Wireless yogi: The Editors' Choice List: Our Selection of the Best PC Freeware

Updated Tue, 10/26/2010 - 10:28 by bodis

http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/probably-best-free-security-list-world.htm

Introduction
Welcome to the Gizmo's Freeware Editors' Choice List, where you'll
find a collection of the very best freeware from our site.

This really is a "best of the best" list. Most of the products in this
list have been awarded the coveted "Gizmo's Top" pick award signifying
they are the best free product in their class. We've also included
some other outstanding products that have impressed our editors with
their usefulness and professionalism.

We suggest you browse the whole list at your leisure as you may be
surprised what freeware gems you will discover. The pathologically
impatient can use the Quick Select Index below.

Caution: Some of these recommendations involve advanced system tasks
like cleaning the Windows registry so be sure to backup or image your
system first.

The Editors' Choice List of the Best Freeware - Quick Select Index
After clicking a link, use your browser's Back icon to return here.

Best Free Security & Privacy Software
Best Free Antivirus Software:

Avira AntiVir -- Download | Review

"My top pick if you're looking for the best protection against virus,
spyware and rootkit threats. AntiVir is very light on resources and
the detection rate of malware is outstanding, better than almost every
other antivirus according to tests."

High Quality Alternatives:

Microsoft Security Essentials: "By far the best choice for average
users because of the minimal user interaction required and clean
interface. The detection rates are very good, in particular the
detection of zero-day threats and rootkits. Even more impressive, it
has very few false positives and is light on resources."

avast! Free Antivirus: "An excellent free antivirus program that many
users prefer. Its detection rates are on par with AntiVir, it's light
on resources, and it has the most features: full real-time
capabilities (web, e-mail, IM, P2P and network shields), boot-time
scanning, and a behavioral blocker."
Provides an essential layer of protection from a multitude of virus,
trojan, worm, spyware, adware, dialer, keylogger and rootkit
infections. Most current antiviruses have at least reasonably good
detection rates of all forms of malware. We recommend using only one
antivirus program for real-time protection.

Best Free Firewall:

Comodo Internet Security -- Download | Review

"The security effectiveness of the firewall and application monitor
(Defense+ HIPS) exceeds the performance of many commercial products.
On the minus side, it's rather talkative and this may alarm or annoy
users." The antivirus component is optional and not recommended.

How to install Comodo Firewall - Comodo 5.0 / 2111 installation guide.

High Quality Alternatives:

Online Armor Free: "A solid contender in proactive protection, with a
novel Run Safer feature that allows the added protection of a limited
user account without the annoyances. If you can handle the ads and
installation nags, it functions similar to Comodo with a few extra
user friendly features."

Zone Alarm Free Firewall 2010 "is an excellent inbound/outbound OS
firewall solution suited for users of every level of experience. Users
can adjust security settings for their needs to allow for file/printer
sharing, public networks, and even turn off the firewall if ever
needed. Simple controls in the form of visual slide bars make setting
up this firewall a snap."
Firewalls not only filter incoming traffic to your computer but they
also increasingly help you to control the activities of Internet
facing applications on your PC. The ones that provide the most control
and security, typically require the most user involvement to answer
popup alerts. If all the popup alerts are meaningless to you, then at
a minimum remember to enable the windows firewall. In any case, only
install one software firewall.

Best Free Adware/Spyware/Scumware Remover:

SuperAntiSpyware -- Download | Review

"Top of the list once again in detection and removal of malware, with
a fairly lightweight download and simple installation."

High Quality Alternatives:

MalwareBytes Anti-Malware: Tied for second and recommended by our
security wizard.

a-squared Free: Tied for second and highest as a Trojan Scanner/Trojan Remover.
Additional scanners/removers will often find additional unique
threats. Regular on-demand anti-malware scanning is still a must.

Best Free Intrusion Prevention and Detection Utility (HIPS Software):

ThreatFire -- Download | Review

"It has now bounced back to the top of the pile and is far less
capable of causing system problems. It provides behavioral based
detection and runs from the box without the need for additional
configuration. Be aware that automatic updates are not provided with
the free version if you elect to "opt out" of the ThreatFire
Community."

If you need a lite HIPS alternative, try WinPatrol.

If you use a simple firewall (such as the built-in windows firewall),
then a HIPS program provides a potent second layer of defense. But
some anti-virus/anti-spyware programs have a behavioral component too.
Learn about HIPS software here.

Best Free Browser Protection Utility:

Sandboxie -- Download | Review

"Creates a special sandbox environment on your PC [either for web
browsing or any program]. So that within the virtual sandbox provided
by Sandboxie the vital portions of your PC are totally isolated. If
set correctly, any spyware, Trojans, keyloggers or other malware
products that 'infect' your PC while browsing will be eliminated. It
can cause problems on some PCs so backup before installing.

Alternatively, you can isolate your browser and other Internet facing
applications with GesWall. It provides excellent security and is a
worthy alternative to Sandboxie" (see the review above).

Browser protection utilities like Sandboxie and GeSWall can greatly
increase your defenses against drive-by downloads and other
vulnerabilities. Instead of only reacting to malware, they use
proactive technology to protect your computer.

Best Free Anonymous Surfing Service:

Cyber Ghost -- Download | Review

"Cyber Ghost VPN is a VPN client offered by S.A.D. GmbH and their
servers are based in Germany. They use 128-bit AES encryption on all
connections to ensure a high level of anonymity and use data
compression to make connections to their servers faster.

For their free service, they offer 1 GB a month which is more than
enough for surfing the web. You must register in order to use this
service.

It's GUI is very basic. attractive and user-friendly. They have just
recently hit half a million users and are growing fast. I am very
pleased with this product. It's well worth a look."

Anonymity services safely transmit information with little risk of
local interception, making them ideal for surfing on open Wi-Fi
networks or in hotels while traveling.

Related Security Top Picks and Hot Items

Best Free Secure DNS -- OpenDNS -- Download | Review. "After only a
quick registration and configuration change, it considerably improves
your pro-active protection against drive by malware. It's an excellent
first line of defense."

Best Free Rootkit Scanner -- "Several free applications specialize in
the detection and removal of rootkits."

Secunia PSI -- Download | Review. Scans for insecure software and
helps you quickly update risky products like browsers, PDF readers,
Sun Java, office software, email software, media players, instant
messengers, download managers, P2P clients, etc.. You should also
allow Windows to automatically update with its latest patches, for
Windows itself often has security flaws (learn more).

Best Free Site Link Adviser -- WOT -- Download | Review. Quickly rates
sites and links, uses an automatic warning or blocking screen to help
you avoid accidentally interacting with potentially bad websites, and
provides informative ratings and user comments without censoring the
visibility of sites.
Best Free Cleanup & Tuning Software

Best Free PC Tune-up Utility:

Ashampoo WinOptimizer -- Download | Review

"It's very easy to use and has a sleek interface. Allows one-click
cleaning for disk, privacy and registry cleaning tasks, and has an
excellent tweaking tool."

Note that it requires registration and some components are not as
advanced as other products, such as the disk defrag and disk cleaner.

Intended as an all-in-one PC performance optimizer and tweaker to
simplify system tasks that typically require many separate specialty
programs.

Best Free Registry Cleaner:

Wise Registry Cleaner -- Download | Review

"The most satisfactory product I have come across. It allows you to
backup the Registry before you start and it doesn't check areas where
most Registry tricks are played. I caution against changing the
default settings unless you have a good understanding of the Registry
and how applications use it."

If you use registry cleaners such as Wise, CCleaner, or WinOptimizer,
be sure to backup and image first. Registry cleaning mistakes can
quickly lead to the need to completely re-install windows.

Best Free Disk De-fragmenter:

Auslogics Disk Defrag -- Download | Review

"The latest release is way ahead of the competition. I found the
defragmentation time to be incredibly fast, and for the first time in
a while, the long process of defragmenting my hard drive was shrunk to
minutes."

Defragmenting your hard drive on a regular basis is a sound
housekeeping habit. It can greatly increase system performance and
relieve stress on your hard drive.

Best Free File Cleaner:

CCleaner -- Download | Review

"Quickly and effectively remove unused or temporary files, unwanted
cookies, and other unneeded files that accumulate from applications."

Additionally, it can scan the Windows registry for issues, securely
erase, manage the startup, uninstall software, clean system restore
points, and run automatically at startup or as a task.

Best Free Secure Erase Utility:

Eraser -- Download | Review

"Highly effective at wiping the free space, leaving behind only
unrecoverable nonsense file names on modern size hard drives. It
erases the unused disk space (or "free space"), cluster tips (or
"slack space"), individual files or folders, and data in the recycling
bin."

Normal file deletion doesn't prevent a common file recovery program
from recovering your files, so eraser utilities are helpful to
permanently delete any personally identifiable or unwanted files to
protect your privacy.

Best Free Program Uninstaller:

Revo Uninstaller -- Download | Review

"It is the only freeware product I know of that will make a decent job
of cleaning up a failed install. It finds leftover files and registry
entries to help uninstall more cleanly, but it doesn't always find
everything.

An alternative technique (requiring more work on your part) allows you
to monitor before and after an installation to completely remove files
and registry entries. For this, try ZSoft Uninstaller. But there is
always the slight chance it will remove unwanted entries, so use
caution."

The Windows control panel has limited uninstalling capabilities, but
freeware programs like Revo and ZSoft allow for better deletion of
programs by removing many files and registry entries that are usually
left behind.

Best Free Startup Manager:

Autoruns -- Download | Review

Besides startup/logon management, Autoruns also allows you to manage
services, drivers, sidebar gadgets, scheduled tasks, image hijacks,
Winlogin entries (that many other startup managers miss), and more,
but use it carefully.

Alternatively, average users could use Starter, CCleaner, Revo Uninstaller, etc.

If you have a system full of programs running in the background that
don't do very much (and a start menu full of near useless tray icons),
then startup managers are especially helpful for increasing system
performance. Run programs when you want, not when they decide.

Related Cleaning/Tuning Top Picks and Hot Items

Best Free Memory Optimizer -- CleanMem -- Download | Review. "Cleans
system memory and cache, and actually seems to work. It doesn't run
constantly in the tray. So you just set it and forget it (via the task
scheduler at user-specified time intervals)."

Best Free Windows Tweaker -- Ultimate Windows Tweaker -- Download |
Review. "A well equipped tweaker utility that covers user account,
security, performance and internet tweaking." Be sure to check out the
complementary tweaking guide, here, which largely applies to windows 7
too.
Best Free Home & Office Software

Best Free PDF Writer:

Bullzip PDF Printer or PDFill Writer -- Read Review

"Both have more of the options I need (encrypt and password protect
PDF files, add watermarks, append files, adjust output quality, edit
metadata), and have worked flawless for me."

PDF writers act like a pseudo printer on your system. When you want to
create a PDF document from pretty much any application you just choose
to print it to the PDF printer and it creates a PDF document.

Best Free PDF Tools Utility:

PDFill PDF Tools -- Download | Review

"Clean and nice user interface, includes most features such as merge,
split, reorder, rotate, header and footer with page number, watermark,
encrypt and decrypt, convert PDF to images or vice versa, convert
PostScript to PDF."

See here for related online apps and services.

Some programs in this review are designed to combine merging,
splitting and other capabilities in a single application (like
PDFill), but some perform a more specific task (see the Specific Tools
section in the review).

Best Free PDF Reader/Viewer:

PDF-XChange Viewer -- Download | Review

"Loads reasonably fast, can print PDFs, allows basic annotation
without watermarking, good text clarity, allows you to fill and save
Adobe PDF forms, extract text and images, magnify text, and export PDF
pages or documents to BMP, JPEG, TIFF, PNG formats."

Third party readers like PDF-XChange help you to replace the slow and
bulky Adobe PDF Reader.

Best Free Office Suite:

OpenOffice -- Download | Review

"OpenOffice covers the basics of office document creation: word
processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, and databases. It
allows you to save your documents in many choices of file formats, so
you'll have no problem exchanging documents with MS Office."

Free substitutes for MS Office like this go a long way to meeting the
needs of home users, small businesses, and many others.

Best Free Software Suite:

LiberKey -- Download | Review

"Liberkey has 305 applications to choose from including most popular
ones. If you know what you want I would suggest installing Standard
suite and adding other apps to your taste. "

Software suites is a great way of having your favorite applications in
one place and it is completely portable.

Related Home/Office Top Picks and Hot Items

Best Free Word Processor -- Jarte -- Download | Review. "A clean,
light, and task oriented word processor. It provides outlining
functions, basic spell checking, screenshot capturing, and PDF
exporting. Additionally, it has extra interface layouts/skins, a
wealth of formatting options, and support for Rich Text Files (RTF)
and Word documents (DOC, DOCX)."

Abiword -- Download | Review. "A popular, free word processor with an
interface similar to Word & WordPerfect. It reads many document types
(OpenOffice, MS Word, WordPerfect, RTF, HTML) and you will be pleased
with its layout capabilities. Includes spell checking, annotations,
common formatting tools, and support for many plugins."

Best Free Finance Software -- GnuCash -- Download | Review. "Eases you
into accounting equations and helps you keep tabs on your budget."

Best Free Text Editor -- "General purpose text editors that have more
features than Notepad, such as tabbed interfaces and block functions."

Best Free Personal Information Manager -- Palm Desktop -- Download |
Review. "An excellent, full function PIM, much like Microsoft Outlook
without the email client. Track expenses for multiple categories (and
in different currencies) and quickly export them to Microsoft Excel
and Word."

Best Free World Clock -- Wim's World Clock -- Download | Review. "A
light world clock with a choice of virtually any number of time
zones."

Best Free Sticky Notes Utility -- Stickies -- Download | Review.
"Provides a plethora of advanced features (such as recurring
reminders) that really makes it shine."
Best Free Image Viewing & Image Editing Software

Best Free High Dynamic Range (HDR) Software:

Picturenaut -- Download | Review

"If you are looking for straight forward images without excessive tone
mapping this has to be your top software. Provides image alignment,
exposure correction, color balancing, noise level compensation, and
derivation of the camera curve from the source images."

HDR photography combines several photos of the same scene, taken at
different exposure settings, into one photo. The details of dark areas
(from a longer-duration exposure) are combined with the details of
brightly lit areas (from a shorter-duration exposure). The result is a
single photo that is correctly exposed and also looks more
dimensional.

Best Free Digital Image Editor:

LightBox Image Editor or Paint.net -- Read Review

"Lightbox is my top pick for basic image editing because it has an
attractive user interface and it's simple and straight forward to use.

Paint.net is a very good choice for mid-level photo retouching because
of its excellent design and attractive interface. It also has options
and tools comparable to commercial software, but it requires you to
install Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 or newer."

See here for related online apps and services.

Basic editors like Lightbox allow you to quickly make small
adjustments to the overall lighting, colors, and tones of your images
(along with other tools: cropping, sharpening, red eye correction).
But editors like Paint.net offer more advanced tools (layers,
captions, shapes, selective adjustments, artistic effects, etc.). See
the review for editors comparable to professional programs.

Best Free Digital Image Viewer:

Zoner Photo Studio Free -- Download | Review

"It is organized into a manager, a fullscreen viewer and an editor,
and is perfect for the needs of average users. It reads many formats,
generates thumbnails in a blink, complete with a powerful search with
many filters, a lot of display options, full shortcut customization,
the ability to temporarily rotate pictures and to straighten them by
drawing a horizontal line. You can also organize pictures into albums,
geotag, build calendars, stitch panoramas, make 3D pictures and more."

High Quality Image Viewer Alternatives:

XnView: "It's probably the most versatile of all viewers because it
can read nearly 400 types of graphic files and convert any of these to
more than 50 formats."

IrfanView: "This is a first-class product, an amazingly capable
application and quite fast at displaying images. It offers plenty of
functions for editing, converting, batch processing, slideshow
exporting, etc."
Apart from the basic viewing and browsing functions, digital image
viewers offer loads of features like editing, filtering, batch
processing, organizing, publishing, etc.

Best Free Screen Capture Utility:

PicPick -- Download | Review

"A powerful and user friendly screen capture tool with a plethora of
features. Captures full screen, active window, and other regions
(rectangular, fixed, or freehand). Supports auto-scroll, dual
monitors, sound effect and multiple formats. An image editor is
included, plus several extras: color picker, screen ruler, protractor,
cross hair and whiteboard."

As an alternative to the utilities that come with windows, free screen
capture products like PicPick cover many useful features and
functions: capture full or selected areas, auto detect windows, snap
scrolling windows, allow delayed captures, etc.

Related Image Top Picks and Hot Items

Best Free Paint Program -- Project DogWaffle -- Download | Review.
"Any one of these in the review will definitely satisfy the inner
artist in you. My requirements include graphic tablet support and the
feel of natural paint on a digital canvas, but support for animation
or booklet pages is a plus."

Best Free Photo Organizer -- Picasa 3 -- Download | Review. "Organize
photos and videos, import photos from cameras, send photos to many
devices, and use many editing features (sufficient for what amateur
photographers need)."

Best Free Photo Noise Reduction Software -- "Noise on a digital image
looks like random speckled-color dots in areas where the color should
be more even. Noise-reducing programs cannot eliminate noise from your
digital photos, but they can make it less obvious."

Best Free Vector Graphics Editor -- Inkscape -- Download | Review.
"Highly usable interface and comes with impressive tutorials to ease
you into the world of nodes, lines, curves, and shapes" (review).
"Suitable for web graphics, logos, creative art, images with text,
technical illustrations, etc." (FAQs).

Best Free Digital Image Stitcher -- Microsoft Image Composite Editor
(ICE) -- Download | Review. "If you have taken a series of photographs
of a scene that you would like to piece together as one picture, then
this is what you're looking for." ICE also recently made Gizmo go
"Wow!" (here).
Best Free Internet & Email and Networking & File Transfer Software

Best Free Web Browser:

Mozilla Firefox -- Download | Review

"It's safer and a tad faster than Internet Explorer at general
browsing, and is very stable and more standards compliant. Version 3.5
made Firefox even more feature rich with such capabilities as Private
browsing (similar to "Incognito Mode" in Chrome). It allows you to
customize your web experience with over 2000 free add-ons, providing
the most flexibility, expandability, and features of any browser to
date."

To setup or backup Firefox, see Gizmo's guides: How to Install
Firefox, How to Back up Mozilla Firefox (and Thunderbird), Best
Firefox Add-ons.

High Quality Web Browser Alternatives:

Opera: "Extremely fast at loading pages, loads of features. There's so
much to like about it you could easily create a case that it's better
than Firefox. Though, alas, there are not nearly as many widgets
available as there are Firefox extensions."

SRWare Iron: "Looks and acts almost exactly like Google Chrome, but
without sending any information back to Google's servers. Amazingly
fast at loading pages, minimalist interface, with impressive features
such as an Incognito Mode for privacy."

Best Free Email Client:

Mozilla Thunderbird -- Download | Review

"Intuitive user interface and highly customizable and expandable
through add-ons. More secure than Outlook Express and, unlike the
latter, is still being actively developed."

In addition to sending and receiving email, email programs like
Thunderbird can manage your contacts and calendar, read news groups
and RSS newsfeeds, and even integrate with various web-based mail
systems like GMail and Hotmail.

Best Free Bittorrent Client:

µTorrent -- Download | Review

"Small, efficient, many features, and excellent support. Tied for
lowest memory use of all clients."

You may also want to browse the related guides, Optimizing µTorrent
for Speed and Optimizing Bittorrent Clients.

Bittorrent quickly became an important download format for its speed,
efficiency, and cheapness in distributing content over the Internet.
Learn more about Bittorrent here.

Best Free Download Manager:

Free Download Manager -- Download | Review

"A popular download manager and a good choice for its stability, nice
user interface and support for various browsers such as Internet
Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Opera and Safari."

There comes a time when you are downloading a large file and the
download stops part of the way through. Specialized download managers
like Free Download Manager will allow you to resume a download, start
several concurrent download sessions, and dramatically improve
download speed.

Best Free Remote Access Software:

UltraVNC or LogMeIn -- Read Review

"UltraVNC offers all the features you need, including
auto-configuration, easy user interface, extensive hotkeys and
embedded file transfer. Add to that the fact that it's free, secure,
reliable and reasonably speedy and you have a winner.

LogMeIn is possibly the fastest most reliable remote control freeware
available. It will even allow a PC to remotely control a Macintosh.
Excellent tool for accessing home computer or friends/family computers
from anywhere."

Remotely administer another computer for off-site troubleshooting or
for accessing your home PC while traveling.

Related Internet/Network Top Picks and Hot Items

Best Free HTML Editor -- "Includes WYSIWYG editors for non-technical
users who want to create an attractive web site, but also discusses
HTML text editors for programmers or for anyone comfortable with
coding raw HTML."

Best Free FTP Client -- Fire FTP -- Download | Review. "With a robust
feature set, ease of use, and browser integration, FireFTP should
serve the needs of all but the heaviest power user. FTP clients enable
fast bulk file transfers; essential for website management."

Best Free Instant Messaging Client -- Pidgin -- Download | Review.
"Easy-to-use and very functional multi-protocol IM client (see its
download page for a long list of supported clients). It aptly calls
itself the 'universal chat client'."

Skype -- Download. "Allows free Skype-to-Skype Internet phone calls
with video, but it also has instant messaging and many other features
(voicemail, SMS, forwarding)."

Best Free Web Form Filler / Password Manager -- Roboform -- Download |
Review. "Full featured and easy to use password manager. Seamlessly
integrates with popular browsers, and allows your saved passwords to
be used on any PC. But the free version allows only 10 to be stored."

LastPass -- Download | Review. "A free password manager as good as
Roboform and maybe even better. It uses a web service that works in
combination with a program that runs on your PC, so your passwords are
accessible from different computers."

Best Free Download/Upload Meter -- NetMeter -- Download | Review.
"Provides a graphical representation of the network traffic going in
and out of your PC. Has excellent graphics, usability, and
configurability."

Best Free Network Finder -- InSSIDer -- Download | Review. "A WiFi
network finder helps mobile users see the available wireless networks
in an area. It also helps you identify the strongest wireless signals
and the SSID of an access point. For example, it may help you solve
slow and unstable connections that are due to overlapping signals."
Best Free Multimedia Software

Best Free CD / DVD Burning Software:

ImgBurn -- Download | Review

"Most powerful burning application with advanced features, support for
every modern optical disc from CD to Blu-Ray, more than 10 image
formats, authoring rewritable discs, etc."

Whether backing up data, preparing an audio mix CD, or creating a
bootable Linux disc, finding the right burning software is essential.

Best Free Media Player:

The KM Player -- Download | Review

"Easy to use and install, awesome playback, and no need for extra
codec packs, making it easy to use for those with less experience.
Other features include setting multifarious audio and video effects,
slow down or increase playback speed with regular tone, etc."

Capable of playing multiple types of media files, including various
digital audio and video formats, CDs, and DVDs.

Best Free Music Player and Organizer:

Jaangle -- Download | Review

"The library is impressive for organizing music, the download
capabilities enhance the music experience (get artist and album
photos, reviews, bios, etc.), and the auto continue (or "auto DJ")
mode chooses songs based on many tag categories (artist, genre, all
music, etc.). It achieves a good balancing act between lightness,
resource efficiency, and feature support for music lovers.

If you need more music managing features all in one program, try MusicBee."

Music players like Jaangle and MusicBee serve as excellent MP3 players
and play most popular audio formats. As music centric programs, they
may inspire you to rip or download music, organize your music
collection, or learn more about your favorite artists or songs.

Best Free MP3 Tag Editor:

TagScanner -- Download | Review

"Supports basic and extended tags, complete with Music Renamer and Tag
Processor. It allows you to preview tag information and cover art from
online databases like freedb or Amazon.

But if you prefer a more normal user interface then Mp3tag is a good
alternative."

Useful for when you need to playback audio files with their tag
information shown correctly or to organize a large music collection
based on tag information.

Best Free Audio & Video Format Conversion:

iWisoft Free Video Converter -- Download | Review

"Simple polished interface, file and preset editing allowed, good
device presets. It even has a few pleasant surprises, such as a basic
editing suite built in. In short, this program is an outstanding
choice for almost any device conversion."

Despite its name, it converts a huge number of both video and audio
formats, and as a nice extra also provides some video editing.

Converters like iWisoft make many different audio and video formats
compatible for use with common devices or programs. Most devices will
only take a few specific formats; for example, a DVD movie will not
play on an iPod without being converted into an MP4 file.

Best Free Video Editor:

Avidemux -- Download | Review

"My personal favorite for multi-purpose video editing and processing
because of its simplicity, wide range of tools, and well documented
tutorials. Supports many file types including AVI, DVD compatible MPEG
files, MP4 and ASF."

Video editing is becoming ever more prevalent and crucial; both to the
aspiring young director and to the mom who just wants to save old
memories.

Best Free Audio Editor:

Audacity -- Download | Review

"It does all the recording and editing I need, and is much simpler and
faster to use than a lot of pay products. It easily applies noise
profiles and saves in multiple compressed formats."

Excellent free products like Audacity give a professional touch to
your recordings. For example, podcasting enthusiasts use them to
record, edit, mix, and save sound on their PCs. They may even make
entire downloadable shows that sound almost as good as a professional
production.

Best Free Online TV Viewer:

JLC's Internet TV Viewer -- Download | Review

"A simple, but effective TV streams viewer that doesn't have much
overhead. The channel guide is maintained by users and is very
complete. User ratings help you choose good streams, and a favorites
category helps you corral the streams you like. Requires Windows Media
Player, Real Player, or VLC."

Get Podcasts, video on demand, reruns of past shows, and live video
streams. Many TV stations make their over-the-air broadcasts available
as Live streams, but quality can vary. You may also find independent
and international networks that aren't carried by cable companies.

Best Free CD & DVD Emulation Software:

Gizmo Drive -- Download | Review

"Support up to 26 virtual drives, create ISO image, burn ISO files or
folders to recordable disks, complete with Gizmo Manager and Image
Wizard to perform tasks."

Emulation software allows users to run a CD/DVD image directly from a
hard disk after mounting the image to a virtual disk drive. This works
the same as or even better than the traditional way of running a
CD/DVD from a disk drive.

Best Free Streaming Media Recorder:

Jing -- Download | Review

"Comes with an eye-catching interface, and outperforms the competition
in the quality of its recorded stream. Allows you to manually select a
recording area on your screen, capture images, play videos, save to
vendor servers, and create links for public viewing."

A good option for most users is to use a free web service to record
streaming media (such as ZamZar, SplanDoo and YouConvertIt), and if
that fails, simply record the streaming media while it is playing on
your PC.

Best Free CD Ripper:

Exact Audio Copy -- Download | Review

"Rips CD imperfections and scratches with ease. Of 800 or so CDs, I
only had 7 tracks that EAC couldn't rip perfectly. Given the condition
of some of my CDs, that's a mighty impressive performance. Rips to
WAV, MP3, OGG, FLAC, APE, and more audio formats."

Digitize your music collection to use on a computer or other player.

Related Multimedia Top Picks and Hot Items

Best Free DVD Ripper -- "Copy the audio and video content of a DVD to
a file in MP4, MPEG, or other video formats. Edit, backup, share, or
playback without the need to load a DVD."

Best Free Media Centre -- XBMC -- Download | Review. "Highly intuitive
and usable features for listening to music, viewing photo albums, or
watching digital videos. Organizes your media files intelligently
(handling some that Windows Media Center does not), and downloads
online information about them. Specially designed for better image and
sound quality on big screens or while 'sofa surfing'."
Best Free System Tools, Disk & File, Desktop & GUI Software

Best Free Backup Software:

GFI Backup -- Download | Review

"It's the top recommendation for average users, with an easy to use
backup scheduler and restore function (that restores complete archives
or individual files). It also backups files even if they are in use
and supports numerous backup locations (including LAN and FTP). You
will find GFI similar to Titan Backup, with some nice extras."

See here for related online apps and services. Online backup services
allow you to share your data, access it when traveling, or archive it
in yet another extra storage location.

You might also be interested in Real-Time Continuous Backup Freebie.

Backup software like GFI has wizards and step by step guides to make
the process painless, giving you confidence that it will continue to
work behind the scenes to protect your data. They include support for
scheduling and backing up to local and online storage locations,
verification of backup archives, and easy to use restore functions.

Best Free Drive Imaging Software:

Paragon Backup and Recovery Free -- Download | Review

"Overall a reliable program with some great features to handle the
needs of most users: fast complete backup and restore, basic
partitioning, differential backups, individual file restore, cyclic
backup, hard drive cloning, and good compression options."

For guidance on drive imaging, see Gizmo's three part article,
encouragingly named "Never Re-install Windows Again" -- Part 1, Part
2, Part 3.

Disk Imaging has rapidly become a must have tool for most users
because of its convenience, speed, and ease of use. It nearly
eliminates any reason at all for going through the painful process of
completely reinstalling, re-updating, and re-customizing Windows. A
user can quickly recover from a system crash or a bad virus infection
by simply restoring to a backup image.

Best Free Software Update Monitor:

Software Update Monitor (SUMo) -- Download | Review

"This is perhaps the best software update monitor for expert users.
It's faster than Secunia's PSI and easily adds portable software. It's
not restricted to any one download site. However, it doesn't provide
direct download links.

Warning: choose the download link."

If you have many scattered programs and programs that don't
automatically check for updates, then an update monitor lets you know
when new versions come out. They also allow you to scan custom folders
to include portable apps. You can then update old software to get the
latest features or security fixes.

Best Free Folder Synchronization Utility:

PureSync -- Download | Review

"Over all I was very pleased with its numerous features and ease of
use, and heartily recommend it to the average user. It has a good
preview of what files are going to be copied, updated, or deleted when
performing a sync job. Supports scheduling and auto syncing."

Synchronization utilities are important in helping you keep identical
versions of your files or folders, say, on both your home computer and
office computer.

Best Free File Manager:

xplorer² lite -- Download | Review

"Offers more functionality and customization than Windows Explorer,
but with an interface sufficiently similar to Explorer that most users
will find it easy to learn and use. Supports dual panes and folder
tabs."

Best Free File Encryption Utility:

TrueCrypt -- Download | Review

"Use this seasoned encryption program when you want an encrypted
container that mounts as a virtual drive. You simply mount its
encrypted files/volumes and then use the content like any other drive.
TrueCrypt's open source status allows peer review of the source code,
adding to its trustworthiness. It also comes with a 'Traveler mode'
for portable encryption."

Encryption is normally used to protect highly sensitive documents, but
it's a good way to stop people from looking at your personal stuff."
Learn about other important steps/cautions beyond encryption here.

Best Free Partition Manager:

EASEUS Partition Master -- Download | Review

"Intuitive and user-friendly interface, features include resize, move,
copy, create, delete, hide, unhide, convert, explore and format
partitions with a single step."

One of the objectives of having multiple partitions is for the
separation of user files from system files. By keeping user files in a
separate partition from the operating system, user files can usually
remain intact if the operating system needs to be reinstalled.

Basic Safe Computing Guides:

Security Advice Wizard: Get personalized results from our security team.

Safe Computing in Under an Hour: Secure your PC by following these
simple guidelines.

Secure Your PC: Provides an overview of safe computing practices. Then
it details four novel ways to block the majority of malware from
getting a foothold.

Probably the Best Security List in the World: Antti Koponen's must
read mega security list.

How to Block Bad Websites: Three different ways to prevent your PC
from being infected by accidentally visiting a malicious or
compromised website.
Related System Top Picks and Hot Items -- Disk & File

Best Free Duplicate File Detector -- Duplicate Cleaner -- Download |
Review. Detect duplicate files.

Best Free Disk Space Analyzer -- SpaceSniffer -- Download | Review.
Analyze disk space; find space hogs.

Best Free File Archive Utility -- 7-Zip -- Download | Review. Archive
files/folders to better transfer, store, and organize your data.

Best Free File Copy Utility -- TeraCopy -- Download | Review. "Copies
large collections of files more quickly, integrates well with Explorer
(and other file managers), and gives more stability and better error
messages."

Best Free File Comparison Utility -- WinMerge -- Download | Review.
"Compare and merge the differences between two (or more) versions of
the same text file, or detect variations between two different sets of
data."

Best Free Data Recovery Utility -- Mini Tool Power Data Recovery --
Download | Review. Recover data after accidentally deleting it.

Best Free File Rename Utiity -- File Renamer Basic -- Download |
Review. "Rename your files for organizational purposes, including your
MP3 libraries and digital image collections."

Related System Top Picks and Hot Items -- System Information

Best Free System Information Utility -- System Information for Windows
(SIW) -- Download | Review. "Displays many detailed specs such as CPU,
memory, devices, installed programs, processes, services, network, and
page file usage."

Best Free Process Viewer -- SystemExplorer -- Download | Review.
Investigate your system: view active processes, end processes, view
resource use of processes, and much more.

Related System Top Picks and Hot Items -- Desktop & GUI

Best Free Virtual Desktop Manager -- Dexpot -- Download | Review.
Organize your applications over several virtual desktops or work
spaces, and work more efficiently and comfortably.

Best Free Windows Explorer Addons -- QT TabBar -- Download | Review.
"Provides some of the desirable features found in replacement file
managers, like dual-panes, tabs, favorite folder access, etc., while
retaining the speed and familiarity of Windows."

Best Free Program Launcher -- "Provides a more efficient way of
running programs than by using the Windows Start Menu or having your
desktop littered with icons."

Best Free Desktop Search Utility -- Copernic Desktop Search --
Download | Review. Find files/folders faster; use advanced searches.
Additionally, here are two lite search utilities reviewed by Gizmo:
Everything, Agent Ransack.

The Editors' Choice List: Our Selection of the Best PC Freeware

Pages

Blog Archive