Top Notch Freeware
February 10, 2010
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Posted by Randydeluxe
The following transpired on Twitter today:
Indeed, that is no oxymoron! The web is simply teeming with really excellent freeware, if only you put a little time and effort into discovering it. What follows are my favorite examples of top notch freeware, categorized:
May as well start with Image viewing and editing -
Sure it’s not a very good name for an application. The name gives you a feeling that you’ll be editing photos in your browser or something, but Paint.net is a standalone application just like any other, and it has the power and ease to be a complete Photoshop replacement for anyone who can’t afford Photoshop.
Music –
The before and after applications for your pre- and post-iPod music life. If you’re not yet attached to an iPod, Winamp is a simply killer app that manages to be incredibly good looking in addition to free.
Audio recording and editing -
Browsers superior to Internet Explorer -
Don’t really need any explanation here. It’s a question of slightly differing tastes.
Document authoring -
There is really no need to ever pay for MS Office for personal use when OpenOffice does it all. Of course, if you do any text editing whatsoever you know that Notepad++ is the only way to fly.
File management via FTP -
I can’t name an FTP client app that is superior to Filezilla, and that includes those that cost a lot of money.
I could go on. I might go on, actually.
Categories: Just Yappin'
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Wow, it is amazing when people don’t see what is open sourced. The internet itself runs on all open protocols that were pretty much completely developed in an open atmosphere to give us this wonderful network we live on everyday. Must of your packets are routed through open source operating systems. Your web pages are probably served by Apache, running on Linux, served using Php/Python/Perl and with a MySQL/PostgreSQL backend.
Thanks for the post Randy. Did you check out my suggestion of http://www.virtualdub.org/ that I tweeted? Or it got lost in your deluge of tweets.
Cheers,
Ken
You forgot http:// in the beginning of wavepad…
I use filezilla on osx, but there are some stupid double-clicking to rename action going on there. On windows I recomend flashfxp (shareware).
Can’t forget VLC ( http://www.videolan.org/ ) as a Media player that doesn’t require codecs on your operating system. Also, from the creators of VLC, there will be a free, open source video creator out soon called VLMC (or VideoLan Movie Creator). It’s still being worked on, but from this team great things can be expected.
You can check out its status at http://vlmc.org/ .
If you’re looking for a really robust, high quality image editing program, I recommend GIMP. I really appreciate that you’re shining a spotlight on open source software but I think I would go a bit further. If you’re really interested in using high quality, free, open source software, I recommend checking out Linux. There are many different Linux distributions out there but the one that seems to be the most main stream and easiest to use is Ubuntu. I recommend giving it a try. Ubuntu is available on a live cd that you can boot from to try out the operating system without making any changes to your existing system. You can then, if you so choose, either wipe your whole hard drive and install Ubuntu on your computer or you can install it alongside Windows and choose which you’d like to boot into each time you boot up.
I highly recommend checking it out if you’re interested in open source software. That’s it for my sales pitch.
How lame, who doesn’t already about all of those already?
another fantastic browser – opera
been using is for years. lightweight, fast, sleek. love it!
I feel that it’s my duty to inform everyone of Format Factory. The best freeware video and audio conversion software out there.
Get it now!!
I came across an application called ZeuApp on Lifehacker this morning and it immediately made me think of Randy’s discussion above. I haven’t used this app but essentially it is a dashboard/on stop shop for finding and downloading free apps.
http://lifehacker.com/5502751/zeuapp-downloads-82-awesome-open-source-apps
Hey Randy, Long time listener of The Instance and am also a big fan of FilmSack.
I work for NCH software, the makers of Wavepad. I am kind of stoked to find that this is one of your favorite programs for Audio recording and Editing. Let me know if either you or Scott would like a free licence for Wavepad Masters Edition. Hey i can get you both one if you want.
Keep up the good work. and Oh i love the Chilli recipe too.
One word.. Great! Two words.. Very awesome! Three words.. I love it!