Adobe Acrobat Reader - free software that lets you view and print Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) files. With Acrobat Reader, you also can fill in and submit Adobe PDF forms online. Choose your operating system... even available for Palm OS which lets you view Adobe PDF files on the go. Adobe Acrobat is available from Adobe Systems.
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Adobe Acrobat Reader Speedup - a simple utility that was created to help make the loading time of Adobe's Acrobat/Reader software bearable for everyday use. AR SpeedUp only needs to be used once (a process taking only a few seconds) and then your Reader will be transformed forever. There are also some tweaking options available.
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AM-DeadLink - detects dead links and duplicates in your Browser Bookmarks. If a Bookmark has become unavailable you can verify it in the internal preview and delete it from your Browser. Additionally you can download FavIcons for all your Favorites and Bookmarks. AM-Deadlink works with Internet Explorer, Opera, Mozilla and Firefox. From WebSite-Watcher
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AMPsoft Calendar - will sit quietly in your tray and shows the date right in the tray. And if you open it, it opens instantly and shows you the year at a glance. It's even configurable for layout and colors. Try this and you'll wonder why Microsoft didn't put this in there in the first place! From AMPsoft
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AVG Anti-Virus - AVG Anti-Virus FREE Edition is the well-known anti-virus protection tool. AVG Anti-Virus FREE is available free-of-charge to home users for the life of the product! Rapid virus database updates are available for the lifetime of the product, thereby providing the high-level of detection capability that millions of users around the world trust to protect their computers. AVG Anti-Virus FREE is easy-to-use and will not slow your system down (low system resource requirements). Created by GrisSoft.
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Belarc Advisor - a handy utility which shows all the hardware and software installed on your PC right in your Web browser. You will see personalized advice on how well software and hardware products will work with your computer, along with a detailed description of your computer profile. All of your profile information is kept in privacy on your PC and is not sent to a Web server. From Belarc.com
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CallingID lets you see the owner of the site you are accessing, where it is located and whether it is safe for sending personal information. It automatically detects, warns and helps you avoid phishing sites, and verifies safe sites. It executes 52 verification tests on each page you visit and provides you with simple easy, to understand risk assessments. From CallingID.com
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Calypso - a terrific email program that used to cost $30 when it was sold by mcdallas.com. MCS decided to stop selling it and refocus their efforts on their mail server software. Rose City Software made arrangements to acquire the source code and continued development on this superb software. Rose City Software is no longer offering Calypso for download... in its place we are now offering Courier as a free download to all our visitors, to introduce them to this great software. More on the Courier homepage.
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Courier - As the successor to the acclaimed Calypso® email program, a favorite of email users for years, Courier sets a standard of excellence for Internet email clients. With the ability to turn off display of HTML mail and an encrypted address book, Courier is immune to current email "worms" that replicate themselves by harvesting email addresses from the Windows Address Book and forwarding themselves to all of your contacts. Combined with an outstanding array of features and an intuitive, configurable interface, Courier is the premiere Internet email alternative. We are now offering Courier as a freeware alternative for Outlook Express and other free email programs, to all our visitors, to introduce them to this great software. Works on all versions of Windows including XP and Vista.
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Chessit! - a complete version of the age-old game of Chess. Take it with you anywhere on your laptop, or play it at home. You have a choice of three styles of game pieces and can configure the playing board in any choice of color combinations. Either or both players can be human or computer. Moves are shown in a list as they are made, and you can retrace all moves backward or forward. Straightforward and simple to use, the controls are completely self-explanatory. CheckMate! Written by Yoto Yotov and available from here.
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ClipArt - This Free Guide to Web Clip Art has thousands of links to tons of free Clip Art from About.com - every topic from A- Z. If you need clipart for a project, this is the place to go!
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Cool Ruler - a free and easy to use little ruler for your desktop that can measure any window or image in Pixels, Inches, or Centimeters. Create as many rulers on your screen as you need. Adjust the angle of the ruler to a vertical or horizontal position. Works with DOS and Windows programs Created by FabSoft.
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DigitWiz - a handy little freeware utility to assist in one of life's annoying little tasks... converting those Name-style Alphanumeric telephone numbers into straight numbers for easy dialing. Engineered by xRayz Software... the same company that created those indispensible productivity enhancement tools, LinkStash and ClipCache Pro. For more info see the DigitWiz webpage at Rose City Software.
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DiskTriage - Have you ever wondered where all your disk space has gone? Or what it is made up of? Or who is using it? Windows does not provide easy access to any of this information - but Disk Triage does! Disk Triage is a utility that sizes and analyzes the contents of your disk space, providing the results via a wide selection of tree views, graphs, reports and exports. Available from Rose City Software. For more info see the DiskTriage webpage at Rose City Software.
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Fast Explorer - This handy utility allows you to manage context menus items of file objects displayed in a file manager like Windows Explorer or any other application that deals with shell's application programming interface. It's a very simple way to make your often used file actions quickly accessible. Fast Explorer handles both static and dynamic context menu items and can assist with even more... With Fast Explorer you can create new context menu items, submenus (cascaded menus), dividers, and optionally specify menu bitmaps and hint text.
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File Vault - a handy utility which places a number of user selected files in a single self extracting / self decrypting executable file called a File Vault. A File Vault can be sent easily to anyone over the internet and only accessed with your password. The recipient of a File Vault does not have to have any special software installed to decrypt or access a file vault. Each File Vault is totally self contained. This makes for easy attaching, receiving and general use. The File Vault allows you to open the vault, access the files, then close the vault which performs a secure wipe of the files from the disk surface. FILE VAULT USES THE BLOWFISH ALGORITHM. Created by Parisien Research.
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akFontViewer - a simple utility that lets you view samples of all your installed fonts in Windows. It can show a list of fonts with each font rendered in its own typeface. Also a window much like a Character Map -- which is always active -- shows you which fonts have full character sets and which don't. Other features enable you to define a sample text string, and to check off attributes you'd like to display -- such as bold, italic, underline, and strikeout. Print function is also supported. Written by Anatoli Klassen of akSoft and available from here.
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Foxit PDF Reader - Foxit Reader is a free PDF document viewer and printer, with incredible small size (only 2.1 M download size), breezing-fast launch speed and amazingly rich feature set. No longer do you need to download a huge PDF reader from the 'other software company', go through a lengthy installation process and wait for an annoying splash window to disappear just to open a PDF document
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gPhotoshow - a nice tool for building your own screensavers from your photo collection. It automatically resizes your images, offers a configurable delay between images, includes several transition effects, can play sound files to accompany the images and offers Multi Monitor support. There is also a more powerful version available as shareware. Written by Gianpaolo Bottin of gPhotoshow.com and available from the gPhotoshow website.
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HelpMaker - HelpMaker is an application to create help files without an expensive word-processor, without having to manage multiple files. Writing help files is called help authoring. You can make whole help files using HelpMaker. HelpMaker makes WinHelp, RTF, HTML-Help, Websites, PDF files. HelpMaker has no limitations, no time-outs, no nags, no adware, no banner ads and no spyware. It is 100% free. Other than this product, there is no free help authoring tool for RTF, WinHelp, HTML-Help, WebHelp and PDF.
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Homeland Security Threat Monitor - a small Windows application that runs in your system tray, showing the current terrorism threat level. It periodically checks to make sure the information is up to date by contacting the Department of Homeland Security web server. Written by Greg Hewgill of Hewgill and available from the Hewgill website.
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IECookiesView - This utility displays the details of all cookies that Internet Explorer stores on your computer. In addition, it allows you to change the content of the cookies, delete unwanted cookie files, save the cookies into a readable text file, find cookies by specifying the domain name, view the cookies of other users and in other computers, and more. Written by NirSoft Freeware.
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Look@Win - a simple DOS utility intended for users that want to track changes made to their system by setup programs. Every time you run Look@Win, any changes that are found will be entered in various log files and displayed on screen. The log files and their reports may also be read using common text editors. Windows system files are saved in c:\windows\look@win. The saved win.ini and system.ini may be used to replace corrupted files, and in case of Registry corruption you will be able to restore it by double-clicking the file registry.reg. Initialization files and registry file control provides a sort of anti-virus function as well. Any changes that are detected will be evident as new lines in .ini files or Windows registry, thus alerting the user to changes made by viral programs (for example, to load at windows startup, as Back Orifice does). Look@Win has been tested and works under Windows 95\98\Me. Written by A. Zancan and available from HERE.
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OE-QuoteFix - message composition windows on-the-fly to allow for correct quoting and to change the appearance of your plain-text replies and forwards in general: move your signature, use compressed indentation, have RFC compliant signatures, etc. But the second feature is equally practical: OE-QuoteFix can instantly color quoted passages (according to the level of indentation), fix bad quoting and generally beautify messages as you view them in Outlook Express. Written by Dominik Jain and available from HERE.
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Moffsoft FreeCalc - a great replacement for your existing Windows� calculator. We took the standard Windows calculator functionality and added many great features including, Adjustable calculator size, simulated paper history tape, Visible memory value and much more.
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Open Office - this is the terrific free Office Suite from Sun Micrososystems. It contains a Word-compatible Word processor, called Writer which allows you to create Word compatible documents, and includes a handy wysiwyg HTML editor; an Excel-compatible, feature-packed spreadsheet called Calc; a Powerpoint-compatible presentation builder called Impress; an advanced graphics editor called Draw; Database User Tools, and more! You can even publish your work in Portable Document Format (.pdf), and release your graphics in Flash (.swf) format - without needing any additional software!!! Here are some nice screenshots of Open office. Compatible with Windows 98/NT/200/XP. Created by Sun Microsystems and available from HERE. Installation instructions are here.
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Powertoys - No list of freeware would be complete without the Microsoft Powertoys. The Microsoft® Windows® Shell Development Team put together this set of productivity tools. We've used many of them, and find some to be almost indispensible. The set includes Xmouse, Tweak UI, Telephony Location Selector, Shortcut Target Menu, SendToX, Round Clock, Quick Res, FlexiCD, FindX, Explore From Here, Desktop Menu, Contents Menu, Command Prompt, CDAutoPlay,CabView. Install any you like after reading about them in the readme file. These were intended for Windows 95 but many like SendtoX, Explore From Here and XMouse work perfectly in Windows 98. The link at Microsoft stopped working so we have made it available here. There is also a special Windows 98/Me updated version of the inimitable TweakUI available from Microsoft. Get the Windows 98/ME version or the Windows XP version of the Complete Powertoys for XP.
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Qlock - a free, simple-to-use, professional-looking world clock. Qclock features a choice of more than 500 cities around the world, automatic DST calculation, multiple dockable clock faces, user selectable alarms, skins, and color schemes. Qlock can easily be used to design your own personal world clock layout. Once installed, Qlock sits quietly in the system tray and provides the exact time for you at a quick glance anywhere in the world. Available from PDA Business.
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Restoration - Restoration allows you to restore files which were deleted from the recycle bin or deleted bypassing the recycle bin by holding down the Shift key. Conversely, this program has another function that makes it almost impossible to restore all deleted files. You can use it after deletion of confidential documents, embarrassing files and so on. Created by Brian Kato.
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Screensavers - A beautiful collection of free screensavers by talented Graphics Designer, Chris Falco. His designs include various themes like Happy Holidays, Winter Scenes, Scooby Doo, Starships in Flight, Star Trek, and Random Moments. Lose those boring Windows default screensavers and add some real beauty to your desktop. You can't beat the price! Available from Graphics Blandishment.
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Skype - This free little program allows you to call anywhere in the world and talk as long as you like for free, and with a broadband connection, the sound is absolutely flawless... much better than a telephone. We kid you not! Try this with a decent headset and you will never want to talk on the telephone long distance again! It actually works pretty well with a decent dialup connection as well. It only requires a data flow of about 4-5 KB/sec which most decent dialup connections are capable of. Works through firewalls with no configuration necessary! And you can't beat the price! Available from Skype.com.
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Taskbar Shuffle This is a unique utility we have personally come to LOVE. A quick install opens it to the system tray and it will start with Windows. It allows you to rearrange the buttons on your Windows taskbar by dragging and dropping them. And it also allows you to rearrange your system tray icons by dragging and dropping as well (but that does require a hotkey). From NerdCave
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UrlTracker - A small application that runs in the background - invisibly monitoring any urls typed in the address bar on Internet Explorer. To view this log file you simply connect to the computer which is running UrlTracker in a web browser! The log file can only viewed by the person who knows the username and password for viewing the log file! To connect to a machine running UrlTracker you type in the following URL into your web browser: http://ipaddresshere:4499/ - if you simply want to view the log file on the same computer type in http://localhost:4499/ Ever wondered what web sites a user on your machine has visited? The history folder in Internet Explorer can easily be cleared or modified. But with UrlTracker you'll know the whole story! This has not been tested with Windows XP. Written in 2001 by Matthew Brocklehurst.
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Raketu - (formerly called Wavago) Raketu allows you to communicate with your friends, family and business colleagues any way you like. That could be instant messaging (Raketu connects you with yahoo, Skype, MSN, AOL, ICQ messengers and Google) or Raketu-to-Raketu voice calls to anywhere in the world, free! Raketu also has stock quotes with alerts, news/weather/sports with previews, multimedia player, web search, games. Eliminate multiple messaging platforms running on your computer and say goodbye to big phone bills. It's all in one place and best of all it is free! Available from Raketu.com.
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WebWerx - is the editor for Web page designers who know their code and don't need to be tied down to a graphical HTML editor. It provides helpful code-writing features, such as intelligent tag insertion, intuitive shortcut keys, and easy access to your preferred browser. Almost all tags are available through shortcut keys, images can be automatically measured, table structures can be created in seconds, and the environment is highly customizable. Features include settings for program behavior, multiple open documents (MDI), multiple templates, fast access to your HTML help file, an FTP client, dial-up networking, a table wizard, some JavaScript support, automatic sizing of images, and text framing. Available from LiteWerx.
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WinPatrol - WinPatrol with Scotty the Windows Watch Dog will sniff out Worms, Trojan horses, Cookies, Adware, Spyware, Klez, Assumption and other malicioius programs. WinPatrol's goal is to help you better understand what programs are running on your computer, and alert you to any new programs added without your permission. Scotty lets you confirm any new programs which have been set up to always run when you start your computer. WinPatrol is optimized to be as small as possible so it can be used constantly without interfering with the speed or memory of other programs. Available from BillP Studios.
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WinUpdatesList - displays the list of all Windows updates (Service Packs and Hotfixes) installed on your local computer. For hotfix updates, this utility also displays the list of files updated with these hotfixes. In addition, it allows you to instantly open the Web link in Microsoft Web site that provides more information about the selected update, uninstall an update, copy the update information to the clipboard, or save it to text/HTML/XML file. Written by NirSoft Freeware.
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ZipCentral - A free, easy to use zip file manager that lets you create new, open existing, add to and extract from zip files. It can also create Self-Extracting archives and archives spanned across multiple floppy disks. ZipCentral supports Drag & Drop to and from Windows Explorer or File Manager and includes a Shell Extension. Compares very well to the top selling utilities and it is free!!! Available from PC World.
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