The 46 Best-ever Freeware Utilities

Techsupportalert ^ | 6/24/05 | Techsupportalert

[Stentor]

Ewido is the best of a new crop of anti-Trojan programs.

Ewido, hijack this, and Killbox were required to get rid of a charmer called Aurora.

[KoRn]

Awesome, thanks!

[Kevin OMalley]

Thanks for posting. Ping for later reference.

[Kevin OMalley]

Oh, and I forgot to add my 2 cents.

I found the best PDF creator was "cutePDF Writer" which I got at Downloads.com but is easier to find at
http://www.cutepdf.com/
There are probably several others. It works better than acrobat distiller on my laptop, and it is completely free.

The PDF editor I use is Iceni's InFix,
available from http://www.iceni.com/

which costs $99. I have used their conversion utility to pull tabular data from PDFs and convert it to Excel, known as Iceni Gemini.

I also downloaded a free trial version of Foxit PDF Editor from
www.foxitsoftware.com/

and I am able to use the full feature set because the watermark that it puts on PDFs is removable by InFix. So, Foxit becomes the best "free" PDF editing software, as long as you have InFix.

[JerseyHighlander]

Bookmarked. I can't agree enough with this quote:

I used WS_FTP Pro as my FTP client for years. What started out as simple and effective product gradually with each new version became more feature-bloated and less effective for routine tasks. With the release of Version 9 it was clear to me that the product had totally lost its way so I started looking for an alternative.

It turned my regular FTP transfers into an absolutely dreaded weekly experience. FileZilla is an excellent replacement, though I've moved to another program, someone's pet project FTP program with like 4000 users.

[IrishCatholic]

Bookmarking for my wife who is my IT support.

[stainlessbanner]

bttt

[StoneGiant]

Thanks!

[Ichneumon]

Spybot I had used prior and still use today in conjunction with Giant. Spybot is no longer finding newer versions than what I have installed. There has to be updates, so that has me little concerned.

There aren't any more "database" updates for the "original" version of SpyBot, but their new engine (1.3) continues to have almost daily updates to its "threat database". Download the latest version of the application itself (SpyBot) from their website, and you'll be back in business and kept up to date.

[amigatec]

After using Firefox for almost a year, and playing around with Knoppix in DVD boot for a short time, this week I completely switched over to Linux. Both feet first, no dual booting. I don't hate Microsoft and I'm aware nothing on the Internet is safe, but I'm not sorry I switched, and I won't go back.

You will find that going back to Windows is not a option.
Not because you can't, but because you won't.

I switched two years ago and have NO regrets.

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

I do like Firefox. I don't think it is quite there yet. Perhaps because I use the .8 version. However, I find Safari (which is also based on the Mozilla engine) to be better.

[Ichneumon]

A very handy search feature allows you to work backwards from named DLLs or handles to the owning process. A gem. Freeware, 230KB. http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/procexp.shtml

This is just one of many "gems" at SysInternals.com. That website has a *TON* of *extremely* useful (and often unique) utilities. When I have a really oddball or highly technical task I need to do on my computer, my first stop is SysInternals.com, and they've seldom let me down.

Two of their utilities deserve special mention: FileMon and RegMon.

FileMon logs *every* file access of any kind that your system does (as long as FileMon is running), and this is *fantastic* for tracking down all sorts of issues, including "why is my hard disk chugging when I'm not doing anything", "what initialization files does this application use", "what license file is this app failing to find", "why is my application's file access so damned slow", and so on. Just last week I used it to solve a really oddball problem I was having on my computer -- my Internet Explorer failed to load any ActiveX controls from any website. Using FileMon to compare this computer's activity versus another (working) computer's while accessing ActiveX websites immediately raised a red flag -- this computer was showing activity by a Symantec anti-virus DLL, which I didn't even know I *had* on this system. After uninstalling the "hidden" anti-virus layer, my ActiveX controls began working again.

As another example, a while back I had picked up some malware that kept adding bogus entries to my "hosts" file, causing advertising popups to run rampant. With FileMon, I quickly pinpointed the exact executable which was doing the nasty, and I was able to nuke it.

RegMon is very similar to FileMon, except that it logs all system registry activity instead of file activity. Again, this is extremely handy for a wide number of uses.

[Never2baCrat]

I'm surprised no mention was made of Stompsoft's product, "SpywareXterminator" which, incidentally found 843 pests when I first installed it, after PestPatrol only found 5! I'm thinking of dumping Norton AntiVirus next month and go with 'NOD32' touted as one of the best, if not the best. You have to get rid of all your other antivirus programmes for it to work. Anyone else use it and if so, how do you rate it?

[Museum Twenty]

bump for later

[Modok]

Marked

[rwfromkansas]

my word...thanks for that link. You can get Adobe Creative Suite CS for 99 bucks. That is even better than what we paid for the educational pricing to get it for the college newspaper.

I just wish they had Incopy.

[k2blader]

After my initial reaction of: "Cool," another thought popped into my mind: "Okay, why should I trust this guy?" :-)

[gitmo]

Bump for some hour that is not past my bedtime.

[Raycpa]

mark

[hobson]

You're very welcome!

I'm not familiar with Incopy but you may want to check their site occasionally, they seem to add new products all the time. I was skeptical at first but then I learned they were essentially a broker for unused licenses. Not many people know about that. I love finding great deals!!!