FREE Great Programs for Windows 7

[Brink]

Thank you Dwarf. Added.

 

[murphy25]

gimp seems to be working ok installed no problems and i used it to get the size down on a pic i used for logon screen and its a free alternative to photoshop

 

[jimbo45]

Hi all
Others have added the "Fun" stuff

I'll add the very useful but Boring stuff

1) Open Office -- MS office clone - is fairly compatable with MS office - exception if you use MS EXCEL with a load of macros and VBA stuff or if you do a lot of "dynamic web queries" from within EXCEL. For typical EXCEL users compatability is fine as well.

2) MySQL - great free database server -- very robust too.

3) Apache web server -- much easier to set up than Microsoft IIS etc.
4) Php -- very useul if you do any scripting / windows web hosting.

(2,3,4 are often installed together on Windows or Linux- on Windows it's called WAMP and on Linux called LAMP).

There's a WAMP ready installable package here -- but items 2,3,4 can all be installed separately of course.

Install PHP 5 Apache MySQL on Windows : WampServer

cheers
jimbo

 

[t41]

A few that I have tested and use frequently - all tried and true for windows7 build 7077


Download Dziobas RAR Player 0.009.38 - Dziobas Rar Player 0.009.39 - great 4 watching rarred movie files without unzipping 1st.

Desktop Sidebar Home Page - desktop sidebar - alternative to vista sidebar

CD Art Display - CD ART Display

EasyTAG - Tag editor for MP3, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, MusePack and Monkey's Audio files, ... - EasyTAG - mp3 tagger - very good 4 free

Easy Screen Capture - Screen capture software, capture any part of your screen and edit professional screenshot - easy screen capture 2 - free ut with watermark - use it to capture full length web pages - has autoscroller that clipper does not TRIAL VERSION, Not Free

Downloads info and guidelines on the latest beta. - The KMPlayer's Forums - KMplayer

Outertech - computer memory and cache optimization, tuneup and internet utility software - getdiz - nfo reader - very good

Introduction » Exact Audio Copy - exact audio copy - cd ripper - the best no questions asked

Directory Lister Pro - Best Folder Printer Download - directory lister - trial ware, but very good

BAxBEx software products - free downloads - irfanview shell extension - down at bottom of page

All for now - getting tired - later

 

[weh]

handy freeware PDFCreator printer driver . . .

I'm using PDFCreator -- a handy freeware PDF printer driver.

see: SourceForge.net: PDFCreator

It installs as a standard printer, intercepting the data stream intended for a physical printer and dumping the result as a file in PDF format.

 

[polycue]

I'm using PDFCreator -- a handy freeware PDF printer driver.

see: SourceForge.net: PDFCreator

It installs as a standard printer, intercepting the data stream intended for a physical printer and dumping the result as a file in PDF format.

Does it retain the hyperlinks in the pdf document?

 

[ethereal]

foxit reader and writer are also compatible with build 7077

 

[t41]

I forgot this one -Trader's Little Helper

Traders Little Helper

[FONT=verdana,arial]Traders of lossless compressed audio files (e.g. ape, flac, mkw, or shn files) have to handle a lot of different applications to decode, encode, create/verify checksums, fix sector boundary errors, or create torrent files. Moreover most of the tools used are command-line programs requiring a deeper knowledge of how to use various parameters. Trader's Little Helper bundles the most important features of those applications in one single easy-to-use frontend. [/FONT]

[FONT=verdana,arial] Features[/FONT] [FONT=verdana,arial] - Encoding of wav files to ape, flac, shn and mp3 format
- Re-encoding of flac files
- Decoding of ape, flac, mkw, shn, mp2 and mp3 files to wav format
- Direct conversion of ape, flac, mkw and shn files to flac or mp3 format
- Test of audio files encoded in ape, flac, shn and mkw format
- Verification of cfp, ffp, md5, sfv and st5 checksum files
- Creation of cfp, ffp, md5, sfv and st5 checksum files
- Display of audio file properties (ape, flac, shn, mkw and wav files)
- Fixing of sector boundary errors that come with ape, flac, shn, mkw, wav and mp3 files
- Removal of extra RIFF chunks in audio files
- Rewriting of WAVE headers to canonical format
- Creation of skt files for non-seekable shn files
- Test of wav files for mp3 source
- Creation of torrent files
- Display of the information encoded in torrent files
- Hashing of torrent files against local filesets or files
- Drag & Drop functionality for all supported file types
- Integration into Windows Explorer
- Check for update function
[/FONT]
Also - QuickSFV Download - Quick SFV
QuickSFV was designed with one goal ... to be quick! Existing SFV file verification programs were slow and cumbersome to use. Most users need to verify files and the quicker, the better. QuickSFV integrates into the Windows Explorer shell and makes it very easy to verify files. Just double-click on the .SFV file and QuickSFV does the rest. QuickSFV also understands several other file verification formats including .CRC, .CSV and .CKZ.
For even quicker verification of .SFV files, QuickSFV remembers which files have been previously verified and will skip them in future checks. You can always tell QuickSFV to go back and verify all files again just to be sure.




Personally I feel that traders little helper is just as good as quick sfv for checking those files and it is already included in that program, but others will disagree.

 

[swarfega]

Maxthon web browser: Maxthon Browser - Full-Featured Browser

Quite a nice browser and shares IE's rendering engine and a few other things like internet options. Can also save your favorites online.

 

[Brink]

Thank you Swarfega. Added.

 

[weh]

A free utility: NetWorx from SoftPerfect . . .

I know that cross-posting is frowned upon and I don't usually do it; however, since this thread is about great free software and the other is complaining about the disappearance of functionality of the network system tray icon, I'll make an exception. If I'm out of line, please tell me and I won't do it again.

Check out NetWorx from http://www.softperfect.com/products/networx/. It's not exactly a replacement for the XP network activity icon; but it serves almost the same function and gives a lot of additional information as well. There are lots of configuration settings. Seems to work perfectly with Win 7 x64 (both 7000 and 7077). I have it monitoring all ethernet activity and set the graph to display as the system system tray icon. I also changed the colors to green for iincoming, red for outgoing and yellow for both. That way, should the icon suddenly start displaying a lot of red when I'm not sending data, I'll know something is wrong.

 

[Brink]

Thank you Weh. Added.

 

[Anthony]

for Windows


The XAMPP 1.7.1 is available!
We've released a new version of XAMPP, including:

• Apache HTTPD 2.2.11 + Openssl 0.9.8i
• MySQL 5.1.33
• PHP 5.2.9
• phpMyAdmin 3.1.3.1
• XAMPP CLI Bundle 1.3
• FileZilla FTP Server 0.9.31
• Mercury Mail Transport System 4.62

Tested in Windows 7 32/64bit by me and works!!

 

[murphy25]

virtualdub is another free program not on the list and works well in windows7 x86 havent got x64 installed so havent tested that.

Welcome to virtualdub.org! - virtualdub.org

 

[weh]

regarding PDFCreator printer driver . . .

Does it retain the hyperlinks in the pdf document?

Sadly, no, it doesn't. There is another free PDF printer driver, CutePDF Writer (uses the GhostScript PS3PDF converter) from Arco Software (cutepdf.com/ - also comes in a "pro" version for money), which does -- or, at least, it did on XP -- however, I have been unable to get it to work in Win.7.x64 (haven't tried x86). Maybe you'll have better luck.

CutePDF Writer seems to get lots of endorsements on "best of" utility lists; however, I've found it a bit finiky. It seems to get broken easily and needs to be reinstalled when other applications, including the GhostScript converter, get updated.

PDFCreator is stand-alone (it incorporates GhostScript internally rather than as an external converter); and, like Timex watches, takes a beating and keeps on ticking. New versions seem to appear at fairly frequent (but irregular) intervals. The active link feature is on their list of requested upgrades, so maybe it will be included soon.

 

[kintomaniac]

u might also want to add samurize and fence. they make a great desktop

 

[Brink]

Thank you Kintomaniac. Samurize added.

 

[harmann]

Recently I tried to sort out my .tga image collection and man, what a pain it was using Explorer without thumbnails. Tried ThumbView but it didn't seem to work on W7 x64. If you have a thumbnail program to suggest, please post. Here's just what I came up with after a bit of Googling:

MysticThumbs

=========================================
MysticThumbs v1.6 beta

PSD, DDS, TGA, PAA Thumbnail extension

32 and 64 bit for Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7
=========================================

--------------------
Installation notes
--------------------

If everything goes well you will have thumbnail previews for:

Photoshop (.pds)
DirectDraw (.dds)
Targa (.tga)
Adobe Illustrator (.ai)
SGI image (.sgi, .rgb)
Painbrush (.pcx)
Apple Paintbrush (.pct)
Fax images (.fax)
.art, .avs, .cin, .dib, .fts, .hrz, .ipl, .jbg, .pbm.

You may need to close all your explorer windows and re-open them. In some cases you may have to restart Windows.

This component requires DirectX installed which should be no problem.
It comes with the required D3DX library for some image types.

 

[p7ast1k]

DAEMON Tools Lite v4.30.4 32/64 Bits (with SPTD 1.58)
http://disc-tools.com/download/daemon

 

[ikilledkenny]

Ooh great! And a hard, cool one: Google Chrome. Then run off and tell the developers about it!

Don't know if anyone has told you yet, but it works.