PDF to Excel Free is a free web service that is specifically designed to convert PDFs with lots of data tables into Excel files. It will automatically detects data tables, transfer them into Excel format, and recreates their formatting and appearance. Conversion is performed remotely on the site; you will have to upload your file and provide an email address where a link to download the converted file will be emailed back to you.

ActiveHotkeys is a small, free portable app that can scan and display all active hotkey combinations on your system that are being used by various applications.

BB Flashback Express is a free screen recording program that can capture your PC’s screen, sound, and webcam video and supports capturing graphics/animations, including 3D graphics. It offers a high degree of control over your video (output resolution, quality, file size, recording modes, mouse autoscroll, and cursor highlighting effects). Saves resulting files as either FLV’s, AVI’s or SWF’s, and offers the ability to easily upload videos to YouTube or embed them inside a webpage.

Quake III is back! And completely free to play, right here in your web browser. For the uninitiated, this is a classic first person shooter.

[Editor’s note: this review was written by Freewaregenius contributor Travis B. Check out his freeware games blog here].

FreeMeter is a free system-performance monitoring utility designed to be powerful yet light on resources. It monitors a number of system activities that most people need, including uptime, drive space, CPU usage, disk access, physical memory available, and page file usage. It can also monitor up to 2 email accounts and present real-time updates for them in the system tray area.

[Editor’s note: this review was written by Freewaregenius contributor Jason H. Check out his tech blog: 404techsupport.com]. 

Appnews.net is a project conceived and created by Andrey from Rarst.net in collaboration with Freewaregenius and Ghacks.net. It’s purpose is present a stream of the latest freeware software updates with links to postings/reviews of the software published on Freewaregenius, Ghacks, and Rarst.net.

SpaceSniffer is a free program that displays the size of your files and folders in a visual “Treemap” representation. It allows you to browse your folder structure, drill in and out of represented elements, and filter the display by any combination of criteria (filenames, extensions, size, date). It also allows you to access your Windows context menu for on-the-spot file/folder manipulation.

This article will present four novel, free note taking apps: Treesheets, Tobu, Cintanotes, and MindRaider. Each one of these apps is unique in its own way, yet they have one thing in common in that they are not your traditional, hierarchical-tree based notes programs.

PowerResizer is a free program that brings the window resizing/docking function popularized by Windows 7 to all Windows platforms. It is unique in that once two windows are docked PowerResizer will let you grab ahold of any one of the edges in the ”border” are between the two Windows and drag it to resize both windows simultaneously, in case you wanted one of them to take up a larger area than the other. A really nifty feature. Additionally, you can perform all sorts of resizing behaviors using a combination of resizing and hotkeys.

I’ve previously discussed virtual server infrastructure with an article on Microsoft’s Hyper-V which comes included with Windows Server 2008. Due to the performance hit that a Server 2008 machine will take just by having the Hyper-V role installed, I went looking for another solution. I had a few criteria though. Since I was just doing this for myself and my own curiosity, I wanted it to be free or near there. I also wanted it to have as little performance impact as possible, but produce a fully stable and functional virtual machine.

[Editor’s note: this review was written by Freewaregenius contributor Jason H. Check out his tech blog: 404techsupport.com]. 

LMMS is a free, open source music production software inspired by commercial apps such as FL Studio (FruityLoops) . It enables you to create melodies and beats and to create, mix, and arrange sounds and samples, and will even import Fruityloops project files. It allows access to LADSPA effects and is compatible with many standards such as SoundFont2, VST(i), and GUS Patches, and offers full MIDI/MIDI project files support. LMMS is multiplatform (Windows, Linux).