 |
nondog Software Info and Links
|
|
|
|
|
|
There are thousands of programs that you can download from the internet,
get free with magazines, or get free from companies like Microsoft and Netscape.
If you are anything like me you will have downloaded and installed quite a few of
these freeware and shareware programs. But how many of them are you still using? Let's face it, most of these programs are unnecessary, useless, annoying or downright damaging. These days the last thing I want to do is install an unknown program on my computer, thereby hastening the arrival of the inevitable reinstall.
The programs listed below are those few of the hundreds that I have tried that
I have found to be truly useful and excellent. Most of them are permanently
installed on my machine and in daily use. Many of them are free or available
in a free (lite) version. I have found very little that I cannot do on my
computer using freeware and shareware applications. Using pirated software is
abetting the monopolistic ambitions of the big corporate software vendors, and will
inevitably result in less choice and lower quality.
(click program names for my comments below)
|
|
|
|
Pegasus Mail
Free! Fully functional. Works on networks and the internet.
Can view message headers on the server and delete spam without downloading (I
always feel the spammers have won if you have to download the message
to delete it!). Sophisticated mail filtering feature can be used to
setup mailing lists, auto-respond, auto-sort mail. Built-in
spellcheck. Reads HTML RTF TXT and writes RTF and TXT. Makes URL's and
email addresses clickable. Single or multi user and user profiles.
Built-in encryptor. Digital signatures. Unbinhex and uudecode. Full
access to message headers. Pegasus can also do mailmerge!
This program is one of the few reasons I have not abandoned Windows
altogether. Version 4 is rumoured to be coming out sometime this year.
http://www.pmail.com
http://www.pmail.com/overviews/ovw_winpmail.htm
ftp://pegasus.topnz.ac.nz/pegasus/winpmail/w32-312c.exe
StarOffice5.1
If you fancy the idea of using one application to do everything (even
replacing your win9x desktop) - this is the one for you. It's totally
free but a massive 65Mb download so if you decide to get it off the
net make sure you download and install an application like FileHound
beforehand. You can do everything you might do with MSOffice (inc
opening and saving in MS file formats - .doc, etc), surf the internet, send and
receive email, write and publish web pages, manage files and start and
stop other applications all from within this one program. Try this on
a 98lite installation for the most MS-free Windows box
possible. The program is often given away on free disks that come with
some of the PC magazines. Look out for it.
http://www.sun.com/staroffice/
http://www.sun.com/products/staroffice/ds-staroffice/
http://www.sun.com/products/staroffice/get.cgi
Opera
I you are still using Internet Explorer or Netscape since Opera 5 (freeware)
came out you are mad! OK, so you get adverts but they are very small and
unobtrusive. I'm not going to argue about it - just download it, NOW!!
You'll never look back.
http://www.opera.com/index.html
http://www.opera.com/features.html
http://www.opera.com/download.html
98lite
An excellent utility for stripping the rubbish out of Windows 98. Free
and Pro versions are available and its a small download. Gets rid of
various bits of unnecessary Windows components - mainly internet
explorer. Results in significant improvements in performance and
frees up quite a bit of disk space. I don't use it myself now because
unfortunately I have to use IE for testing web pages. Worth checking
out if you don't mind missing out on badly built sites that won't work
properly on anything other than IE.
Ideal for emulator installations such as VirtualPc or VMWare
(Linux)
http://www.98lite.net/98lite.html
http://www.98lite.net/
http://www.98lite.net/get98lite.html
NoteTab Lite
The free version of the NoteTab program. Makes an excellent
replacement for NotePad and can use scripts to do various clever
things with text. Doubles as quite a useful HTML editor. Can open
multiple documents of unlimited size and displays them as tabbed
pages. Sophisticated find and replace utility allows editing of all
open documents. If you're into messing around with scripting, there's a
lot of potential in this program.
http://www.notetab.com
http://www.notetab.com/products.htm
http://www.notetab.com/download.htm
GXExplorer
Excellent free file manager with lots of useful features - copy
filename as text, thumbnails, multi-pane windows, quickview, etc, etc.
Well worth having if you do a lot of file organising.
http://www.gexperts.com/GXExplorer/Index.html
http://www.gexperts.com/GXExplorer/download.html
Thumbs+
Very good for managing and manipulating graphics files. Slightly
disables itself after 30 days. Can print catalogs and make thumbnail
web pages, slide shows (inc. subdirectories), resize, rotate, convert,
etc. I particularly like the ability to sort files by similarity of
appearance.
(W.o.W. - 12444kb download)
http://www.cerious.com/download.htm
http://www.cerious.com/version4.htm
http://www3.cerious.com/binaries/cerious/thmpls410_s.exe
WordExpress
Adds a small credit to itself on your printouts after 30 days of use.
Apart from this it is a very capable well designed small footprint
word processing application. Saves in native format, RTF, etc.
This program hasn't had a new release since 1998 but it's still out there
and still works.
I don't use it myself anymore since I have StarOffice installed, but
it is an excellent solution if you don't have much space or need for other
office apps.
http://www.mvd.com/wordexpress/index.htm
http://www.mvd.com/wordexpress/features.htm
http://www.mvd.com/wordexpress/dlpage1.htm
http://www.mvd.com/wordex/trial/we32.exe
Naviscope
Free. No adverts. Very good web accelerator, ad blocker, etc - highly
configurable.
Can be configured for individual sites and servers, can preload pages based
on keywords and can very effectively block pop-up windows and adverts.
W.o.W: Watch out with the MTU settings if you are on a network!!!
http://www.naviscope.
http://www.naviscope.com/dnload.htm
http://www.naviscope.com/featlist.htm
FileHound
Excellent download assistant which very usefully supports resuming
broken downloads. Keeps records of downloads and monitors windows clipboard.
Well worth getting if you do a lot of downloading or if you have a
slow or unreliable connection.
PaintShop Pro
Sometimes described as the poor man's Photoshop, this is a very
sophisticated bitmap graphics AND vector graphics application with
animation thrown in! Unfortunately it does timeout after 30 days
(unlike earlier versions).
http://www.jasc.com/download_3.asp
1stPage2000
Very good free HTML editor with built in preview that integrates well with other
programs. Comes with very good unbiased documentation and many truly
useful features.
http://www.evrsoft.com/1stpage/images/1stpage_capture_b.gif
http://www.evrsoft.com/1stpage/
http://www.evrsoft.com/download/
HTMLKit
Another good free one particularly good for tidying up and verifying
code.
http://www.chami.com/html-kit/
Tidy.exe
Integrates with the two above and NoteTab
http://www.chamisplace.com/dl/htmlkit/HTMLTidy.zip
Amaya Internet browser/editor
Amaya - V2.2 Amaya - an editor/browser for the Web developed by
W3C
Haven't had this long but looks interesting and it's free. On the
cutting edge of DHTML and XML.
This could be useful for playing with and learning about forthcoming web
technologies. It has a very nice wysiwyg interface for editing pages
as you browse them. Unfortunately it seems a bit slow and buggy but
I'm going to persevere with it.
http://www.w3.org
dtSearch
Clever search utility that can search within files (inc web pages) on
your HD
www.dtSearch.com
http://www.dtsearch.com/dtfeatures.html
http://www.dtsearch.com/download.html
http://www.dtsearch.com/eval523.exe
http://www.dtsearch.com/
TopStyle 1.5
Good CSS (cascading stylesheets) editor that integrates well with other programs. Free lite
version is available but not nearly so slick as the evaluation
version.
http://www.bradsoft.com/topstyle/index.asp
http://www.bradsoft.com/topstyle/features/fullscreen1.asp
http://www.bradsoft.com/topstyle/download/index.asp
Dreamweaver Fireworks Flash Freehand
The programs made by Macromedia are not free or cheap but they are
extremely well written and well integrated applications that are fast
becoming the industry standard for web page authoring. All are
available for download from the Macromedia site as 30 day fully
functional evaluation versions (although it will probably take a
couple of days to get them all!). If you're thinking of writing pages
professionally you probably need to learn these apps.
www.macromedia.com
hardware
top
