Free Softwares

Own a Laptop or Desktop ?

noreply@blogger.com (Sunil Ramachandran) — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 16:34:00 +0000

If you bought a branded laptop or desktop then it probably came with many unwanted trail programs pre-installed. You should first remove those pre-installed trial versions. To do this you need
PC Decrapifier which Will help in detecting and removing all those unwanted trial progams which came pre-installed with your laptop.

You must also be having an internet connection and would be browsing the web quite often. I would suggest you use Firefox. Firefox is slightly better than internet explorer. But dont forget to install addons and thirdparty software to Firefox. I shall list a few below which I know you would find useful.

delicious to save the addresses of all your favorite websites.

Iterasi To permanently archive your favorite web pages.

Speed dial Direct access to your webpages.

WOT To warn you of risky websites.

PDF download To manipulate PDF files online.

Keepass To manage your passwords securely.

Down them all A download manager.

My full list of favourite Addons for Firefox.
As far as Emails are concerned create at least two email accounts I recommend Gmail.com as primary email address to share with your friends and family. For others use the secondary email address.

The trial version of Microsoft Office on your computer will usually expire and if you are looking for a free office suite I suggest Open Office it has all the basic feature you would need in an Office suite.

Sometimes you will get files that will not open on your computer. Just pay a visit to zamzar.com and convert the file into some simple formats which your computer can open.

After a lot of installing and uninstalling your computer may contain too many programs that you rarely use. Install Revo Uninstaller to get rid of such programs.

To free additional space on the hard drive by finding the files which occupy large space, use WinDirStat

The Virus threat is one which everyone fears and it is quite difficult for a beginner to understand the difference between various anti virus softwares. I would recommend you to read and download a Good Anti Virus here

For most of your common needs you can read a list of Quality Free Softwares that I use and make the most out of it. Enjoy your Laptop / Desktop and make the most out of it.

Digital Photo Organiser

noreply@blogger.com (Sunil Ramachandran) — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 17:30:00 +0000

The crown in this area goes to Picasa. It scans your whole hard drive (or designated locations) on the first run for photos and videos and organises them into folders on a time line basis. You get to view your pics one at a time, as slideshow or by traversing the time line.

There is a one click red eye reduction feature, which could be quite useful. Other features include adding labels, star rating system for favorite snaps, password protection. Import facilities from your camera in multiple formats including RAW is available. Photos can be printed online, you can burn a CD, print or share them with others through blog or instant messaging services . Wiith the free online storage you can build web albums too.
Download Picasa

Image Sticher

noreply@blogger.com (Sunil Ramachandran) — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 17:25:00 +0000

Stitch programs are generally used to stitich together a series of photographs into one photograph. I recommend, Windows Live Photo Gallery, as the best photo stiticher for you. The feature "Panorama Stitcher" in the make menu makes it different.

You have to simply select the photos from the thumbnails viewer, and the program does the rest. Use the Fix menu for Cropping and adjustments . The results are even better than if done by Adobe Photoshop.

Download windows live photo gallery

Multimedia Player

noreply@blogger.com (Sunil Ramachandran) — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 11:38:00 +0000

One of the best media players available which runs on almost all OS is the Video lan media player VLC. VLC can also be installed and run directly from a flash drive. Most versions will support playback of most video files and DVD discs without the need to download external codec packs, including flv files, VLC has another unique feature as well. There are 5 different DVD region codes. DVDs manufactured for one region will not play in players made for a different region. VLC plays them all. VLC also has the ability to convert videos to formats it supports along with the ability to take screenshots of your video, even while during DVD playback

Download VLC

Parental filter

noreply@blogger.com (Sunil Ramachandran) — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 02:24:00 +0000

Even though opinion on what is an inappropriate material differs from person to person there is no doubt that such material is easily available on the internet. Most parents want to ensure that their kids are not exposed to such inappropriate material while surfing the Internet.

The best choice available for the purpose is OPEN DNS. You have to have a little technical knowledge to enable it, but it is worth the effort.

OpenDNS is a replaces your ISP’s DNS servers. By default OpenDNS only blocks Phishing sites. You will need to register for a free account to enable content protection.If your IP address is not a static one then, You will need to install a dynamic DNS client IP update software to periodically update OpenDNS with your new IP address. Open DNS also gives you the ability to customize the look of the "Blocked" page with your own message, logo or picture.

Open DNS Website
Register for account
Dynamic IP Updater

Download Manager

noreply@blogger.com (Sunil Ramachandran) — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 02:23:00 +0000

FREE DOWNLOAD MANAGER

Most of us have experienced the difficulty of downloading large files from the internet. Sometimes the download even stops while it is partly underway. In the windows download applet which pops out when you start downloading nothing can be done if it stops you will have to start all over again. Download managers allow you to pick up where you left off.

A very good download manager will split large files into parts and will download all the parts at the same time and will in the end assemble all the parts. This can result in quite good improvement in the download speed. I personally use these type of managers.

Free Download Manageris one such. It does simultaneous multipart downloads and is very efficient and fast. It can schedule downloads, it can restart downloads which was stopped while it was underway. It is a nice utility which all should have. Though there are other choices like Gigaget, Orbit, Getgo, Flashget, Multiget I personally prefer Free download manager for its stability and easy integration with most browsers.

Download Free Download Manager

FireWalls

noreply@blogger.com (Sunil Ramachandran) — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 02:22:00 +0000

Firewall, is a computer security device that blocks unauthorized access to an organization's local area network (LAN). A firewall can reside on the administrative computer (the server) that acts as the local area network's gateway to the Internet or it can be a dedicated computer placed between the local area network and the Internet, so that the network is never in direct contact with the Internet. The firewall also keeps track of every file entering or leaving the local area network in order to detect the sources of viruses and other problems that might enter the network.

The best is the reputed COMMODO INTERNET SECURITY. Be sure to use only one software firewall at a time. IF you use windows firewall, do disable it before you are installing COMMODO. During installation, it gives you a choice between three levels of security. But I use only its firewall aspect of security.

After installation Comodo selects either "Clean PC Mode" or "Safe Mode". "Safe Mode" maximizes proactive protection and is the best mode for most users. But it relies on numerous popup alerts. Have it remember your answer to all popup alerts when an application first runs.

Though there are other choices like the Online armour, PC tools, Outpost firewall etc. Commodo remains my main choice as a stable firewall the only thing being you have to put up with the pop up alerts, so remember to keep the "remember my answer" box ticked.

Download Commodo Internet Security

Digital Image Viewer

noreply@blogger.com (Sunil Ramachandran) — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 02:21:00 +0000

If you have a large amount of images on your PC, then you really must be on the lookout for a nice digital image viewer. There are alot of products available like acdsee, irfan view etc.

My recommendation in this area is the XNVIEW

XNview is a very versatile product. It can display more than 350 types of graphic files and convert any of these to over 50 formats. It displays quickly and can be viewed full screen, as slideshows or thumbnails.

It's quite capable at processing images. You can adjust brightness, color, apply filters or effects, crop photos, re-size, convert and format. Its ideal for converting large digital photos to smaller sizes for the web or emailing. It supports drop and drag, has many plug-ins. It is better to download the complete version with all the plugins.

Download XNView

Mozilla Firefox

noreply@blogger.com (Sunil Ramachandran) — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 02:20:00 +0000

Browser, is a program that enables a computer to locate, download, and display documents containing text, sound, video, graphics, animation, and photographs located on computer networks. The act of viewing and moving about between documents on computer networks is called browsing

Browsers allow users to access Web information by locating documents on remote computers that function as Web servers. A browser downloads information over phone lines to a user’s computer through the user’s modem and then displays the information on the computer

In the early 1990's there was only one web browse which was worth using and that wasr Netscape. Then can internet explorer which was given to us by Microsoft bundled with its OS. It is difficult to recommend internet explorer due to on-going security concerns. A new set of browsers that are feature rich, very secure, and super fast are now available to browse the net.

One of the popular one is Mozilla Firefox. It loads slower than IE but once running, it positively zips along. Firefox is extensible through add-ins.

Download Mozilla firefox

My favourite Addons for Firefox.

Audio Editor

noreply@blogger.com (Sunil Ramachandran) — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 02:20:00 +0000

If you are a music buff then you will be looking for easy ways to record, edit, mix, and save sound on your PC's to such quality that they sound almost as good as the professionals. Software that can do all this editing like Adobe Audition are very expensive. There are free products available which can give you that professional touch to your recordings, editings and mixings.

My recommendation in this area is Audacity.

Audacity is much simpler and faster to use. It allows you to select and apply a noise profile and just as easily remove it. It will also, record live audio, convert tapes and records into digital recordings or CDs, edit Ogg Vorbis, MP3, and WAV sound files, cut, copy, splice, and mix sounds together and change the speed or pitch of a recording. Audacity also supports plugins for LADSPA, Nyquist and VST.

Download both the recommended one for windows as well as the optional plugins which are quite handy.

Download audacity

Cache Cleaner For You

noreply@blogger.com (Sunil Ramachandran) — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 02:19:00 +0000

Many a times people have asked me on how to erase their browsing history, temporary internet files etc with just a click so that it is not available to people who use that PC again.

It is quite usual for adults to visit sites which of course they would not want their children to visit. But unfortunately many still dont know how to remove the visible traces that are left on their PC after such visits.

For them and for all others who want optimum usage of their PC, I would recommend the most useful utility the CCCleaner

It's very effective as it frees up disk space by cleaning up unused as well as temporary files, cookies, recycle bin, Windows hot-fix files, old prefetch data, history and cache files in many applications such as Internet Explorer, firefox , opera and many others. It also checks the Windows Registry for invalid entries and cleans them too.

While installing CCcleaner I would recoommend to uncheck the Yahoo tool bar option if you dont want the toolbar to be installed, personally speaking, I dont like yahoo toolbar, it sometimes creates problems with the browsers especially If you are using old IE versions.

After installation ,when you first run it you can find the cleaner icon on the left hand side. Click on it and on the right side under the windows tab as well as the applications tab select all the options and click the run cleaner button.

you can also clean your registry of invalid entries by clicking on the Registry icon on the left side and selecting all the options on the right window and then running the cleaner.

So browse happily wherever you want to and before shutting down the PC just run the CCcleaner and have peace of mind for rest of the day.

Download CCleaner

Spyware / Trojan Removers

noreply@blogger.com (Sunil Ramachandran) — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 02:17:00 +0000

In recent years people relied on spybot search and destroy and adaware for spyware removal. Today the new generation of malware requires defensive products . The best anti spyware programs are mostly commercial ones but a few good free ones are available.

SuperAntiSpyware, is one of the best spyware scanner and remover which successfully detects and cleans threats. A reboot to complete cleaning is still required, though this is a minor inconvenience, and required by most packages.

The freeware version installs a startup item which doesn't actually do anything at all but in the paid version, it loads the always on protection.

Download Super Antispyware Free edition

Anti Virus

noreply@blogger.com (Sunil Ramachandran) — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 02:16:00 +0000

Virus is a self-duplicating computer program that spreads from computer to computer, interfering with data and software. Just as biological viruses infect people, spreading from person to person, computer viruses infect personal computers (PCs) and servers.

Some viruses are mere annoyances, but others can do serious damage. Viruses can delete or change files, steal important information, load and run unwanted applications, send documents via electronic mail (e-mail), or even cripple a machine’s operating system (OS).

To be protected from the multitude of viral, Trojan, and rootkit Internet threats one requires an able antivirus. Antivirus is essential as a secondary preventative Internet security solution beyond a firewall.

The best possible protection recommendation is Avira AntiVir Personal Edition. Its detection rate is outstanding.

Download Antivir

RootKit Scanner

noreply@blogger.com (Sunil Ramachandran) — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 02:15:00 +0000

A software tool used to hide trojans, viruses and other malware from anti virus scanner and other security products is called a RootKit . They are so effective that you could be infected even now while you believe your PC to be totally clean. The new type of security product called rootkit scanners are now available which will help detect rootkits on your PC.

Sophos Anti-Rootkit is quite a good Root kit remover.The program easy to use interface with no options other than choosing where you want to scan.

During scans it opens up a slightly larger interface where it lists the results of the scan and gives recommendations too. Sophos offers an easy and very effective choice in rootkit removal, that is suitable even for beginners.
Download Sophos Rootkit remover.

Email Client

noreply@blogger.com (Sunil Ramachandran) — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 02:15:00 +0000

Emails are now the common way of communication and have almost fully replaced snail mail. Use of Emails extensively has led to the development of Email programs. In addition to simply sending and recieving , email programs now manage your contacts, calendar, read news groups and RSS news feeds they even integrate with web based email systems like Gmail and Hotmai. Thundermail and microsoft outlook are some of them. By having an email program you can download your mails and read them offline any time you want, you can compose mails and later send them when you are connected to the net.

The most popular opensource and free Email program available which you can install on your system and download mail from the mail server is Thunderbird from Mozilla. It is so good that it can even integrate multiple Gmail accounts whereas in Outlook only one Gmail account can be configured.

To configure a Gmail account or any other account in ThunderBird is easy. All you have to do is install the program and supply the required fields.

Download Thunderbird.

CD Recovery Utility

noreply@blogger.com (Sunil Ramachandran) — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 02:11:00 +0000

The causes of an unreadable CD range from simple scratches to partially written sessions. A CD recovery utility is a must for everyone. My recommendation in this category is IsoBuster. It supports all CD / DVD formats and most file-systems. It can read old sessions, decode multiple image file formats, recover data from quick formatted DVDs and a hosts many other useful data recovery features.

It recovers files from a bad CD or DVD disc, saves important documents, pictures and video .This free utility will allow you extract anything on the CD/DVD to your hard drive.

Some use this feature to extract file from copy protected CD/DVD which is not legal.

Download ISO Buster

Files Cataloguer

noreply@blogger.com (Sunil Ramachandran) — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 02:11:00 +0000

When one has a large no of files on the disk one would generally require a file cataloger, here a small portable program that catalogs files on removable media or hard drive would come in handy and my recommendation in this area is Cathy .Once indexed, one can quickly search and locate a file by name, size, and date. There is a faciltity for additional search fields for MP3 files. Multiple catalogs are supported and you can also search for duplicate files. The handy directory listing feature allows you to print the contents of any folder.

The program is quite speedy, and can index thousands of files without a problem. Cathy only indexes the file names and other file properties. It does not index the contents of a file. For indexing the contents of a file you would require a desktop search program.

Download cathy.

Tune Up your PC for Free

noreply@blogger.com (Sunil Ramachandran) — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 02:10:00 +0000

Ashampoo WinOptimizer 2010, (otherwise paid) available for free from V3 Software Store is a top choice in this regard.

You will need to register for the serial. WinOptimizer has a very sleek interface, with one-click cleaning for disk, privacy and registry cleaning tasks. It also has a nice option of a full scan, which gives recommendations for disabling unnecessary services, tweaking system settings, as well as the one-click cleaning features.

However, WinOptimizer requires registration. Also, no further updates are provided. However, this is the best choice if you want something simple that can clean your computer with a few clicks.

It also has a tweaking utility with over 450 tweaks.

Securely delete unwanted data on the PC

noreply@blogger.com (Sunil Ramachandran) — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 02:08:00 +0000

How mucch do you Know?
When you delete a file to the recycle bin and then empty the recycle bin do you think that your data has been deleted from your system. ? If you think so then you should be reading what is written below.

That data you think you erased is still stored on the drive. When you delete a file it isn’t really removed from the disk. only the reference to the file from the file allocation table (FAT) is removed. This is like removing the table of contents from a textbook the actual chapter still remains in the textbook.

Even if you reformat the harddisk, then too the data remains and for people who are into computers it is a easy job to get the data which has not yet been overwritten from a formatted harddisk.

The only permanent way to make data irretrievable is to completely and utterly destroy the hard drive. But it is an action that is probably a little severe than required. The only thing which has to be done is to make the data irrecoverable. That is to be as safe as possible, you must overwrite both slack space and free space. Also, the Windows swap file could contain private data that you wouldn’t want to have fall into the wrong hands.

This free software "ERASER" will securely erase selected files and folders, or even whole disks, located on your hard drive it works with any drive, including IDE, SCSI and RAID, and CD-RWs. Eraser can overwrite the data area with your choice of a variety of random data patterns, and can also wipe data in the paging file, Internet cache, temporary files, Internet cookies, unused disk space, and a number of other places where data can secretly lurk. It can handle FAT16, FAT32, and NTFS partitions.

Download Eraser

Sun Ram Portfolio Manager

noreply@blogger.com (Sunil Ramachandran) — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 02:06:00 +0000

HI friends,

Many a times, people I know have asked me about monitoring data for the stocks they trade in. Keeping in view the requirements they gave me I have created a excel workbook which uses data available on yahoo finance and makes portfolio management easy for you. The excel workbook is self explanatory and also has a help worksheet.

One who downloads this should be aware that excel formulas are entered into the worksheets coloured cells so they should not delete data in the coloured cells. Only the white cells are to be used to enter data.

The workbook was created using Microsoft excel 2003. The security of macros in microsoft excel by default is high. So after downloading sunram portfolio first you have to enable the macros feature in your excel.

For enabling the macros feature you can click tools - macro - security - low or medium ( as per your desire)- click ok then save the workbook. Then open and use. The enabling feature needs to be done only once.

If you have any doubts read the help segment or contact me over mail or phone.

Download SUNRAM PORTFOLIO.