You will find in this page a list of free programs and free tools for Windows XP. They will also usually work with Windows 95, 98, Me, NT and 2000. This list is limited to 20 freeware on purpose, while my objective is not to create a new freeware referencing site, but a "top 20" of freeware that comes from my experience in the daily use of these programs that, although they are being free, are very often just as good as many shareware or commercial programs.
I personally (almost) only use these free programs in addition to the development tools I use every day (and all are free !) and in addition to the ONLY TWO commercial software that I had to buy : Windows (of course!) and Delphi 3 (since then, Delphi even became free for personal use!). And therefore, my hard disk of 8 Gb is far from being full and my Pentium running at 1 GHz is far from being overloaded.
In my personal selection, the programs have been splitted in 3 categories to ease both search and reading :
I use these programs on a regular basis and since several weeks or months. Therefore can I give you my "personal quotation", as a result of a mix that includes installation easiness (and uninstallation easiness !), use easiness, documentation clarity, real utility of the tool.
: excellent
: very good
: good
Download Size
You will also find the indication of the size of the downloadable program, which should help you in estimating the needed time for download.
: less than 1 Mb
: between 1 Mb and 2 Mb
: between 2 Mb and 3 Mb
: between 3 Mb and 4 Mb
: more than 4 Mb
Language
Is also given the information about the language in which these programs are readable.
: in French
: in English
: both in French and in English (what a good job!)
Do not hesitate to let me know your comments about this selection, your proposals for adding other programs, and so on...
Office automation, Internet and graphical Tools (7 freeware)
I have put in this category a few tools that will assist you in your general office automation and web browser uses, whatever browser you might use : Microsoft Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox, or even another one.
The use of these tools together with Ma Page Web (HTML page creator) from aldweb will allow you to design nice Web pages and bring them to your "Internet readers".
Here is the list of the subcategories covered in this chapter :
PC protection (Firewall, Anti-virus, Anti-spyware) Your attention please: it is mandatory, before connecting to the Internet, to protect as much as possible your PC with ALL these tools or similar ones!
I personally do not like at all the integrated firewall of Windows XP and I had got used to using ZoneAlarm on my former Windows 98 PC. ZoneAlarm is a very efficient firewall that will protect your PC from intrusion of hackers while browsing on the Internet.
AntiVir PE (Author : H+BEDV Datentechnik GmbH - Germany)
Anti-virus
This a full-featured anti-virus program. You can also download on a very regular base the free virus definition upgrades. This great anti-virus is free for a personal use.
I cannot go on in this category without a proposal for an anti-spyware software to protect your privacy.
OpenOffice.org (Author : OpenOffice.org - International team)
Office automation
Now that our PC is well protected, it is time to give you the link to this full-featured office suite that comes with a wordprocessor (compatible with Microsoft Word), a spreadsheet (compatible with Microsoft Excel) and a graphics editor. This fantastic suite, born as StarOffice in the 1990's, is 100% free.
I have tested lots of FTP software which are programs used for transfering files from your PC to a remote systeme (your Web server, for example). It uses the FTP protocol (which means "File Transfer Protocol"). I always came back to LeechFTP even though it is no more maintained since the year 2000, because it is small, fast and dramatically efficient!
BRS WebWeaver is a free personal web and FTP server (to share files with relatives, without using some public space... better for privacy!). Even with its small size (~375 KB) and low memory requirements (~4 MB) it provides lots of functionality at speeds that will impress you. On my side, I integrated it in the EasyGuppY pack which is made of BRS WebWeaver, PHP and the GuppY web portal, project in the open source software spirit which was born here, initiated by myself before it became such a success that it now has a dedicated web site and a full team devoted to develop it and make it live. You will become your own webmaster in a couple of minuts with this great GuppY tool which is so well served by BRS WebWeaver.
System Tools (6 freeware)
You will find in this category a few tools that will help you in your daily use of your Windows system.
Add to this list Mémo Friends (address and data book with notification of upcoming dates) made bu aldweb, very useful tool to no more forget important dates.
Here is the list of the subcategories covered in this chapter :
Windows customizing
Startup programs control
Windows registry monitoring
General System tool
Disk space follow-up
Personal Information Management (consider using Mémo Friends)
It is hard to find, it is no more maintained, but DrvImagerXP is the only free tool that I know which is able to save and restore the FAT32 (of Windows 9x/Me) and NTFS (of Windows NT/2000/XP) partitions of a hard disk. More than once, this efficient software saved me from the "damned, I have to reinstall my system from scratch!"...
Its registry is the weak point of Windows, a cleanup from time to time helps it being fine. And, for this job, RegSeeker has a very good quality / price ratio!
Registry Monitor (Authors : Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell - USA)
Registry monitoring
Registry Monitor is a spy looking for the permanent registry accesses made by Windows. It is useful for programmers that want to trace read and write accesses to the registry. It is also useful for those who want to check what some free programs do...
This little program is ment to print an image of the video (PrtScr) or the active window (Alt + PrtScr). It is very useful to print examples of video without having to go through a usual application.
Disk Space Monitor adds icons to the system tray showing the total and free space for any drives. Any drive letters available, either local or remote, can be shown.
RegDir will change the color of the current active directory from yellow to green, so that it becomes very easy to know what is the current active directory in the Windows Explorer and also in most load/save windows. This little tool is just a must.
Other Tools - games, network tools, programming (7 freeware)
I have put several programs for relaxation in this category, or on the contrary that will be useful in your creating side for programmation.
Maybe, will you also need Gestion de Projet from aldweb, very useful tool for organizing and managing your projects (like programming, etc...).
Here is the list of the subcategories covered in this chapter :
Rapid-Q is a free Basic compiler and graphical development tool. It works pretty much like Microsoft Visual Basic or Borland Delphi. Thanks to Rapid-Q, there is no more need to buy an expensive development tool to create nice programs. Really THE MUST for programmers... and also THE MUST for those of you who would like to discover what software programming is like as Rapid-Q is really easy to use and works with the easiest language of all being Basic.
In my opinion, Setup Generator is far away the best free program to generate installations of programs. All my freeware used to be given away with Inno Setup (another great installation program) as an installation procedure.Setup Generator is easy to use, it has all needed features for this kind of programs. So, starting with Ma Page Web v2.1, all of my freeware will be given away with a setup program made by Setup Generator.
BlockCAD is for those of you who just love Lego bricks. Now they can virtually build their Lego constructions. This freeware is just needed for those of you that are old children... I am one of those.
Digger was originally created by Windmill software in 1983 and released as a copy-protected, bootable 5.25" floppy disk for the IBM PC/XT. Digger was one of the first games I played with on my very first PC, and I had a great pleasure to find that someone had given life back to this great game of the 1980's.
Ah, j'allais oublier ... Fais moi le plaisir de modifier tes doctypes HTML 4.01 Transitional d'ici et de guppy pour les remplacer par du Xhtml strict ... Et pis rajoute des feuilles de styles, c'est pas très propre de tout mettre en plein milieu là comme ça .... :D Et pis enlève les Js, c'est mal, je sais pas moi ... essai l'Ajax vaisselle ou le HttpRequest ... Bon allez j'arrête de faire mon boulet, travailles bien ^^
Salut Lô, Très utile ta page de liens ! C'est marrant, je tombe sur ce site par hasard, pis en naviguant je vois que tu es le créateur de Guppy, projet déjà bien connu sur le web, quelle notoriété :) Bon hop, j'en profite pour filer des liens de logiciels utiles (ou pas): Scanner : permet de visionner rapidement ce qui prend de la place sur les disques durs. http://www.steffengerlach.de/freeware/ Filezilla : Pour les Transferts Ftp. J'utilisais leechFTP avant, mais filezilla même s'il pèse 3mo au lieu de 1mo est en francais et plante beaucoup moins souvent. http://www.01net.com/windows/Internet/ftp/fiches/17966.html Sablier : LE logiciel utile ! Un minuteur pour les pâtes estudiantines ou pour le thé des longues nuits blanches :) (logiciel simple et efficace, tu en as peut être même crée un du même acabit dans tes gratuiciels mais je n'ai pas encore tout regardé) http://siri.urz.free.fr/Sablier.php Spybot est bien, mais c'est encore mieux s'il est accompagné de a-squared et ad-aware. N'oublions pas Thunderbird et Firefox. Et pour finir un WindowsMediaClassic accompagné d'un pack de codecs léger et efficace ou alors tout simplement VLC, plus robuste mais rustique. Bon c'est une liste de 20 logiciels, je sais, mais bon, peut-être pour 2007, elle passera à 30 ? ;) Passez de bonnes fêtes, et bon codage !
Ma liste date un peu... mais après avoir été pendant des années un fervent défenseur de Netscape, je me suis rabattu sur le navigateur par défaut de mon PC, avec l'idée de me limiter à cette liste de freeware en complément des gadgets nativement fournis par Micro$oft, de façon à alléger la charge sur mon vieux PC...