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There's never been a better time to be a cheapskate. Free utilities? We've got 'em. Want a full-fledged image editor? A few gigabytes of mail storage? How about an entire office software suite? We can top that, easy. Take the whole earth and solar system. Free!
If you thought that the golden age of free stuff ended when the dot-com bubble burst, guess again. The past few years have seen an explosion of giveaways -- both Web-based services and free software -- that make the anemic home-page building apps and first-generation Web mail services of the late 1990s pale in comparison.
In part, we have the open-source movement to thank. Initially the province of uber-geeks only (think Linux), open-source projects have recently produced several outstanding consumer-oriented programs. The Mozilla project has spawned not only a terrific browser (Firefox) but also an e-mail client, an HTML editor, and more. Sun's OpenOffice.org suite has finally matured, with Microsoft Office-compatible programs that are fully the equal of their commercial competitors. And the list goes on.
The other developments putting smiles on the faces of the tightfisted are advertising-supported software and Web services. As online advertising gathers momentum, it no longer seems so silly to give away endless gigabytes of hard-disk storage and server bandwidth, as free video-hosting services like Putfile and Revver are doing. As a consumer, all you need is the willingness to put up with some banner ads while you watch the videos these services host. Revver is so confident in its ability to make money from ads that it's willing to share ad revenue with anyone who posts videos. In the following pages, we uncover the best free software and services you can find. These are the real deal--no hobbled half-products or demos that time out after 30 days.
On the last page of the article (before the Software lexicon) you'll find a link to an alphabetical list of all the freeware covered here, with links to download them from our sister site PCworld.com
Tune Up: Utilities and System Tools
Foxit Reader For viewing PDF files, Foxit Reader beats Adobe Reader hands-down. This program requires no installation -- just run the executable -- and it launches in about 1 second. Plus, it includes some desirable tools that Adobe lacks, such as a "typewriter" that lets you edit any text in the PDF, not just in form fields.
System Information for Windows Run the executable, and in a few seconds this little utility will tell you more than you could imagine about your computer's hardware, operating system, installed programs, and so on. What you do with that information is up to you -- the tool doesn't offer diagnoses or advice.
PDF Creator This printer driver lets you create Adobe Acrobat files from any application, just by selecting Print from within that app and choosing PDF Creator as your printer. It offers a multitude of options for controlling the output, including the ability to password-protect PDF files to limit users' ability to print, copy, or modify the documents.
CCleaner Over time, your PC gets gunked up with old browser cache files, cookies, and other bits and pieces. CCleaner finds this digital detritus and zaps it.
Microsoft Tweak UI Control scores of hidden Windows XP settings, from determining what appears on your Start menu to specifying how users log on to your PC.
7-Zip It's just plain rude to send huge, uncompressed files. 7-Zip is a free utility that creates .zip compressed archives.
PuTTY If you need to connect to your Web server for maintenance, an SSH (Secure Shell) connection is safer than old-school Telnet, because the connection -- including the part where you type your password -- is encrypted. This SSH client will do the trick very neatly.
OmniFormat Want to convert BMPs to JPEGs? GIFs to PDFs? Word docs to TIF image files? As fast as you can copy files into a specified target folder, OmniFormat will turn them into the precise kind of file you want. Note: In order to use OmniFormat, you must install an ad-supported PDF creation utility, PDF995.
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