We are great fans of any application that helps us with the
way we work. We are even bigger fans when it also happens
to be free
Check
out our list of programs that we think do an excellent
job and yet cost absolutely nothing.
Firefox is an alternative browser to the Microsoft equivalent
Internet Explorer. It has faced a tough struggle gaining
recognition amongst the casual users, although this should
not be surprising as Internet Explorer is built in to all
versions of Windows. In spite of this market share is steadily
growing, and once users discover what Firefox has to offer
many stick with it as their browser of choice.
Firefox offers many useful features that
enhance the browsing experience, not least of which is security.
Although new vulnerabilities get discovered in browsers,
various security forms confirm they are patched much more
quickly in Firefox and are usually of a less serious
nature than IE. As of October 25, 2007, Firefox 2 has four
security vulnerabilities unpatched, the most severe of which
was rated "less critical" by Secunia. Internet
Explorer has eight security vulnerabilities unpatched, the
most severe of which was rated "highly critical" by Secunia.
Firefox also protects you from phishing scams and spyware
downloads.
Other features include built in spell checking,
session restore, built in search, improved tabbed bars, web
feeds (RSS) and a lot more. Added to this is the ability
to use add-ons. You can choose from over 1,000 add-ons at
addons.mozilla.com. A Firefox add-on can help you comparison
shop, share bookmarks with your friends, see the weather
in a corner of your browser, write to your weblog, get news,
listen to music - all from inside the browser. fore a taster
of what's available click here.
Having won many awards from the I.T. industry,
it certainly gets our recommendation too. Try it yourself
here.
Foxit
Reader is a program that opens .PDFs. While most people
use Adobe's own version, in recent times it has become
bloated and slow. This alternative on the other hand
opens files in a flash, and allows you to scroll through
the document without any of the stuttering associated
with the Adobe version. It's also only 10% of the size
at a svelte 2MB.
OpenOffice.org
is a fully-featured
office suite compatible with leading office products.
It contains a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation
tool, database, vector drawing tool and mathematical
function creator. These programs will all open their
Microsoft alternatives. With most people only using a
small percentage of the power of larger, expensive office
suites, this is more than adequate alternative.
Windirstat
is an excellent application for producing a visual
representation of what kinds of files are on your hard
drive and where they are located. The files are colour
coded by file type e.g. images, music, application
and represented by blocks that vary in size, reflecting
actual file sizes. You can zoom into the graphic to look
at specific folders too. A great tool for finding out
where all your free space has gone.
CPU-Z
interrogates your system's core components and
reports the data back in an easy to read format. It's
very helpful for checking that you've got the components
you paid for, but also the information it provides can
help to ascertain if you have any upgrade potential in
your system.
Paint.net is an excellent program for anyone interested
in editing their own images. For general use it has features
that give programs like Photoshop which costs hundreds
of pounds a run for their money. The only thing we don't
understand is how they fit so much into it's tiny 1.5MB
download size. It's like the tardis of the software world.
ScreenHunter is screen capture
software for you to easily take screenshots. Unlike
the cumbersome print-screen function, ScreenHunter
allows you to capture just the area you want, as well
as active windows and full screens. you can save the
capture to the clipboard for editing in another program,
or save it as an image file. An excellent utility that
has proved an invaluable tool here at ImagineTek.
If you would like
to share your favourite free software with us, then
let us know, and if we like it too, we may give the
program (and you) you a mention on our upcoming User
Recommended page. We do however ask that, like the
software we have highlighted above, any recommendations
are fully functional, advert and nag screen free and
have no time limitations.
