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10 Top Magic
freeware
In this site there are some of the
best free apps you
can find on the web. All of them can be freely downloaded and used.
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1)
Irfanview 3.98 -
(image viewer)
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Irfanview is a 32 bit graphic viewer for any
version of Windows. It can visualize a huge numbers of file types (not
only graphic, but even audio and video). These are some of the file types
supported: AIF, ANI/CUR, ASF, AU/SND, AVI, BMP/DIB, CAM (Casio JPG), CLP,
Dicom/ACR, DJVU, EMF/WMF, EPS, FlashPix (FPX), FSH, G3, GIF,
ICO/ICL/EXE/DLL, IFF/LBM, IMG (GEM), JPG2000, JPG/JPEG, KDC, LDF, LWF,
MED, MID/RMI, MOV, MP3, MPG/MPEG, NLM/NOL/ NGG, PBM/PGM/PPM, PCX/DCX,
PhotoCD, PNG, PSD, PSP, RAS/SUN, RealAudio (RA), RLE, SFF, SFW, SGI/RGB,
SWF (Flash/ Shockwave), TGA, TIF/TIFF, WAV, WBMP, XBM, XPM.
Really impressive. Irfanview can even batch convert
entire directories from a format to another (i.e.: from PNG to JPG), or
simply batch rename thousands of files (image001, image002, etc.).
Furthermore Irfanview is faaast and small (less
than 1 MB to download, almost incredible), and 100% free.
What could I say more? There is not an application of this kind that can be
compared to it, neither shareware of commercial (ACDSee is very good, but
Irfanview is -for me- even better). Great, great, great.
The version 3.80 adds an experimental support for
digital camera RAW formats (plus many other small improvements). The
version 3.97 adds support to many others image formats.
Download
it !
OVERALL: Fantastic -
10 Top Magic !!! -
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2) Winamp
v.
5.0 and
Foobar 2000 0.8.3- music player
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player you say? No, no baby. Winamp is much more than that.
Winamp is a lifestyle. It is freestyle. Give me a word. Versatility? Yeah. Visionary? Of course. Community? Now you're talking.
Winamp lives because its users have a life. Winamp is in the coffee house. On the laptop. Of the guy. Who is writing the screenplay. That you will be watching next year.
Winamp is on the screen. In the club. Where the DJ plays the tracks. That get you through the night.
Winamp is with you. When you take your playlist. Push it to the ether. And share the music that you love. With all of humanity.
Winamp lets you put together the soundtrack. That runs in the background of your mind. And allows you to define your life. Winamp is very small, uses a very little resources and is
100% free! Great, no doubt.
The version 3.0 enhances the GUI (playlist, skins,
etc.), enables the useful crossfading between songs, adds support for Ogg
Vorbis and for video (like .avi) and much more. Anyway, there is no
improvement in the quality of audio (quality good, though), nor in the
equalizer.
Foobar 2000 is one of the best audio players for Windows. The GUI almost does not
exist, but this makes it to use a very few resources. It supports an
incredible numer of audio formats, even FLAC, APE (monkeyaudio), MPC and many more
without the need of plugins. In short: you lose in GUI, but you earn
in compatibility (IMPORTANT: download foobar2000 special version,
since it natively supports everything).
Download it !
OVERALL: Very Good (Foobar 2000) and Good
(WinAmp)
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3)
Process Lasso 2.23 (system
optimization)
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Lasso automatically restrains running
processes that are consuming too many CPU cycles. Processes that are out-of-control can bring a
Windows system
near halt, or to a major slowdown.
With Process Lasso, these processes are temporarily reduced in
priority so that the system is returned to a responsive level.
Process Lasso acts when the total usage of all CPUs exceeds a
configured threshold. When this threshold is exceeded, processes
that exceed another configured threshold for a set amount of
time are temporarily lowered in priority. Processes that
currently have the focus can be boosted in priority.
The shareware version has some more features (for example can
log executed applications), but the free version is perfectly
usable. Download it !
OVERALL: Very Good
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4)
SpyBot search &
destroy 1.3 -anti-spyware
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Spybot is a
free multi spyware removal utility, that scans your memory, registry and hard drives for known spyware components and lets you remove them safely.
Spybot is a small and easy to use program that will scan your system
for known advertising systems, and lets you remove them safley from your system.
During the process this app scans your memory, registry and file system for known modules.
Spybot is 100% free and is one of the best apps you can
find for Windows. (what is spyware?)
Download it !
OVERALL: Excellent
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5) Open
Office
2.0
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suite covers most of your
needs with a word processor, spreadsheet,
presentation software, equation editor and a drawing program.
The most interesting feature for many people? Simple: Open Office can import
and export many different types of documents and templates in a huge range
of formats from HTML to MS Office XP. You can save in Word or Excel format,
if you like, or import documents created with MS Office.
Open Office is 100% free (50MB to download) and you
can use it even for business purpose.
Download it !
OVERALL: Excellent
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6)
Cobian Backup
7.4 (backup)
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Cobian Backup is a program you can use to backup
your files and directories from their original location to other
directories/drives in the same computer or other computer in your network,
or to a FTP server. You can automatically backup your files once,
daily, weekly, monthly, on a timer basis or manually.You can backup to
other computers on the network, to other partitions or to a FTP server.
Cobian Backup has integrated compression capabilities, using the
standard Zip algorithm. All the functions in the program can
optionally be password protected. It supports even incremental backup
(if you modify only a few files out thousands, Cobian will update only
those files in the zip archive and not the others. A really useful
feature!).
A great application.... 100% free.
Download it !
OVERALL: Very
Good
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7)
Dust
Buster v. 2.6.2
-system cleaning
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| The best
free
app I have ever used for cleaning automatically the HD. Dust Buster uses
the most recent routines for a deep and safe cleaning of any
system. You have not to do anything
(just start it and wait 40-50 sec. for a complete cleaning of your system. It
will accurately clean the system and close on its own)...
It is 100% free and only 300 kb to download. Dust Buster beats
any commercial app of this kind (just download it and see yourself!).
DustBuster is extremely fast with Windows 98/Me, but quite slow with
Windows XP.
Download it !
OVERALL: Very Good
(especially with Win 98/Me)
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8)
Antivir Personal Edition -
antivirus
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Antivir
is a great antivirus completely free. It detects and removes more than
80,000 viruses, is always among the winners of comparison test featured in
computer journals, is updated very frequently, protects against previously
unknown macro viruses, against trojaner, worms, backdoors, jokes and other
harmful programs. Internet-Update Wizard for easy updating.
It is very easy to use and does not need many resources. Really a great
choice, almost incredible an antivirus so good is completely free
(for personal use).
Very good performance in Antivirus Test
of October 2004, though making updates is a little nightmare (server
very slow, in some cases down).
Download it !
OVERALL: Very Good
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9)
Truedownloader 0.8 (download manager)
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tried to download a huge file with Explorer? Have you ever thought to
Microsoft when the connection suddenly dropped (... since Explorer does not
support download resume...)?
DownloadPlus is an internet file management and retrieval system. With Download Optimization,
DownloadPlus will intelligently split the file in more parts to increase
speed. You can easily recover interrupted downloads, as well as pause
them and recover later.
But... there are so many download managers with similar features...
why TrueDownloader? Since it is Open Source: no banners, no ads, no
spyware, better than free (since the meaning of
the word free in this time is quite... subjective).
Download it !
OVERALL: Good
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10)
Feurio v. 1.67
(audio cd burning software)
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Feurio!® is an integrated software for creating audio CDs (especially
samplers) for PCs with Windows NT/2000/XP® or Windows 95/98/ Millenuim®.
Feurio!® combines "Audio Grabbing" (digitally reading of an audio CD), a
database for CDs (including CDDB support), a CD and Wave player, a simple
Wave Editor and a CD Writer.
This app is not freeware, but the trial version is
not restricted in any way. A great application for burning Audio CDs,
excellent even with overburning.
Download it !
OVERALL: Very Good
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11)
Isobuster
v. 1.4 (modify CD images)
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IsoBuster is a powerful data recovery tool. It is designed to recover
data from CD, DVD and Image files created by apps like
Nero, CloneCd, Easy CD, Blindwrite, etc.
How does it work? Simple. You make an image (.ccd, .bin,
.iso, .img, etc.) of a CD on your HD. Then you can use Isobuster to
extract the files of this image in a directory... and here you can
modify everything (remove/add files, modify them, etc.). When you have
done, you can burn again all these files on a CD (with Nero, Easy Cd,
etc.). Great. Great. Great.
Isobuster is almost 100% for free: no time limit, and
almost any option enabled (you need to register only if you need to
recover UDF data from UDF discs). One of the best free app for your pc.
Download it !
OVERALL: Very Good
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IZArc 3.5
(archiver)
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IZArc provides support for most compressed and encoded files
(completely replaces Winzip), as well as access to many features and
tools. It allows you to drag and drop files from and to Windows
Explorer, create and extract archives directly in Windows Explorer,
create multiple archives disks, creating self-extracting archives,
repair damaged zip archives, converting from one archive type to
another, view and write comments and many more. IZArc has also build-in
multilanguage support. IZArc supports these archive formats: 7-ZIP, A,
ACE, ARC, ARJ, B64, BH, BZ2, BZA, CAB, ENC, GCA, GZ, GZA, HA,
JAR, LHA, LIB, LZH, RAR, ZIP and many more.
It is 100% free.
Download it !
OVERALL: I cannot rate it, since it is a must.
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