15 Great Free Utilities You've Never Heard Of

[Capper]

Looking at the price of software today is enough to send you into sticker shock. Sometimes it feels as if you need to mortgage your house if you want to get a full suite of tools.


Luckily, that's not the case. There are plenty of very good free programs that do everything from protecting you against spyware, to giving you a comprehensive look inside your PC, and cleaning your Registry, to managing your media, and plenty more.


We've scoured the Web and come up with 15 of our favorite free utilities that most people have never heard of. We've focused on three popular categories: security software, system tools, and graphics and multimedia. But we've also thrown in some personal favorites that defy categorization.
Among the security utilities, we've chosen two spyware killers--SpyCatcher Express and a-Squared HiJackFree--because no single piece of antispyware can do the job by itself. We've also found a very good firewall, VistaFirewallControl, to improve on Windows Vista's built-in protection. And we've included Tor, which will maintain your privacy whenever you're online.

PC World - 15 Great Free Utilities You've Never Heard Of

[Lead Head]

Those are pretty neat!

I've actually already had Azureus and Google Sketchup installed though.

Heres another one called "Who lock me"
WhoLockMe Explorer Extension v1.04 beta (NT-Win2K-XP) download page

Ever tried to delete or move something, and it says some other program is using it? This will tell you what programs are using that file, pretty neat

[polobunny]

Originally Posted by Lead Head

Those are pretty neat!

I've actually already had Azureus and Google Sketchup installed though.

Heres another one called "Who lock me"
WhoLockMe Explorer Extension v1.04 beta (NT-Win2K-XP) download page

Ever tried to delete or move something, and it says some other program is using it? This will tell you what programs are using that file, pretty neat

I prefer Unlocker over WhoLockMe
With Unlocker you can actually "unlock" the file without having to manually close explorer.exe or such.
Unlocker website UNLOCKER 1.8.5 BY CEDRICK 'NITCH' COLLOMB

And µtorrent over Azureus
Azureus relies on Java and Java = slow and heavy
µtorrent is a C++ application, much faster.
Utorrent website µTorrent - Powerful BitTorrent Client

[Panda Man]

OH NOES! A PC WORLD ARTICLE THAT IS HELPFUL!!!

:P haha, I've heard of about half of them, but some of those are pretty nifty, will have to give them a try.

[Death_blooms]

Mediamonkey is great best media player for music collectors only it dosent play videos but there is a plugin for that.

[screwballl]

most of those have a better free program that is available... I have tried pretty much all of these apps... my edits to their list:

Security

• SpyCatcher Express - Spyware Terminator is better
• a-Squared HiJackFree
• VistaFirewallControl - problematic and causes major internet hiccups, wait for Comodo Firewall 3.0 for Vista
• Tor - a web hackers best friend

System Tools

• What's Running - decent but crashed my system a few times until I removed it
• Eusing Free Registry Cleaner - CCleaner's registry cleaner is much better
• Undelete Plus
• Advanced WindowsCare - CCleaner and Spyware Terminator do a much better job than this one app does
• System Information for Windows - One app: CPU-z

Graphics and Multimedia

• Photozig Albums Express - GiMP and others work much better
• MediaMonkey - caught by many spyware and malware apps as undesirable
• Google SketchUp - excellent free app

Miscellaneous Software

• RSS Bandit - good for RSS only but to combine browing + RSS, you're better off with Firefox or Opera
• ImgBurn - decent freebee but Nero is just so much better
• Azureus - like many of the P2P apps out there, this one is caught in asquared with thousands of spyware/malware bits... plus you can get better speed and what you're looking for with Ares

[polobunny]

There's no spyware in MediaMonkey, just thought i'd point that out. False positive maybe?
Besides, people should really look into µtorrent instead of running bloated apps such as Azureus. Ares isn't a very good BitTorrent client, by the way. Far from being lightweight for once, it puts a continuous strain on many peers. It is just a matter of time before it gets banned from several private trackers.

Edit: As for a good burning program, I often recommend CDBurner XP Pro, it's free, simple to use and gets the job done.
CDBurnerXP Pro - free burning solution |Home / News

[screwballl]

torrents are not the end all/be all for P2P but it will likely be the only one that stands the bs that the AACS and RIAA are pulling.
Besides when you need something, it takes 2 days with a torrent and 2-3 hours with Ares, that is a no brainer. Rarely have I been able to get anything over 20MB that did not take any less than 18 hours with torrents.

[polobunny]

Originally Posted by screwballl

torrents are not the end all/be all for P2P but it will likely be the only one that stands the bs that the AACS and RIAA are pulling.
Besides when you need something, it takes 2 days with a torrent and 2-3 hours with Ares, that is a no brainer. Rarely have I been able to get anything over 20MB that did not take any less than 18 hours with torrents.

Than your sources or your torrent program configuration aren't good, don't blame me for that as i'm seeding full time. :P

[Lead Head]

Originally Posted by screwballl

torrents are not the end all/be all for P2P but it will likely be the only one that stands the bs that the AACS and RIAA are pulling.
Besides when you need something, it takes 2 days with a torrent and 2-3 hours with Ares, that is a no brainer. Rarely have I been able to get anything over 20MB that did not take any less than 18 hours with torrents.

I'm getting a torrent right now going at around 100KB/s, I've had some hit as high as 450-500 KB/s. With torrents, the more you upload, the better your download speeds seem to be. Atleast from what I've seen.