Keywords:
Free software |
The following is a list of reliable and capable software that is free to use (in some cases, free only for non-commercial uses). We can assist with installation, and in most cases, also provide training and support.
This software is under various licenses, including the GPL (GNU General Public License), LGPL (GNU Lesser General Public License), BSD License and Simplified BSD License, Apache License, MIT License, MPL (Mozilla Public License) and proprietary licenses It is up to the individual user to ensure compliance with the licence; the licence terms are usually displayed during the installation process, or can be viewed in advance from the program's home page..
Productivity Software
 OpenOffice is a Microsoft Office compatible Word Processor, Spreadsheet, Presentations, Database
& Vector Graphics suite. With this suite, you can create dynamic documents,
analyse data, create databases, design eye-catching presentations, and produce dramatic
illustrations.
You can continue to use your old Microsoft Office files without any problems,
and this suite even lets you exchange files with people still using Microsoft
Office, or create PDF files for distribution. |
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 Adobe® Reader® software
is the global standard for electronic document sharing. It is the only
PDF viewer that can open and interact with all PDF documents. Use Adobe
Reader to view, search, digitally sign, verify, print, and collaborate
on Adobe PDF files.
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 PDF Fill PDF and Image Writer installs as a printer to create high quality PDF files that are distilled directly from Postscript (requires additional download of GhostScript). Any Windows applications can be converted into business quality PDF documents. The PDFill Image Writer component allows printing to a PNG, JPG, BMP, TIF, or GIF image. The converted image retains all of the information from the original file and can be easily shared and viewed without the need for the original software. Advanced options control the image format and quality. |
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 WordWeb is an excellent English dictionary and thesaurus that allows
you to look up words from almost any program. Simply type in your word
and press the search button; one frame displays the definition, another
shows synonyms and other related words. Well-integrated with most Windows
applications. |
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 PagePlus
SE makes Desktop Publishing more intuitive, more productive
and more fun than ever. Now the SE version makes Desktop Publishing available
to everyone for free! If you're starting out as a Desktop Publisher,
PagePlus offers Automated Templates for just about every job, making
it really easy to get professional quality results every time. Even if
you've never used PagePlus or any other Desktop Publisher, we're confident
you'll find this brand new version so easy to learn that you will be
up and running in minutes. |
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 Scribus is
a program that brings award-winning professional page layout to your desktop
with a combination of "press-ready" output and new approaches to page layout. Underneath
the modern and user friendly interface, Scribus supports professional publishing
features, such as CMYK colour, separations, ICC colour management and versatile
PDF creation (requires ghostscript). |
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 AllyCAD
Freeware is a professional CAD package with advanced functionality
and integrated Toolkits. AllyCAD is renowned internationally for its
power and ease of use in the Mechanical, Structural and Civil engineering
and the Architectural and Surveying fields. Not compatible with Windows
95, 98 or ME. |
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 Envisioneer
Express 3D Building Design and Project Viewer is the easiest
to use residential design program available. Specifically designed to
introduce clients to the simple creation of floor plans, 3D models, and
interior design concepts. Envisioneer Express uses real world objects
such as walls, doors, windows and stairs to make creative designs fast
and easy. |
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 TurboCASH is much more than a simple 'home finances' or small
business bookkeeping system. TurboCASH includes most functions a business
will ever need: debtors, creditors, general ledger, full stock control,
VAT accounting, invoicing, bank reconciliation, trial balance, balance
sheet and income statements, full reporting and analysis, as well as
multi-company and multi-user capabilities. |
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 FreeMind is premier mind-mapping software.
The term mind mapping was coined by British psychologist Tony Buzan to
describe a tree with many branches, colours, pictures and personal
expression. FreeMind belongs to the class of so called mind mapping software. |
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 Open
Workbench is an application that provides robust project
scheduling and management functionality. Already the scheduling standard
for more
than 100,000 project managers worldwide, Open Workbench is a free and
powerful alternative to Microsoft Project. Open Workbench provides all
the functionality and benefits that project managers expect in a world-class
scheduling application. |
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Internet Software |
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 Firefox is a browser, successor to the Netscape/Mozilla
Navigator series. This browser provides pop-up control and a tabbed
navigation mode
that
lets you open multiple pages in a single window. You can load links in
the background without leaving the page you're on. There is integrated
Google search, and the find-as-you-type feature finds links and page
text as you enter the information. Privacy controls let you cover
your Internet
tracks.
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 Opera Internet browser is a fast-loading, fast-viewing browser that additionally
provides an e-mail client with spam-blocker, IRC-compatible chat, news
reader,
RSS news feeds, integrated Google search, pop-up blocker, mouse gestures
and keyboard shortcuts. |
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 Google Chrome web browser is quick to start up from your desktop, loads web pages quickly, and runs interactive web pages, web applications and JavaScript faster than ever. It is designed for efficiency and ease of use: search and navigate to web pages from the same box; arrange and organise your tabs however you wish - quickly and easily; get to your favourite websites in the New Tab page with just a click from the thumbnails of your most visited sites. It is themed to add colour and delight to your browser: deck your browser out with colours, patterns, images and artwork from the Google Chrome Themes Gallery. |
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 Thunderbird is a complete redesign of the Mozilla mail component includes the stand-alone
mail program and the news reader. It acts as a cross-platform, stand-alone
mail application, using the XUL user interface language. It works with
Mozilla FireFox and other stand-alone browsers. |
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 Azureus is a BitTorrent client with with many features for
both beginners and advanced users: multiple torrent downloads, upload
and download speed limiting, advanced seeding rules, adjustable disk
cache, UPnP sets the port on your router, fast resume, can set a default
download folder and move completed files, can import torrents automatically
from a set folder, IRC plug-in included for quick help, embedded tracker,
host your own torrents.
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 Limewire Peer-Peer downloader has Bittorrent Support Built-In,
System Tray Notifications, Mojito DHT (Distributed Hash Table) Support,
TLS (Transport Layer Security) Support, No spyware, No adware, Firewall
to Firewall Transfers, Faster network connections, Universal Plug 'N
Play, iTunes Integration, Creative Commons Integration, Search drill
down results, Proxy support and Support for International searches and
International groups. |
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 Skype: Make calls from your computer
free to other people on Skype and cheap to phones and mobiles around the
world. |
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 Pidgin is an easy to use and free chat client used by millions. Connect to AIM, MSN, Yahoo, and more chat networks all at once. Supported chat networks: * AIM * Bonjour * Gadu-Gadu * Google Talk * Groupwise * ICQ * IRC * MSN * MXit * MySpaceIM * QQ * SILC * SIMPLE * Sametime * XMPP * Yahoo! * Zephyr |
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 Filezilla is an FTP client available in different languages. The
site manager, drag-and-drop functionality and transfer queue help you
control your tasks. It can connect to almost any FTP server, even if
you are behind a firewall or SOCKS proxy. Using an SSL connection or
Kerberos, all traffic can be encrypted. |
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Graphics Software |
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 XnView allows you to quickly and easily view, process and convert
image files. The universal program is able to read more than 400 different
formats and then convert them to other formats such as GIF, BMP, JPG,
PNG, multi page TIFF. XnView can also display video formats, many digital
camera formats and more exotic formats such as Amiga IFF and Calamus. Free for non-commercial use |
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 Irfanview is a fast, free and simple image viewer and editor supporting
dozens of major graphic formats, including AVI, BMP, DIB, JPEG, GIF,
PNG, PCX, multi-page TIFF, TGA, and audio files as well. Other features
include Thumbnails, Preview, Drag & Drop Support, fast Directory
View (fast moving through directory), Print Support, Scan Support, Slideshow,
Batch Conversion, changing the colour depth, resizing, capturing, Cut/Crop,
Effects (Blur, Sharpen, etc.) and many more. |
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 Paint.NET is
free image editing and photo manipulation software designed to be used
on computers that run Windows. It supports layers, unlimited undo, special
effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools. It started development
as an undergraduate college senior design project mentored by Microsoft,
and is currently being maintained by some of the alumni that originally
worked on it. Originally intended as a free replacement for the MS Paint
software that comes with Windows, it has grown into a powerful yet simple
tool for photo and image editing. |
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 GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a program for such
tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It
has many
capabilities. It can be used as a simple paint program, an expert quality
photo retouching program, an online batch processing system, a mass
production
image renderer, an image format converter, etc. GIMP is expandable and
extensible. It is designed to be augmented with plug-ins and extensions
to do just about
anything. |
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 Inkscape is an Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X, using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format.
Inkscape supports many advanced SVG features (markers, clones, alpha blending, etc.) and great care is taken in designing a streamlined interface. It is very easy to edit nodes, perform complex path operations, trace bitmaps and much more. We also aim to maintain a thriving user and developer community by using open, community-oriented development. |
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 Dia is a diagram creation program inspired by Visio. It can be used to draw many different kinds of diagrams. It currently has special objects to help draw entity relationship diagrams, UML diagrams, flowcharts, network diagrams, and simple circuits. It is also possible to add support for new shapes by writing simple XML files, using a subset of SVG to draw the shape. [from DIA Home Page] And it continues evolving. |
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 Potrace is
a utility for tracing a bitmap. It supports PBM, PGM, PPM, or BMP input
formats, and the default output is an encapsulated PostScript file (EPS).
A typical use is to create EPS files from scanned data, such as company
or university logos, handwritten notes, etc. Potrace can currently produce
the following output formats: EPS, PostScript, PDF, SVG (scalable vector
graphics), Xfig, Gimppath, and PGM (for easy antialiasing). Mkbitmap is
a program distributed with Potrace which can be used to pre-process the
input for better tracing behaviour on grayscale and colour images. Open the
ZIP file and follow the installation instructions. |
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| FontPage is a font viewer. Rich
and easy interface, examines and compares all your fonts, view typeface
in
bold, italic, underline and 3-D styles, print a specimen page for any font
or print a list of them, fonts listing selectable by font types, Character
Table with copy and print options, Compare Window, Preview for uninstalled
fonts, Slide Show Function, List function, adjustable colour settings,
support for Visual Styles (for Windows XP), font specific Help File on
board. |
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 KompoZer is a web development tool built on NVU. The project strives
to fix bugs in the NVU project and added new features to it. Both the
HTML editor as well as the CSS editor have been updated as part of the
Kompozer project - and many more changes are scheduled. Apart from that
the main feature set is exactly as in NVU. And one of the most important
features is still that editing take place in WYSIWYG (What You See Is
What You Get) mode allowing you full control of layout as you work with
your web design. |
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 Xenu's
Link Sleuth checks Web sites for broken links. Link verification
is done on "normal" links, images, frames, plug-ins, backgrounds,
local image maps, style sheets, scripts and java applets. It displays
a continuously updated list of URLs which you can sort by different
criteria. A report can be produced at any time. It has a simple, no-frills
user-interface, can re-check broken links (useful for temporary network
errors), supports SSL websites ("https:// "), detects and
reports redirected URLs and Site Map.
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 PixelRuler is a screen ruler that measures the exact size and position
of any screen element. it features horizontal and vertical orientation,
dynamic mouse measurement tracking in pixels, floats over your screen;
works with all applications; maximum of 1300 pixels; and choose between
several skins. |
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Media Software |
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 WinAmp music & multimedia
player. The Playlist Editor is one of the best around. Switch between
multiple playlists with one click, and edit on the fly; send between
multiple playlists; sort and remove duplicates. The Media Library allows
searching for files on the fly, and adding them directly to your playlists.
The Video Window plays MPEGs without a plug-in, and features full-screen
and incremental size support, instant 7-second rewind and 30-second skip
forward, a seek bar for precise cueing, a spectrum analyzer, and basic
controls: play, pause, stop, previous and next.
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 MediaMonkey is
more than just an MP3 player; it allows you to organise music, edit tags,
lookup and tag Album Art, manage 50,000+ files, play MP3s and other audio
formats, correct for varying volume, rip CDs into OGG, MP3, and WMA files,
convert MP3s, OGG, and WMA files into other formats, create playlists
and music mixes, synchronize with portable MP3 players.
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 Audacity is
a sound editing program which can record, playback, and mix sounds or
apply effects using a variety of filters. Audacity lets you
edit your sounds using Cut, Copy and Paste (with unlimited Undo) and
mix multiple tracks together. Save your files in a number of formats,
including
WAV, Ogg Vorbis and AIFF, or use Audacity's native project format for
high performance editing. MP3 support is available using the LAME MP3
encoder (above). Audacity also has a built-in amplitude envelope editor,
a customisable spectrogram mode and a frequency analysis window for
audio
analysis applications. Built-in effects include Bass Boost, Wahwah, and
Noise Removal. The LADSPA plug-ins provide a range
of extended capabilities.
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 VideoLAN media
player is a free cross-platform media player which supports a
large number of multimedia formats, without the need for additional
codecs.
It can also be used as a streaming server, with extended features (video
on demand, on the fly transcoding, ...)
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 winLAME is an audio encoder, including mp3 (MPEG Layer 3), Ogg Vorbis and more.
winLAME lets you set up the encoding process with an easy-to-use
wizard-style
user interface. winLAME supports many input audio formats, and uses the
LAME mp3 encoding library for encoding and the MAD decoding library
for
decoding.
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 DVD
Flick aims to be a simple but at the same time powerful
DVD Authoring tool. It can take a number of video files stored on your
computer and turn them into a DVD that will play back on your DVD player,
Media Centre or Home Cinema Set. You can add additional custom audio tracks
as well as subtitles of your choice.
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 Miro: Beautiful interface. Plays any video type (much more than windows
media player). Subscribe to video RSS, download, and watch all in one.
Torrent
support. Search and download from YouTube and others. |
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 Quick Media Converter enables you
to convert between most audio and video formats, including AVI, DVD, Quicktime,
Flash, Xvid, DivX, MPEG, MP3, WMA, MP4, 3GP and many others. You can convert
multiple files (of different formats) in a single process and optionally
customize the output settings in Expert Mode. In addition to media conversion,
the program also includes CamStudio, which allows you to record desktop
activity to video, as well as a WebCam capture feature that enables you
to record video directly from your webcam device. Quick Media Converter
uses open source code from software such as FFmpeg and FFplayer. |
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Utilities |
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 Areca Backup is a personal backup solution that allows you to select a set of files / directories to back-up, choose where and how they will be stored, and configure post-backup actions. It has been designed to * Be as simple as possible to set up; * Be as versatile as possible; * Allow you to interact with your archives and the files they contain |
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 PDF-Xchange Viewer allows users to view, modify or perform simple editing of PDF files on their Windows PCs. The PDF-XChange Viewer is small, fast and feature-rich: * Add Comments and Annotations; * Add & apply Custom Stamps; * Measurement Tools; * Type directly on any PDF page; * Export PDF pages; * Extract text; * Simplify navigation; * PDF Security Support; * Fill and Save Adobe Forms; * UI Customization; * Full Javascript Engine; * Store/Restore; * JPEG2000 Compression; * Plug-Ins for IE and Firefox; * Integrate with favorite translation software; * Auto-Highlights; * Fillable Form Fields |
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 Lupas Rename is a program developed to flexibly rename a big number of files.
It works on Win95, Win98, WinME, WinNT, Win2K and WinXP, Vista and Windows 7. |
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 7-Zip is a file compression and archiving program. The main features of 7-Zip are: * High compression in new 7z format with LZMA compression * Supported formats: 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2, TAR, ARJ, CAB, CHM, CPIO, DEB, DMG, HFS, ISO, LZH, LZMA, MSI, NSIS, RAR, RPM, UDF, WIM, XAR and Z. * Compression ratio up to 10% better than PKZip and WinZip * Strong AES-256 encryption in 7z and ZIP formats * Self-extracting capability for 7z format * Integration with Windows Shell * Powerful File Manager * Powerful command line version * Plugin for FAR Manager |
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 To-Do DeskList is a simple to do list program that is powerful in its simplicity and effectiveness. * Simple, nice looking and easy-to-use interface * To-Do Notes placed directly on your desktop * Assigning priority levels to to-dos * All to-dos can have a reminder to a specific date and time * Hotkeys for adding a new to-do and displaying all to-do notes in front of other windows * Sorting To-Do Notes by priority or by date * Well-arranged to-do list on your desktop instead of a complex structure |
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Bad CD/DVD Reader can copy data from
scratched CDs and DVDs. It comes with advanced features like copying
whole CD/DVD in a single click. Folders can also be copied easily. BAD
CD/DVD
Reader also has an easy-to-use, very friendly user interface. |
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 CDBurnerXP
Pro writes all kind of optical media (apart from double-layer
DVD): audio-CDs with and without gaps between tracks, burn on-the-fly,
supports most IDE, USB, Firewire and SCSI drives, rip Audio CDs, obtain
track-information (ID3-tags) from Internet, burn and create ISO-files,
data verification after burn, create bootable discs, bin/nrg/ISO converter,
cover printing. Burning video-DVDs is limited. |
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 ImgBurn is a lightweight CD / DVD / HD DVD / Blu-ray burning application. It has several 'Modes': * Read - Read a disc to an image file * Build - Create an image file from files on a computer or network - or write the files directly to a disc * Write - Write an image file to a disc * Verify - Check a disc is 100% readable, or compare against an image to ensure the data is correct * Discovery - Put your drive / media to the test! Used in combination with DVDInfoPro, you can check the quality of the burns your drive is producing. |
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 MagicISO is a powerful CD/DVD image file creating/editing/extracting tool. It can open, create, edit and extract CD/DVD image files, convert bin to iso and back, make an ISO file from DVD/CD-ROM or hard disk, and handle bootable information. Supports all known CD image types. Directly add, delete or rename files or folder in CD image file(s) . MagicISO can handle up to 10G images so that user can manage DVD image files with ease. |
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 ClamWin provides a graphical user interface to the Clam AntiVirus engine. ClamWin
Antivirus comes with an easy installer at no cost. It features Scanning
Scheduler and Automatic Virus Database Updates; Standalone Virus Scanner;
Context Menu Integration to Microsoft Windows Explorer; Add in to
Microsoft
Outlook.
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 Comodo Internet Security is a free, multi-layered security application that keeps hackers out and personal information in. Built from the ground up with security in mind, Internet Security combines powerful Antivirus protection, an enterprise class packet filtering firewall, and an intrusion prevention system called Defense+. Includes: * Firewall: Exclude hackers and identity thieves. * Antivirus: Locate and destroy malware hiding in a PC. * Defense+: Protects critical system files and blocks malware before installation. * Memory Firewall: Protection against buffer overflow attacks. * Anti-Malware Kills malicious processes before they can do harm. |
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 Spybot
Search and Destroy detects and removes different kinds
of spyware from your computer. If you see new toolbars in Internet Explorer
that you
didn't install, or you experience other problems, you may have spyware.
This program prevents marketing companies from gathering information
about
your Web surfing and purchasing habits, and selling it to advertisers. Anti rootkit plugins 1.0 adds improved capabilities to find rootkits.
Only needed if you do not want to use the update function integrated
into Spybot-S&D. |
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