| Application |
URL |
Remarks |
| Total Commander |
www.ghisler.com |
Formerly called Windows Commander, this is quite simply the best file and disk management utility around. Everything you could possibly need is built in (including support for FTP, zipping/unzipping, file/directory comparison and much more). Microsoft take note - this is what Windows Explorer should have been like! Total Commander is shareware, meaning it is not free to use - you can try it and if you like it you should send the registration fee to the author. |
| Crimson Editor |
www.crimson... |
My favourite text editor - intuitive, powerful and totally free. It is small and fast but provides every feature you need for editing text documents of any kind (even column editing/manipulation). The web page you are reading now was hand-coded in HTML and JavaScript using Crimson Editor. |
| PhotoScape |
www.photoscape.org |
An outstanding, free graphics utility for editing, manipulating and resizing photographs. It shows you the file size (in kilobytes) of your edited image before it is saved on disk, thus allowing you to edit it further if the size is too big or small. PhotoScape is the best tool I've found for saving high quality images in as small a file size as possible (which is what you need when publishing photographs on the internet). Full support for creating images from your screen (the full screen, a window or part of a window) is also provided. It has a rather unusual interface but is well worth getting used to. |
| Avast |
www.avast.com |
A comprehensive, sophisticated and very secure anti-virus application. It is unobtrusive, very easy to use and is not resource-hungry or processor-intensive. Best of all it is totally free, merely requiring a simple registration once a year to remain active. It is also a lot more reliable than some commercial products whose names I shan't mention here. |
| FireFox |
www.firefox.com |
Mozilla FireFox is the best web browser around. Google Chrome is also pretty good, but it has some irritating idiosyncracies that I can't stand. And the less said about Microsoft Internet Explorer the better. |
Free Download
Manager |
www.freedownload... |
A great tool to manage the downloading of large files, or many files, from the internet. "FDM" handles multiple simultaneous downloads, intermittent lost connections, video from sites like YouTube, downloading of the entire contents of a web site, scheduling of downloads, pausing, resuming and a number of additional features that allow you to concentrate on other things while it does the work. |
| IrfanView |
www.irfanview.com |
A good, free graphics utility that can be used to edit and manipulate files in virtually any kind of image format. Uses a very intuitive technique for cutting bits of a picture out and filling in the blank space with colours from other parts of the image. You can also convert from one format to another (for example, open a BMP and save it as a JPG). Creating a slide show is quick and easy. |
| CutePDF Writer |
www.cutepdf.com |
A free utility that allows you to create PDF files from any printable document. It is installed as a virtual printer so that when you print something you can choose the CutePDF "printer" as the target - rather than actually printing it creates a PDF which you can then save on your hard drive. |
| Stellarium |
www.stellarium.org |
A free astronomical or planetarium application. It shows a realistic 3-dimensional sky on your screen, exactly as you would see it with your naked eye, binoculars or a telescope. |
| Bluefish Editor |
bluefish.openoffice.nl |
An outstanding text editor for programmers and developers. It is totally free but boasts a level of sophistication that is usually only seen in major commercial products. A minor warning - the setup EXE will download several megabytes of extra stuff during installation ; I'm not sure if you can avoid this or what will happen if your internet connection is off while it is installing. |
| WinMerge |
www.winmerge.org |
An excellent, free utility for comparing and merging the contents of files and directories. |
| VLC Media Player |
www.videolan.org |
A free, open-source application that can play videos or music in virtually every possible format. |
| Compu-Sport |
www.PaulKilfoil.co.za |
An application for recording of sports results and data. It is unique in that it supports cricket (all formats), rugby union, soccer, tennis and formula 1 straight out of the box. A full database of results for the South African national team is included, as well as all tennis grand slams and formula 1 Grands Prix. |