All Narfed Up photography and words by Bryan Villarin

Freeware

A Complete Freeware Collection

In Freeware, Open Source, Software on 15 June 2005 with no comments

The “complete freeware collection” is a collection of hand-chosen free and open source applications, which when combined, make the complete freeware package. In other words, all you need is the operating system and you won’t have to spend one cent on software. Nothing in this software bundle contains spyware or adware.

There’s a few programs that I do use that aren’t mentioned, but a lot of programs I haven’t heard of before, so I’ll be checking those out in my next Windows clean install which I need to do very soon. (Golf clap: Forever Geek)

Paint dot NET 2 point 1 A

In Freeware, Photography, Software on 9 May 2005 with no comments

I’m trying out Paint.NET 2.1a at work. (FYI: It was just updated on May 5th, 2005 to this version.) It looks very nice. I’ll install it on my personal desktop and laptop and use it over Gimp, simply because it looks more polished. I don’t work on graphics extensively, but it starts up so quickly! I need to do a little more than what MSPaint does, so if it’s quicker than Gimp, then I’m more likely to use it.

Hard drive monitor

In Asides, Freeware, Hard Drives, Software on 13 April 2005 with 1 comment

HDDlife looks like a good program to install - and it’s freeware! I think I’ll put it on my desktop computer at home.

Commercial-like Freeware Graphics App

In Asides, Freeware, Software on 12 April 2005 with 2 comments

I heard of Paint.NET before, but saw it again today from a Steve Bass email. I think it’s worthwhile to mention it. “Paint.NET has many of the powerful features that expensive commercial applications have, including the ability to use layers.” Stable version 2.0 is 7MB without .NET Framework v1.1, and 28.7MB with it. If you have RSS Bandit, then you already have the .NET Framework. (Since it’s not available there, download the .NET Framework through Microsoft Windows Update. Please note the minimum system requirements on the download page.

Freeware registry utilities

In Asides, Freeware, Software, Windows on 3 April 2005 with no comments

ERUNT and NTREGOPT is for Windows NT/2000/2003/XP

Not all freeware is bad!

In Freeware, Open Source, Spyware on 21 December 2004 with 2 comments

I read the CNET News.com article “Worst spyware queues up” this morning. It’s good to see what names pop up, in case a friend or client needs help on their computer. The part that caught my eye really ticked me off:

Webroot recommends that people install Microsoft security patches, avoid using freeware and disable downloads via ActiveX in Internet Explorer.

Avoid using freeware? That’s the one thing that keeps us going! Basically all of the programs listed here is freeware! What about Firefox? OpenOffice? AVG Anti Virus Free Edition? 7-Zip? Filezilla?

Ridiculous. You simply do not have to fork out cash for everything. You can donate to keep the developers going, but they’re not looking for money…they’re just trying to help out everyone where others have failed.