101 fantastic freebies

Once upon a time you actually had to pay for great software and services -- hard to believe, but true.

Luckily, we no longer live in that world. The Internet is stuffed with great downloads and Web sites offering free software and services of every kind. Want to tune up your PC, keep it safe, create graphics, or back up your system with gobs of free storage space? You can find free software and sites to do all that, and plenty more.

We revved up our cable modem and searched for the most intriguing free offerings out there. After we took each download or service for a test-drive, we picked the very best, and came up with the following list of 101 great freebies.

We didn't do it alone, though -- you helped. We polled readers, asking for your top freebies in several categories, so here you'll find your favorites as well as ours.

System Utilities

Windows XP Tweaks

Winner: Fresh UI

Fresh UI is a tweaker's heaven: With it you can change scores of settings in XP, many of which you probably never knew existed. Want to alter most any aspect of the Windows interface? Go ahead. Customize the Start menu? No problem. Change global menu settings and dozens of network and Internet settings? You can do them all, and a whole lot more.

Microsoft Power Toys for Windows XP Who says Microsoft can't write great software? These easy-to-use tweaking tools allow you to customize XP in countless ways.

Tweak and Tune This freebie doesn't have as many options and tools as Fresh UI does, but it's simple to use and well laid-out.

Windows Vista Tweaks

Winner: TweakVI Basic If you want to do some serious Windows Vista tweaking, you need this utility. Microsoft seems to have gone out of its way to make Vista unfriendly to power users. But this great freebie gives you hundreds of ways to adjust the operating system, tasks that otherwise would be extremely difficult to do. Whether you want to, say, hack the Start menu, put an image on Internet Explorer's toolbar, or optimize your CPU's cache, this program has something for you.

VistaBootPRO Want to change how Windows Vista boots? Ordinarily you'd have to learn the ins and outs of the incomprehensible BCDEdit command-line tool. But this simple, graphical program lets you master Vista's boot-up and startup without ever touching the dreaded BCDEdit.

Easy BCD Another BCD editor, this one is great for setting up a machine with Vista and other operating systems, such as Linux or XP.