the episodes because they will run 30-45 minutes or so each and they will have more or less the same duration.

Step5

In the “presets” area on the right hand side, select “iPhone & iPod Touch”. If that’s not the format you want, you can do one of two things; either (a) select that format for now; you will get to change specifics later, or; (b) find and select the format you want from the available options.

I strongly suggest (a), such that what you will see will correspond to the screenshots provided here.

Click “browse” next to the box labeled destination, find your desired destination folder, and type in your desired filename (and extension). Or use the file format dropdown to make sure you’ve got the correct output format.

A note on formats: MP4 and M4V are the same format (M4V simply denotes that this MP4 file is a video file, but is often not recognized by some media players). Note that iTunes will recognize both, but I personally prefer to use MP4.

AVI Format: if you want to get an .AVI format file, make sure to specify AVI in this step, using the dropdown.

Step7

Next, in the “Picture Settings” tab, move down to “Width/Height”. If you have an iPhone/iPod touch or a newer generation iPod type 640 in the left (width) box. Leave the “height” box blank. This will prompt Handbrake to calculate the height for your video based on the correct aspect ratio of the title, and your resulting video will look right and will not be lopsided or resized incorrectly.

This is the only input you will make in this tab. Leave everything else alone.

Important note on width=640: the reason I use this value is that the resulting video will play nicely and at an excellent quality both on most iPods/portable devices as well as on the computer (i.e. I like to create one file that will work everywhere, and will look decent on a computer screen).

Note, however, that although iPhone/iPod Touch and all newer generation iPods (5G onwards) can accept video sizes up to 640 pixels, iPhones/Ipod Touchs will only display this video at a resolution of 480 pixels wide, while older iPods will only display a resolution of 320 pixels wide. Pre-5G iPods cannot handle video files with 640 pixels resolution at all, therefore if you have an older device than a Fifth Generation iPod you must use “320″ as the width value rather than “640″.

Here you have to do 3 things:

1- Set the target size in megs (under quality). Here are some guidelines

• For a “normal” feature film use 700 megs. Your video will be of excellent quality and if you want to burn it to CD to get it off your hard drive it will fit on a single disk.
• For typical TV series episode use 230 megs (such that you could fit three on a single CD) or 350 megs for better quality (and you could fit two episodes on a single CD). I usually go with the former, and typically the quality is excellent.

2- Under “Advanced Encoding Settings” check two-pass encoding. This will make for a better quality video but at the expense of longer processing time. Do it!

3- Select video codec using the dropdown

• Select MPEG4-Xvid. Yes you could use Xvid to encode MP4s, which some people do not know; you do not need to use H264 (although yes H264 it is much much more common for MP4s – you can use H264 if you want to).
• For AVI files: use Xvid, plain and simple, if your intended output is an AVI file.

Leave all else as is.

1- Go to the Bitrate (Kbps) column and use the dropdown to select 160 Kbps. This is the maximum quality that the iPod can use and I always select it; I advise you to do the same as believe you me there is NOTHING more annoying than trying to watch a video on a portable device in a public place where the din of outside noises is more audible than the audio from the video that you are trying to watch.

2- Subtitles:

• If you do not need subtitles (i.e. the audio is in your language), do not select or check anything and skip to Step10 …. or
• If you think there may be scenes in a foreign language, but the video is mainly in the language you want, select your desired language from the dropdown and click on “Forced Subtitles Only”. This will result in burned-in subtitles only for those scenes that may require it.
• If you are converting a foreign film, and/or you want subtitles visible on-screen at all times, then select the language you want from the dropdown; in this case do NOT click on “Forced Subtitles Only”

Note on subtitles: any subtitles created with Hanbrake will be permantently “burned into” your video. Handrbake does not produce a seperate subtitles file.

This one is easy; uncheck the “Create Chapter markers” box.

Unless of course you want chapter markers displayed for some reason, inwhich case keep it checked. These markers will be displayed on-screen in the same way burned subtitles would. Moreover, if you want to you can edit/customize the “labels” that you want to display for each chapter marker under “Chapter Name”

You are now ready to start the conversion process. You can do one of two things

1. Start the process (go to step 13)
2. Add another title or titles for “batch encoding”; i.e. have Handbrake schedule another conversion or conversions to be executed back-to-back after this one.

Batch encoding allows you to schedule another conversion or string of conversions to be performed serially one and after the other.

In the process described here, for example, you could batch-convert multiple titles that exist on the DVD such as multiple episodes or extra materials that you are interested in.

How to do it: click “Add to Queue”, then select a new title to convert from the title dropdown, enter a new destination file, and customize the settings for the new title as per the steps above. Press “Show Queue” to review the list of conversions that you have scheduled.

Once you’re ready to start the process, go to Step13.

Note on multiple episodes/TV series: the beauty of scheduling multiple episodes/TV series in batch is that for each title that you add to the process you do not have to change any of the settings (assuming you want the same settings to apply to all episodes). All you would need to do is select title > enter a new destination filename > add to queue, and keep doing this until all episodes on the DVD are covered.

Step13

Click on “Start” in the upper left to start the conversion process.

A DOS window will appear which reveals what is going on under the hood. The time this will take to finish will vary depending on the titles you are converting and how powerful your system is. On average I would say it takes 2.5 hours per movie.

Happy Converting  .

This posting will discuss which of the following three programs deserves the title of “best freeware antivirus program”: Avira Antivir, Avast, or AVG. My conclusion: all three are very worthy contenders that can hold their own or surpass any heavyweight for-pay antivirus; however Anitvir and Avast are definitely in the first tier, while AVG is a close second tier.

There’s been a vigorous debate going on in the little “cbox” message box (in the sidebar) over which freeware antivirus program is best. This posting will explore this issue more closely. The objective is to go beyond the ubiquitous “I have used program x for y years now and it has kept me completely virus free” to a more substantial comparison.

The findings presented here are not my original work but come from a single source: AV-comparative.org’s antivirus comparison tests conduced in Nov 2008 (test #20) and Feb 2009 (test #21), which are the latest as of this writing. It is somewhat difficult to reference these as sources because the av-comparatives site disallows direct linking to the test results and requests that all links be to its root domain (presumably because new tests are always published and they do not want links to results that may be obsolete).

By way of comparison and to provide some perspective I will also include some of the numbers for two of the best paid antivirus programs: Kaspersky and ESET NOD32.

Where AVG has a good advantage is in the number of false positives (lower than both Antivir and Avast, both of which exhibit comparable numbers of false positives). However, AVG scores another strike against it in terms of its scanning speed, which is significantly slower than the other two.

The freeware version of Antivir displays an advertisement on every update, which is rather undesirable; however, this can be easily disabled (look here, here, or here). It also “does not support email scanning”; however, this is also a non-issue in my opinion, a red-herring designed to scare less tech-savvy users into purchasing the paid version. The reason I say this is a non-issue is because although Antivir may not scan your email for virus as it downloads, it will still protect you from it afterwards, not just during normal scans as it will also intercept it once it is on-disk and/or if and when it tries to act up.  In fact email scanning as such may be completely redundant and a waste of time; see this article for more info.

Antivir is my favorite freeware antivirus. It is best in terms of performance and, with the recent addition of an antispyware component it has become even more desirable. However, if asked to recommend a freeware antivirus Antivir comes with too many caveats and explanations (the nag screen, the email scanning (non)issue). It is easier to recommend Avast, as it provides comparable protection and performance, and is an excellent product.

AVG is my third choice. It also provides excellent protection and has the edge with respect to the least number of false positives, but its performance and detection rates lag behind the other two.

The numbers (and other issues considered):

1. Detection Rate / on-demand scans
2. Detecton Rate / predictive “heuristic” detection
3. Number of false positives
4. On-demand scanning speed
5. Versions tested
6. Links and downloads

• Avira Antivir: 99.7% detection rate
• Avast: 98.2%
• AVG: 93.0%
• Kaspersky (*): 97.1%
• ESET NOD32 (*): 97.6%

* Note: no free version of these offered. They are listed here to give ’perspective’.

The data seems to show that overall the detection rates are very similar (the differences are unlikely to be meaningful), with the exception of AVG which has a somewhat lower rate of detection than the others.

• Avira Antivir: 71% (over 1 week), 67% (over 4 weeks)
• Avast: 40% (over 1 week), 39% (over 4 weeks)
• AVG: 43% (over 1 week), 40% (over 4 weeks)
• Kaspersky(*): 71% (over 1 week), 60% (over 4 weeks)
• ESET NOD32(*): 54% (over 1 week), 51% (over 4 weeks)

The results above seem to show that when handling yet unknown threats (malicious code that is so brand new that it has not been added to the program’s database), Antivir and Kaspersky have an advantage over the others.

• Avira Antivir: 24
• Avast: 28
• AVG: 17
• Kaspersky (*): 14
• ESET NOD32 (*): 13

Interestingly, Avast and Antivir have significantly higher false positives than the two paid programs, with AVG having the lowest number of false positives of all three freeware antivirus programs.

• Avira Antivir: 13.6 MB/sec
• Avast: 15.4 MB/sec
• AVG: 6.8 MB/sec
• Kaspersky (*): 13.3 MB/sec
• ESET NOD32 (*): 13.2 MB/sec

On this metric AVG significantly lags behind the others, who are otherwise very similar, with Avast having a slight overall advantage.

• Avira Antivir: 8.2.0.374 (test 21), 8.1.0.362 (test 20)
• Avast: 4.8.1335 (test 21), 4.8.1229 (test 20)
• AVG: 8.0.234 (test 21),  8.0.156 (test 20)
• Kaspersky (*): 8.0.0.506a (test 21), 8.0.0.454 (test 20)
• ESET NOD32 (*): 3.0.684.0 (test 21), 3.0.669.0 (test 20)

• Avira Antivir free: see my Mar 2007 review of Antivir here.
• Avast free: free registration required
• AVG free

  .

When creating this list I kept my focus on general use programs that everyone might need rather than specialized programs that have a smaller audience. I thought about programs that I always will install on all my computers no matter what, but also about lesser know programs that are not the typical freeware lists keep instinctively repeating (e.g. OpenOffice, Audacity, GIMP, Paint.Net, VLC, Firefox, CCleaner, etc.)

Want to share your own lesser known top-10 “must have” freeware list? Please do so in the comment section!

The list :

1. Everything: lightning-fast free desktop search for files and folders.
2. Digsby: multi-protocol free desktop IM client, email notifier for regular and web mail, and social networking tracker.
3. Returnil: a free virtualization software that provides an “undo” option for your system.
4. Q-Dir: a multi-pane free file manager that offers a good range of functions and an excellent user experience.
5. Launchy: free search-box based launcher for your apps and files.
6. The KMPlayer: media and DVD player that is feature rich and will play anything you throw at it.
7. Threatfire: free, effective antispyware that offers real-time protection and behavior based (heuristic) detection of malicious software.
8. ArsClip: free, feature rich clipboard manager with hotkey-access from any application. Can store “permanent” clips for frequently used items.
9. Xobni: free Outlook extension that provides superfast searches in Outlook and threaded conversations.
10. 3RVX: free hotkey and mouse enabled volume control with cool visual effects.

Descriptions, screenshots and mini-reviews provided below.

1. Everything

Ever wished for desktop search that was instantaneous, that did not make you wait as it scanned the hard drive on-demand or to build an index? Everything is that program. It integrates into the Windows’ context menu to enable quick searches within any folder. It makes finding any file or folder anywhere on your computer so quick and easy that … it really can change the way you use your computer.

This program is so good that if you do not have NTFS-formatted partitions I strongly recommend that you convert to NTFS just to use it. “Everything” is simply amazing freeware; however, note that it does not search for content inside files, and will only find files and folders.

2. Digsby

Supports the following IM protocols: AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, Google Talk, Jabber, and Facebook Chat; the following email protocols: IMAP, POP3, Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo Mail, AOL/AIM Mail; the following social networks: Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and LinkedIn accounts. If the social network you are interested in is not on the list don’t fret – it will probably be added sooner or later.

This software came out of nowhere to knock my beloved Pidgin IM client off its perch. Imagine having all of your IM accounts, email accounts, and many of the most popular social networks in the same place, with messages being displayed on your desktop whenever there’s any activity in any of these almost in real time.

What I like about Digsby, aside from the convenience of having all of my accounts on the desktop in the same place, is the following:

• Easy access to your messages: hover inside the Digsby sidebar over the account you want to check and your inbox will pop-up, cascading-menu style. No need to log into your account.
• Handles multiple webmail accounts from the same provider: it checks my multiple gmail accounts without hitch.
• One-click automatic login into your webmail: just click on the “inbox” link or on a desired message and Digsby will automatically your log into your account in your default browser.
• Real-time desktop notifications: see screenshot above

Note on downloading: I recently realized that the Digsby installer will ask if you want to install an entire host of services/browser toolbars, etc. If you do not want these make sure to decline them (I strongly recommend that you decline).

3. Returnil

Many people ask me how I test so many program without messing up my computer; Returnil is the answer to this question. Once enabled it will let you install (or uninstall) any software on your machine, open or run unknown attachments or surf unknown or unsafe websites and then, on reboot, will return your primary partition exactly to the state it was before you started the virtualization (actually, it will not “return” your partition to its former state, as that state never changes to begin with; after enabling protection, Returnil simply writes all changes onto a virtual layer that is eventually discarded).

The only exception where you will not be able to test a piece software is, obviously, when installing requires a reboot, in which case the reboot will merely get you back to the previous state.

4. Q-Dir

Some of the functions that Q-Dir provides: intuitive access to multiple file panes, file and folder filtering, easy access to favorite folders, saving “views” with multiple folders and panels, media previews, etc.

Q-Dir is just great, and even if file-manager type programs do not make much sense to you (they didn’t to me either a few months ago) I suggest you give it a try. I am actually using this one as a direct replacement to Windows Explorer (i.e. I double click on a folder in Explorer and it opens with Q-Dir). More info in my original review.

5. Launchy

Imagine launching any type you want simply by typing its name in a searchbox. That’s what Launchy does. I’ve said this before: once you start using this program you will wonder how it was that you ever managed without it. Not only does it make launching the app you want super easy but also gives you the sense of being completely on top of things. Plus it looks supercool.

Note that Launchy indexes the shortcuts that exists in your start menu. If you want it to look in other places (e.g. a folder where you save all your portable apps) then make sure you add that to the list of places it will index. Also, if you would like to use Launchy to index certain types of files aside from shortcuts and exes (e.g. to access your MP3 collection) make sure to point it not just to the right directory but tell it which file types you would like it to scan as well.

This program has spawned a long line of imitators (and may itself have come after a couple of other similar indexing launchers). Some of these have added quite a few bells and whistles to the mix (not to mention skins) but Launchy is still my favorite.

Supported formats: VCD, DVD, AVI, MKV, Ogg, OGM, 3GP, MPEG-1/2/4, WMV, RealMedia, QuickTime and others.

You’ve tried VLC and GOM, now try this one. You won’t be disappointed. Aside from its reliability The KM Player also offers excellent video quality for most media formats. Its new “Album Art” view offers iTunes carousel-style thumbnail browsing of media files/videos (see image to the right).

If you are accustomed to (and tired of) programs that keep scanning your computer over and over, Threatfire is a great option. The reason this is so is in the way it operates: less scanning of vast stretches of hard drive, and more examining what programs are trying to do in real time in order to stop malicious behavior.

Threatfire, which is brought to us from the same people behind the terrific “Spyware Doctor” (payware) is very good at what it does: aside from an antivirus program, I use this as my primary line of difence against spyware/malware and it has performed beautifully. If you are looking for fantastic freeware antispyware with real-time protection this is it!

Copying-and-pasting is such a terrific invention which we take for granted (until, for example, the makers of the iPhone somehow forget to provide that functionality, but I digress). A clipboard manager such as ArsClip enables you to copy many items from different places and to paste any clip where you need it as necessary, freeing you from Windows’ single-clipboard-item restriction.

Here are some of my favorite ArsClip functions:

• Paste text to image: you can convert some tables (clipped from programs like Excel) to images quickly. See image to the right.
• Portable: unzip and use, no need to install.
• Permanent clips: you can make clips permanent (or “sticky”) so you always have access to them.
• Quickly paste a clipping minus the formatting: CTRL+Alt+V by default.
• Captures text, rich text, images, and files: with unicode and HTML support.
• All-keyboard usage: each clipping has an associated keyboard shortcut that is conveniently displayed next to it.
• Other options: keypress emulation, form mode for pasting into multiple fields.

Although this is an absolute must-have program for me, it was hard to choose ArsClip because there are at least two clipboard management programs that are at least just as worthy to be in a top-ten list: Ditto and ClipX. But I’ve used ArsClip for some time and can vouch for it.

I had to put this one in this list even though it is only currently available to Outlook users (versions for other email/PIMS clients are reportedly in the works). Bill Gates apparently called this “the next generation of social networking”, which in my opinion is somewhat of an exaggeration.But not too much – compared to the standard Outlook experience Xobni is indeed a revolution. Imagine an Outlook search box that actually works for anything you type into it, imagine search results that come up in an instant, imagine being able to view a history of your “conversasations” with another person all in the same place. You don’t need to imagine any of this if you install Xobni, as that is exactly what it provides.

I am including this program in this list because ever since I installed it to test it I have come to rely on and use it heavily. And although there are a number of similar free programs I like the user experience that 3RVX provides (tranlsation: it is pretty darn cool). Note for volume tweaking fans: I use 3RVX with another volume-related utility, OSD Mute, which simply displays a “Mute On” message on the desktop if the volume it muted).

Note: uninstall any previous versions before installing a new one. At the moment of this writing the developer’s home page seems to be down but they have kindly made the program download links available anyway.

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• PowerPoint to video to DVD: using “EM PowerPoint to Video Converter Free” (PPT to AVI), then doing the DVD authoring using DVD Flick (AVI to DVD).
• PowerPoint to Flash SWF to AVI to DVD: using iSpring Converter Free (PPT to SWF); then using either SWF2AVI or CamStudio (SWF to AVI), and finally DVD Flick (AVI to DVD).
• PowerPoint to JPEG to DVD: using PowerPoint Image Copier (PPT to JPG) then authoring a DVD slideshow using DVD Slideshow GUI (JPG to DVD).

Notes:

• All of the methods described here require that PowerPoint be installed on your machine.
• While I use PPT to refer to PowerPoint files you could in fact convert any PowerPoint file extension that your version of PowerPoint supports (e.g. PPS, or PPTS, PPTM, etc. if using PowerPoint 2007).
• It took a while to research and write this post so if you like this post please Digg or Stumble it.

I am going to segment the process of converting a PowerPoint file into 2 parts: (1) capturing the visual part of the presentation, and (2) packaging it into a DVD.

1. PPT to AVI: EM PowerPoint to Video Converter Free .

• Experiment first to see if everything works out as you want it to; note that in testing this application I have encountered instances where a visual element in the original presentation is incorrectly placed in the output video.
• This program installs a media player and DVD burner in the program directory, and these cannot be uninstalled seperately. The DVD burner component, moreover, requires VOB or MPG files as inputs to author a DVD, but refused to burn my resulting presentations when I converted them to MPG.
• Burning to DVD: see “DVD Flick” in “Part2 below – Packaging the presentation to DVD”.

2. PPT to SWF: iSpring Converter Free . This is a powerful free PowerPoint extension that can convert PowerPoint files to flash (SWF) files. Some notes on this one:

• Output: the resulting SWF file when I tested this program was 720×526 in resolution ; it did not offer me any resize options. iSpring will preserve all animations, transition effects, sounds, and videos that may be in the PPT file but will not capture any rehearsed narration that may have been saved into the PPT file (this is available in the paid version only).
• HTML/Player: iSpring will also generate an HTML page that incorporates a player to play the converted SWF within your browser (or, alternately, uploaded and played from a web site).
• Settings / auto play: if you plan to eventually convert your SWF to a video file (AVI) in an automated fashion using a SWF to video converter, in the “Publish” settings, make sure to check “change all slides automatically” and “auto-play on-click animations”. This will ensure that your resulting SWF file plays continuously and does not wait for user input to advance (and therefore behaves like a video rather than being interactive).
• Settings / manual play: if you plan to convert your SWF to a video file (AVI) using a screen recording program and would like to set the pace/speed of the presentation manually, uncheck “change all slides automatically” and “auto-play on-click animations”. This will give you on-click control over animation events and slide transitions.
• If you’ve not sure what I mean by the “settings” above, see the “SWF to AVI” sections (2a) and (2b) in Part 2 below.

3. PPT to JPG: PowerPoint Image Copier . This little free gem will process a PowerPoint file and output each slide and/or animation event as a series of JPG’s.

So, for example, a slide with 2 animation events (say click: get a bullet point, and then click: a chart flies in) will output 3 jpg’s with PowerPoint Image Copier (the initial slide with just the title, the slide with the bullet point displayed, and the slide with the bullet point and chart together).

This program is a small, no-install program that is able to capture all of the visual content of a PowerPoint presentation as distinct JPG images; on the other hand it will not capture any animations or transitions that may have been used and certainly not any sound or narration.

PowerPoint Image Copier works in a rather quirky way: it will open your PowerPoint presentation using PowerPoint in full-screen mode and then proceed to scroll through all the slides and events and take snapshots of them. However, any on-screen events that may occur during this process will also be captured (for example your IM client window suddenly popping up on-screen, etc.) – so make sure to have a controlled environment where nothing else is going to interrupt the on-screen activity.

Have you ever been in a situation where you where prevented access to certain sites on the internet because you were behind a company firewall or because of a restriction imposed by your Internet Service Provider? If so, you might be able to use the solutions provided below as a workaround.

Although I’ve been asked variants of the question “how do I surf blocked sites from my job” often enough to decide to investigate some potential solutions, let me begin by saying that I present these without experience in a restricted internet situation myself and therefore can not attest to the efficacy of the solutions below.

1- Use a Proxy service site: such as hidemyass.com, can’t bust me, or anonr.com. Many of these sites in fact all belong to the same network and work in the same way: they will act as a go-between between you and the sites you want to access.

The easiest way to find these is to search Google for “proxy service sites” or a similar keyword. Once you are able to access one of these sites you will find an address box where you can enter the URL for the site you want and the proxy site will grab the content for you and present it within the proxy site URL, allowing you to surf your desired content while its actual URL is being masked by the proxy site. Note that some of these sites will also provide anonymous internet surfing by disguising your IP address and location info.

Click on the image to the right for a list of some proxy service sites. Bear in mind that your corporate firewall or ISP may have already blacklisted some proxy sites, preventing you from accessing them. In this case you might simply search for some new ones that may have not been blacklisted or considering another solution.

2- Web2Mail

As you might imagine, “browsing” your desired site using this service involves receiving the initial email, clicking on a link on that page that most likely be blocked in your browser but that you would use as the subject line in another email to Web2Mail, and repeating. Not the highest quality surfing experience, but will work in a pinch.

One thing I might add: the Web2mail servers are at times unresponsive and there was a point when I was testing it a few days ago and having my emails sent back to me. Since then the issue seems to have been fixed and it is working just fine.

3- Get internet from your home machine via VPN

There are many free VPN software options: OpenVPN (and GUI version, pictured above), UltraVNC, TightVNC, LogMeIn Free, and Windows’ own built in VPN. This post is not intended to be a tutorial on how to set this up, but if you search the internet you will find a lot of further information on this. If you know of a good tutorial or tutorials on this please post them in the comments.

4- Use an internet anonymizer

Aside for TOR, another option is JAP, which I which operates more or less under the same principle.

5- Use Google

• View a cached version of your site. Search for the site and/or webpage you seek in Google and, once you have found it in the search results, click on the “Cached” link which will display a cached version that Google has indexed previously. The drawback: in most cases this will be an earlier version of the site that may not up-to-date, depending on how frequently the site content is updated.
• Use Google reader: if your target site has an RSS feed you can sign up for a Google account and use Google reader to grab the RSS feeds from the site. Google reader presents a couple of advantages (1) you can add a subscription to the site using only the site’s URL, and Google will find the appropriate feed URL for you, and (2) in many cases it will display more than the 10 or so posts that are contained in the feed itself (Google probably caches earlier feeds). A potential drawback is if your site publishes partial feeds rather than the post of page in its entirety, inwhich case an RSS reader will be of limited value.

Do you know of other solutions to this problem? Let us know in the comments.

I’m a big fan of turn-based strategy and war games. If pressed I would go on record as saying that Sid Meier’s Civilization series are the best ever created… and while I’m at it let me also venture my opinion that turn-based strategy games offer an inherently better design that real-time strategy games, even when the latter profess to be a better representation of what happens in the real world.

This posting could have been entitled “19 games I really would have liked to
play had I had the time”; I wanted to present an overview of the many free turn based strategy games that I’ve come across. Note that although I usually personally try all the software I post on Freewaregenius, I only played a sub-set of these. Finally, it took a while to research and write this article, so please Stumble and/or Digg it! This list assumes the following guidelines:

• Will include empire building and/or war games only; no squad based or shoot em ups (e.g. Worms-style), or role playing games.
• Turn based: no real-time-strategy (RTS) games will be included.
• Focus on standalone, playable games rather than game engines.

1- FreeCiv: inspired by the Civilization series of games, FreeCiv is a an open source turn based strategy game that most closely approximates Civ2 (although it also includes elements from the others in the series, as for example “national borders” which is equivalent to “culture” in Civ3. FreeCiv has been around for a while and has a large community following and lots of resources on the net. [Open source, single player, LAN or internet multiplayer. Windows, Linux, Mac and a number of others]. Go here to download.

Also check out Longturn, which organizes multiplayer FreeCiv games over the internet where each turn takes 24 hours, for those of us who do not have hours every day to invest in playing but wouldn’t mind spending a few minutes each day to play a single turn.

2- TripleA: is a free, Java-based turn based strategy game based on the popular Axis and Allies boardgame that looks very good indeed. Documentation is somewhat scant but you are familiar with Axis and Allies you’ll be in good shape, or you can find a guide for TripleA newbies on the AAZone fansite. [Open source, single player or multiplayer over the internet. Windows, Linux, Mac]. Go here to download.

3- Stick Figure Strategy: a turn based strategy game that could be considered a casual game in that it can be learned in a mere 15 minutes. Everything is kept simple, from the handful or rules to the relatively short list of units, but that only serves to enhance the game playing experience. And despite the simple, perfunctory graphics it still somehow manages to look cool [Open source, single player. Windows]. Go here to download.

4- Weewar: this is a free browser based multiplayer turn based strategy wargame on a hexadecimal grid. A friend of mine loves this game and I’ll take his word for it that it’s pretty cool. Unfortunately, and although Weewar allows its users to create their own maps, it requires an upgrade to a “pro” version to allow you to play these. All the same there will be a good number of maps for you to play for free at any point in time.

Due to it’s serial turn-based nature some games could potentially take a long time. Once a player finishes his turn others are notified by email, or you can get notified through a number of desktop based tools and widgets. [Free version allows a max of 4 simultaneous games, browser based, multiplayer over the internet, requires registration]. Go here to play.

5- Eight Kingdoms: featuring 3D graphics overlaid onto an hexagonal grid, 8 Kingdoms takes you to a medieval world of warring kingdoms. Of note, as I researched this game, was the diverse set of units and downloadable maps. The website lists a number of “significant” features of this game, including the “realistic projection of terrains and surfaces which influence upon movement, realistic model of weather, well-developed computation of fights, including counter-attacks, visibility and experiences, siege weapons and magical units, model of money, taxes, payment to the army, units earn experiences, and artificial intelligence”.

I haven’t played this game but it looks like its a very good one. [Open Source, single and multiplayer games, Windows and Linux]. Go here to download.

6- PhpDiplomacy: a browser based implementation of the board game “Diplomacy” which professes to be “quite self explanatory”, according to the website. Another quote: “Diplomacy is a game which is easy to learn but impossible to master. The rules are all very intuitive, lots of people pick them up just by playing”. In fact all you need to get going is to learn the handful of possible moves and unit types, and the basic rules of Diplomacy. [Open Source, browser based, multiplayer using hotseat or play by email, requires registration]. Go here to play.

7- C-Evo: another Civ2 inspired game. This one boasts all the elements that you would expect in an empire building game: exploration, war, diplomacy, industry, research, etc. What the creators of this game aspired to do, however, is to create a strong, challenging AI who is out to get you from the get-go. [Freeware, single player or hotseat, Windows] Go here to download.

8- Advanced Strategic Command: an open source game modeled on the Battle Isle series of games released in the 1990’s, featuring warring units on a hexagonal grid map (what else could you possibly want?).

[Open Source, Single player against the AI and against multiplayer using hotseat or play by email. Window, Linux and Mac]. Go here to download.

9- Project W: set 50 years into the future, this game sets you as one of five nations with the objective of controlling a world set . You will need to control the territory you own, manage your army, research new technology, spy/sabotage your enemies, manage your staff (scientists, spies, generals, etc.), and of course manage your resources. Features multiple units, buildings, and techs, variable AI personalities, and an extensive manual.

Project W does not skimp on eye candy and looks pretty good, but requires a decent graphics card. [Freeware, Single player or multiplayer, hotseat mode, on one PC. Windows 2000, XP, Vista]. Go here to download.

10- Conqueror: a Shockwave based game set on a map of medieval Europe. It can be described as a cross between Risk and Civilization, in that you manage your territories and resources (build structures such as farms, raise/lower taxes, and have to deal with your population and keep them happy lest they revolt). A nice game in general but the AI seems to be very well behaved and non-aggressive in general while human opponents are much harder to deal with. Conqueror employs “ingenious system of simultaneous turns” which means you (mostly) don’t have to wait for the human players to finish their turns (no I don’t really know exactly how this works, if you do please explain in the comments section).

Overall a nice game but the AI players don’t seem to make sense sometimes, and the game will require that you play for extended periods of time to get to grips with it. You can play against up to 16 players (human or AI) and the games can be anywhere from 30 mins to 4 hours or so. [Free, browser based, Single player or (mostly simultaneous) multiplayer. Requires registration]. Go here to play.

11- The General: a turn based strategy game that despite its somewhat primitive graphics promises to be a “real intellectual treat” and has grown significantly in popularity it its first two years. The General offers simple controls via a tabbed interface, excellent computer AI that “is not confined to some rigid scheme of play”, and is very suited for multiplayer play with other humans (and employs a simultaneous turn processing mode).

A full game with a handful of human players can be completed in 3 to 4 hours, and the game supports “all multiplayer modes”. [Freeware, Single player or multiplayer via LAN, modem, through LPT or COM ports, on the Internet, or hotseat mode on one PC, Windows]. Go here to download.

12- TriChromic: a fairly straightforward game inspired by the “Advance Wars” series of games where you fight your opponents for control of a map. The graphics are nothing to write home about but the gameplay is fun and somewhat addictive.

TriChormic offers three types of army: Crimson has sophisticated yet expensive/slow units, Cobalt has fairly good units that are faster than Crimson but less powerful, and Pine has few unit types that are cheap yet versatile. Gameplay consists largely of grabbing resources on a map and managing the combat by managing sheer numbers as well as a kind of rock/paper/scissors calculus. The game comes with a map editor as well.

This game is easy to learn and get into with a minimal time investment. The only problem I had with it was its tendency to crash on my Win XP system, although the blame may lie with my PC rather than the game. [Freeware, Single player or multiplayer, Windows or Linux]. Go here to download.

13- FreeOrion: a galactic conquest game modeled on the “Master of Orion” games released in the 1990s. FreeOrion is a so called 4x game (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit & eXterminate) and incorporates the typical elements of an empire building game, such as nation building, etc., It also supports an open design that allows for the customization of the story elements and the game engine.

[Freeware, Single player or multiplayer, Windows, Mac,or Linux]. Go here to download.

14- People’s Tactics: a wargame on a hex grid modeled on games like Panzer General and Empire Extreme where up to 10 (human or AI) players can play. You will have to deploy land, sea, and air units (including officer units with special abilities), manage logistics and supplies, and issue “highly customizable”. This game has been called “one of the best freeware war games ever made”, and seems to have struck a perfect balance between complexity and playability.

People’s Tactics includes a random mission generator and offers downloadable scenarios (e.g. American Civil War, Spanish Civil War, etc, found in the forums). [Freeware, Single player or multiplayer hotseat or play by email, Windows]. Go here to download.

15- Lgeneral: another Panzer General inspired tactical turn based wargame. I didn’t play this one and information was sparse, but will quote the website for some of the features: “Entrenchment, rugged defense, defensive fire, surprise contacts, surrender, unit supply, weather influence, reinforcements and other implementations contribute to the tactical and strategic depth of the game.” Also offers custom downloadable scenarios. [Freeware, Single player or hotseat multiplayer against another player, Windows, Linux]. Go here to download.

16- Crimson Fields: a turn based tactical war game on a hex grid modeled on the “Battle Isle” series of games, and includes a converter that can import maps from games such as Battle Isle and History Line. Crimson Fields offers a range of mission objectives (e.g. defend a location, destroy the enemy, etc), and includes a tool for creating custom maps and campaigns. [Freeware, Single player or multiplayer network or hotseat, or play by email. Windows, Linux, Mac, and a number of others including PDA versions; Zaurus, Palm, PocketPC]. Go here to download.

17- 1848: this game is set during the Hungarian Independence War of 1848-49, which apparently was a period during which many revolutions against the Austrian Habsburg erupted and were put down. 1848 is a turn based tactical wargame on a hexadecimal grid, and features 3 nations (Hungary, Austria and Russia), 14 unit types, and 100 generals. [Freeware, Single player or multiplayer network or hotseat. Windows]. Go here to download.

18. The Battle for Wesnoth: is a very addictive turn based strategy game played on a hex grid. What makes this game good is (a) its balance between depth and complexity – a good dose of the former, and not a lot of the latter, (b) its strong AI, and (c) its just fun! Although it has elements of a role playing game I decided to include this game here because in many ways its is a strategy wargame in a fantasy setting (the other reason: its a rather good game). See the full Freewaregenius review of this game. [Open Source, Single player or nework or internet multiplayer. Windows, Linux, Mac]. Go here to download.

19- Risk: there are a number of freeware implementations of the famous Risk board game, my favorite being a Java-based version that I previously reviewed on Freewaregenius. Check it out here.

Note: if you know of a good freeware Risk implementation that you like, please let me know in the comments section!.

At first when this posting was conceived I was going to put together a list of my favorite freeware games; however, I was thinking why create another list when there are so many out there? Here’s a collection of my favorite freeware games lists:

1. Freewaregenius’ reviewed freeware games category (scroll down, multiple pages).
2. 1UP.com’s 101 Free games 2008
3. 1UP.com’s 101 Free games 2007
4. 1UP.com’s 101 Free games 2006
5. Gamespot: Adrian’s guide to 2007 freeware games
6. Wikipedia’s list of freeware games.
7. Wikipedia’s list of commercial games released as freeware
8. Wikipedia’s list of open source games
9. Wikipedia’s list of free first person shooters
10. Open source games at the Open Directory Project
11. IndieGames.com: best freeware games 2007 and 2006 . Categories include shoot em ups, platformers, arcade games, etc.
12. TIGsource: best freeware games of 2007
13. Indygamer has their own best of lists 2007; whaddyaknowit.
14. GameTap free games: you have to download and install the “GameTap Player”, and you will have to watch an ad before you play, but it’s worth it for some great games. The fantastic Psychonauts is available for free (although it’s a 1.5 gig download).
15. Caiman Games: top 60 ranked freeware games
16. The Random Gnome’s Lair: Our freshly hand-picked free games selection.
17. Another Random Gnome’s: Oh no! More hand-picked free games.
18. Also Gnome’s Lair: 100 excellent free games in bloom
19. Finally Gnome’s: bouquet of hand picked games with dirty commercial pasts
20. Home of the underdogs’: list of freeware [games] recommendations.
21. Ghacks also has an ultimate free games list.
22. Über 100 kostenlose Games!
23. Cnet’s: 10 most addictive flash games ever made.
24. Butterblog: neverending list of best free games
25. MarcoFolio: best freeware first person shooters
26. Last one — I’m going to bed.

I assume there’s a whole bunch of lists that I don’t know about; if there’s a page you know about that absolutely, positively has to be listed please share in the comments.

• How to never use a paid program again (aside from Windows).
• 53 essential freeware programs that can take care of the majority of your computing needs.

I am writing this from the perspective of myself clean-installing Windows and re-installing all the software I find to be essential afterwards. This post took a long time to write, please Digg and/or Stumble it .

Pre-installation: before reformatting my hard drive, I used the following programs:

1. Gparted Live CD: one of the easiest ways to preserve your data when you want to wipe your system clean is to create a secondary partition and move all of your data into it. Gparted Live CD is a fantastic program that can create and manage partitions and hold its own alongside any program of its kind, paid or otherwise.

2. Unstoppable Copier: I used this program to copy any of the data and files on the primary partition (C:) to the secondary partition. Unstoppable copier makes the process of moving large numbers of files easy because you can set it up and leave and be certain that the copying process will not be interrupted by pointless Windows dialogs such as “are you sure you want to move the read only file xxx” or any other possible prompts of this sort.

3. Amic Email Backup: can backup all of my Outlook email to the secondary partition ahead of the drive formatting (it can backup email from numerous programs except Thunderbird; if you use Thunderbird use Mozbackup). For another freeware alternative try EZ Email Backup.

4. DriverMax: I used this one to back up all my current drivers. DriverMax will backup all of your drivers locally and can optionally restore them for you. Although I have my manufacturer’s CD with all of the original drivers (and anyway they are all on the internet), I used DriveMax just in case; if it were the case that I am unable to locate a driver for any device after re-installing XP, I figure I could always go back to the drivers backup that I made with DriverMax and find it.

5. Produkey: used this program to keep a record of all the product keys for the Microsoft products that are on my system, including Windows XP and Office. Made a printout of this info and saved it on the secondary partition for later use. I found that unlike some other similar programs, this one doesn’t make antivirus/antispyware programs act up and react adversely to it.

Installation: re-installed Windows XP on the re-formatted primary partition. Used the CD that came with my laptop to install all the proper drivers without hitch. If you have drivers issues try to find the drivers you need on the internet and, if not 100% successful, use the ones from the DriverMax backup (#4 above). Once Windows was installed I did a Windows update (actually several, since it kept doing partial updates and restarting), then installed the Microsoft .NET framework and the latest Java RTE).

Post installation: now the fun begins.

6. PC Decrapifier: if you install Windows from a CD image disk provided with your computer then it is highly likely that it comes pre-loaded with all manner of junk software that the computer maker wants to foist on you. PC Decrapifier will batch-uninstall many of these for you; be careful, however, to check the list so as not to uninstall something you might want something you actually want.

7. DriveImage XML: used this program to create an image of my freshly clean installed hard drive. (A hard drive image is a backup of the drive as-is with everything in it; performing such a backup means that I can quickly revert to my clean install of Windows in the future simply by restoring the image). There’s a number of reasons why I like this program (a) it can split the image file into several files, allowing you to save an image that is larger than 4 gigs onto a hard drive that uses the FAT filesystem rather than NTFS; it features ’Volume Locking’ which contributes towards ensuring that your created images are error free, and it is featured on boot CDs such as BartCD, which means I can boot into it and restore the primary partition.

8. Launchy: everybody needs a good launcher, and Launchy is my favorite. Pressing a hotkey will prompt a dialog to appear whereby you can type in the first few letters of the name of the program that you want in order to launch it. Launchy will index your start menu and program files folders by default so that it will know all the programs available on your computer (you can define other folders for it to index as well). If you would like alternatives to this one checkout Key Launch and the very powerful Keybreeze.

9. AVG Antivirus: the reason this is the my free antivirus of choice is (a) it is very light on the system’s resources, (b) it does a simply excellent job,and (c) it supports email scan, which is something that I need (and which is why I use AVG rather than the excellent AntiVir). Secondary choice: Antivir. Third choice: Avast.

10. Spyware Terminator: provides very good real-time protection against spyware/malware. For system scans it also integrates the open source ClamAV virus killer, which it also auto updates. Overall this program provides a very good free antispyware solution. Note that it will attempt to install a “Web Security Guard” toolbar in the setup which I typically disable (I do not like toolbars installed in my browser thank you very much).

11. Comodo Firewall: this is not only an excellent free firewall, this program is a PC Magazine Editor’s choice and is possibly the best personal firewall out there, free or paid. According to Matousec.com’s latest firewall ratings, Comodo gets the highest overall firewall score as well as the highest anti-leak protection (these results as of the date of this writing Oct 20, 2007). (Thanks go to reader DevZero for mentioning this in the comments section of my Comodo Firewall review).

12. TweakUI: this powerful Windows tweaking tool from Microsoft is one of the best out there, IMHO. In general I do not like to have any of my data stored in the primary (C:) partition, and I use this program to switch many of Windows’ special folders (i.e. My Documents, My Pictures, My Music, My Favorites, and the Desktop itself) from their default locations to a new location on the secondary partition. Having no data on the primary partition means that I can create images of my hard drive with DriveImage XML (#7 above) and restore them at will at any point without having to worry about lost data. Later I will also change the default data storage locations for all programs that I use so that they are on the secondary partition as well. More interesting tweaks that TweakUI does that I should mention: customizing the placesbar in the windows open/save dialog and increasing the number of folder customizations that Windows would remember.

13. OpenOffice: a world class office productivity suite and Microsoft Office replacement. OpenOffice can read and write MS Office 2003 documents in DOC (Word 2003) ,PPT (Powerpoint 2003) and XLS (Excel 2003) formats, and can also output documents in PDF format. Note that some MS Office documents that employ VBA Macro scripts may not be fully compatible with OpenOffice. (Ok, I have a confession to make: I actually install MS Office 2003 and 2007 both on my machine rather than OpenOffice, because (a) I need to use Outlook for work, (b) because most of my Excel work is done with VBA script, and (c) the licenses are paid for by my work). For the average user and for the purposes of this article, however, OpenOffice would be my free productivity suite of choice.

14. Forcevision Image Viewer: this is a very competent and straightforward free image viewer. Image viewing programs tend to be either (a) simple lightweight programs with few features but get the basic job done, (b) mid-level image viewers that have a good range of image editing options and features, some of which can do image format conversions (c) larger programs that have a comprehensive set of features and are typically extendible by plugins, and typically include the ability to read/write all manner of image formats including obscure ones. And although I know many people swear by Irfranview and Xnview, which would belong to category (c) in this case, for myself I prefer a mid-level program that I find can handle 99% of my image viewing needs, and Forcevision is the one I use. (Another good alternative: Faststone Image Viewer).

15. JZip: my current compression/zip utility of choice. Based on the 7 Zip open source archiver, JZip Can handle a good number of formats, has excellent compression ratio and speed as well as context menu integration. Other options that are good in this category are TugZip, IZArc, and ALzip (this last one might come as a surprise to some readers, but I actually used the new beta version for a few months and liked it).

16. CDBurnerXP 4: is the free program I use to burn CDs and DVDs; it is a full featured CD/DVD burning program that can burn audio CDs, copy CDs/DVDs, burn/convert ISOs images, and handle a large variety of formats (including Double layer DVDs, Blu-Ray and HD-DVDs). My second program of choice would be InfraRecorder, which provides most of these functions as well.

17. JKDefrag GUI: this is the graphical user interface for JKDefrag a hard disk defragmentation program. There are 3 reasons why you should use this program (a) JKDefrag has recently been tested and found to be the best amongst x different defragmentation programs, free and paid, (b) it provides the option to install itself as a screen saver, which will kick-off the defragmentation process whenever your computer is idle and goes into screensaver mode, and (c) it is fast and delivers excellent performance (see this blog for an interesting comparison of free and commercial defraggers, where JKDefrag was deemed the best freeware defrag program)..

18. Folder Size: this free Windows Explorer extension provides a “Folder Size” column in Windows explorer’s ’Detail’ view that shows the size of both files and folders (Windows shows the size of files but not that of folders). My second choice for a for a free program that does this would be “Aurionix FileUsage“; the latter offers more columns but requires .NET and therefore much more resources than Folder Size does.

19. Pidgin: a fantastic IM client that supports multiple messaging protocols including AIM, MSN, Yahoo!, XMPP, ICQ, IRC, SILC, SIP/SIMPLE, Novell GroupWise, Lotus Sametime, Bonjour, Zephyr, MySpaceIM, Gadu-Gadu, and QQ. It enables you to access all of your instant messaging accounts for the above networks simultaneously in the same client. You can use it to communicate individually with other people or to create chat rooms where multiple people interact simultaneously. Pidgin has been improved continuously and it is my favorite IM client (they finally implemented minimizing to tray which was inexplicably lacking forever). My second choice in this category: Miranda IM, which also has matured greatly, or try Meebo, which performs this function but is a web service that you can use from anywhere rather than a program that you install locally.

20. Google Toolbar: this is the only toolbar that I install. Google Toolbar provides a quick searchbox your browser’s toolbar, but it also provides the ability to fill simple forms, quickly translate pages, and spell check your text that you enter in internet forms. See this posting for a description of how to do that.

21. CCleaner: a fantastic hard drive cleaner that can rid your system of temp files, internet traces such as your surfing history, cookies, logfiles, cached files and other unused files from your computer. Installer comes with Yahoo toolbar included, so be careful to uncheck that during the installation process so it doesn’t install on your computer. Also includes a registry cleaner.

22. Shock Sticker: a really nice desktop ’sticky notes’ program that provides rich text editing and minimizing notes to floating icon (which is why I like it). This is my favortie desktop notes program, although Stickies, another similar program, is also extremely good and has more features.

23. FolderICO: I really like to differentiate my folders with different colors and/or icons. FolderICO installs an entry into the Windows context menu that does this, but it also saves the changed icons within the folders such that the changed icon is preserved if, say, the folder is accessed on a network from another computer from a different operating system (or after a Windows re-install).

24. BeCyIconGrabber: if you work with icons you will love this one. It enables you not just to extract icon resources from files, but to do the opposite (save individual icons into libraries) which most like-programs do not. Very cool.

25. Alpass: an excellent password manager (for Internet Explorer only) that can store, encrypt, and fill in passwords and logins into forms for you. For another excellent program that performs a similar function check out Keepass.

26. Picasa: an excellent program from Google that can help manage your picture libraries as well as share/upload them online. Provides many picture enhancement functions, and is also a very nice viewer to boot.

27. Faststone Capture: a really powerful image capture program that is extremely easy to use and has a built in editor for adding annotations and image manipulations. Unfortunately this program has recently become shareware but you can still download and use the last freeware version (5.3). Check out Screenshot Captor for another excellent screenshot capture program. If you know another excellent screenshot capture program please mention it in the comments (I’d like to try something new).

28. GOM Media Player: a fantastic player that plays DVDs as well as video formats, including Real Media, Quicktime, DivX, Xvid and FLV. Whats is really nice about this program is that it is self-contained and uses all internal codecs (meaning that in most cases it will not install codecs on your system). If, however, it encounters a video file that it cannot play it will automatically download it for you.

I chose this one over my other favorite, VLC media player, because it handles FLV videos better (allows you to jump to the middle of an FLV video, which the current version of VLC does not). It also has a nicer look and feel, IMHO, esp. when playing DVDs.

Also check out CodecInstaller, an excellent program that can identify, download, and install the codecs needed to play any media file (regardless of the player you are using)

29. Quintessential Media Player: supports most audio formats. It is simultaneously (a) a very nice player, (b) a competent tag editor, (c) a CD ripper with CDDB database support, and (d) and audio formats converter. Also features an equalizer, visualizations, and skins and is extendable through plugins. One of the nicer abilities is autotagging, which it does through digital thumbprinting and CDDB. (Note: album art is supported through a plugin, or use the cool CD Art Display).

Mediamonkey is another excellent program that also provides CD ripping, mp3 tag management, downloading of album art, audio format conversion, visualizations, skins, and equalizer, etc. Mediamonkey is vastly extendible though plugins and has a large community following.

30. MP3Tag: a fantastic MP3 tag/metadata manager that can download album art from Amazon and save it into the audio file itself. I’ve used a number of similar programs but like this one most because of it’s straightforward interface and user experience. Try The Godfather for another free alternative (note that the audio players mentioned in #29 above also provide MP3 tag management, which might be sufficient for most people’s needs).

31. MusicBrainz Picard: use this program if your audio files have incomplete and or missing tags. Picard uses sophisticated digital fingerprinting to compare audio files to the community-created MusicBrainz database. It employs a different technology than Quintessential Media Player (#29 above) and can in the most cases auto-tag audio files that have no tags whatever.

32. Exact Audio Copy: an audio CD ripper that reads audio CDs “almost perfectly” (i.e. produces very high quality MP3s), connects to CDDB/Freedb to get track information, and supports a handful of audio file formats. Another favorite of mine that does the same thing is BonkEnc. (Note that the audio players mentioned in #29 above also provide competent audio CD ripping). If you are looking for an excellent audio file converter try Any Audio Converter which supports most audio formats as well as FLV and can demux audio from video files.

33. MP3gain: this program can analyze a group of MP3s and determine the average volume for each, and then raise and/or lower the volume of the files in order to “normalize” them (such that volume differences that might occur when one song transitions to another largely disappear). The cool thing is that it does this without re-encoding the files and its intervention is reversible. Another program that has this same function: MP3Trim.

34. Unlocker: this small memory resident program will pop-up whenever you encounter a file that is locked by a process or another program which prevents you from deleting or moving it. Once you install and use this you will start to consider it a must have program. (Also see this related post).

35. Orbit Downloader: is an excellent download manager that has the unique ability to download streaming media (audio and video, as well as flash SWF) from video sharing and other sites. Another excellent download manager: FlashGet.

36. WinSCP: if you need an FTP client WinSCP is an excellent program that supports FTP and SFTP (as well as the legacy SCP), allows for secure transfers, and features dual pane file-manager like functionalities (such as sorting and comparing directories). It also allows for session saving (i.e. a bookmarking functionality), with the option to create entries in the Windows’ send-to menu for uploading files straight from Windows.

FileZilla is another competent, free program that is constantly improving and supports FTP, SFTP, and FTPS. If you want a very nice program that integrates FTP support into explorer through the Windows’ right-click context menu check out RightLoad.

37. Local Website Archive: is a program that saves individual webpages locally on your hard drive, including pictures and formatting, and allows for later viewing even if offline. What’s cool about this one is that it saves websites in the original HTML format and therefore allows you to reference the local URL of the saved webpage in your notes program or other applications. Another alternative that I used for a long time until I found Local Website Archive: Evernote.

38. Flashnote: a quick and handy scratch-pad that pops-up when you press a hotkey and disappears back into the background again when you minimize it (or press the hotkey again). You can store multiple notes in it and quickly retrieve them when needed (its not a full-fledged notes program, but nonetheless has become a must install on my machine).

39. Revo Uninstaller: my uninstaller of choice, Revo Uninstaller will uninstall a program and then look for any files and/or registry entries that were left behind by the program’s uninstaller (and does a beautiful job at that). Be carful to look at the entries that it identifies for deletion post-uninstall, as it will sometimes list registry entries and/or files that should not be removed. Revo also provides a slew of other tools such as a startup manager and hard drive cleaner.

Another nice uninstaller which I used previously is ZSoft Uninstaller; this one will not uninstall programs as thoroughly as Revo does, but on the other hand will not erroneously remove registry entries or files that should be left alone.

40. BitTyrant: this is the free torrent client that I’ve been using for some time. What it is is a modified version of Azureus that, controversially, picks and chooses peers to allocate bandwidth to such that those who are providing more bandwidth for downloaded files receive more of your own bandwidth (which is why it is sometimes called the ’selfish’ bittorent client). It is claimed that this can result in up to 70% faster downloads, but the reason this is controversial is that peers with lower connection speeds or are not sharing files may be overlooked by this program (read more about it here). Other excellent free torrent clients: uTorrent, Azureus.

41. Starter: a small, no-install program which does a fantastic job managing the programs that start with Windows. (I’ve tried many, and this is the one I like the most). Note that Revo Uninstaller (#39 above) provides a built in startup programs manager as well.

42. Send To Toys: use this program to add any folder to the explorer “send to” menu, which allows you to quickly copy or move any file to your favorite or most used folders.

43. Returnil: a system virtualization program that allows you to surf dangerous sites and/or install and test software or implement any desired changes then restart your system to get it back to the state it was before said changes.

44. SysTrayMeter: a small program that shows your processor usage and free memory in the system tray. Invaluable if you like to keep an eye on your available resources, and very useful in troubleshooting a problematic or slow system.

45. SweepRAM: a tiny, no-install RAM optimizer that frees system RAM by allowing applications all the RAM that they need, but no more (i.e. does not deprive programs from RAM). Use it to free RAM whenever your available memory plummets and/or your system becomes sluggish.

46. VSO Image Resizer: installs an entry in the Windows right-click context menu that enables image resizing and format conversions on-the-fly. One of the nicer things about this software is the ability to create custom image profiles that you can save in order to access them quickly at any later point. Another program which I also used for a long time: Easy Thumbnails.

47. Photoscape: is an all-in-one image management and manipulation suite that includes an image editor, a screen capture program, image formats conversions, an image viewer, GIF animation editor, mass image renamer, page creator, as well as a handful of other functions. While it does most of these functions competently, what I like about this program is its ability to combine and/or overlay images and easily add annotations. If you have to use a lot of images in presentations (as I do for work) you will find this program a great help.

48. PDF-XChange Viewer: a very nice PDF reader that allows for form filling as well as annotation and adding notes. The only thing I would change about this program is the icon it displays for PDF files (but that can be done with a program like Icon Phile).

49. Primo PDF: a virtual printer that can create PDF files out of any printable document. If you’re interested in printing to image formats as well try PDFCreator. Another alternative: DoPDF.

50. HobComment: this will add a “file/folder comments” in Windows details view, and a right-click “add comment” extension in Windows explorer (the latter only for NTFS partitions). The end result is a very easy way to add comments to files and folders that can be displayed in the Windows details view.

51. I.Mage: I use this image editing program as a replacement to Windows’ “Paint” program; it’s simple and straightforward and sufficient for my occasional image manipulation needs. If you need a more powerful Photoshop-replacement freeware bitmap editor try Gimpshop or Paint.net (both excellent programs).

52. Flashfolder: an explorer extension that adds user-defined favorites folders (and recent folders) to Windows’ open/save dialogs. A favorite of mine that I always have on my machine.

53. JOCR: can snap any area of the screen (or simply load an image) and provide instant (and excellent) optical character recognition. This one might be a little out of place for an article that advocates using only free software because it needs a library installed with MS Office, whereas I list OpenOffice (#13 above) as the MS Office alternative. Still, I use this program a lot and find it to be a must-install, which is why I decided to list it.

Create Disk Image: now that I have my system decked out with all the software that I use, I create another image with DriveImage XML so that I have 2 images; one that contains Windows XP clean installed with drivers, and one with all the software that I use. Should I need to for any reason I can quickly and easily revet back to any one of these setups.