101 Fantastic Freebies

 

101 Fantastic Freebies

By Preston Gralla and Erik Larkin, PC World

Whether you're partial to online services or to downloadable software, we have the Web's best free stuff and it'll keep you productive, secure and entertained.

Free. It's the magic word for an ever-expanding wealth of downloadable software and online services. Free doesn't necessarily mean good, however, and hunting for freebies can mean sifting through a lot of junk.
That's where we come in. We surfed, clicked and installed to find sparkling free gems capable of planning your time, keeping you in touch and tuning and securing your PC, not to mention glitzing up your desktop, helping you stay productive and entertaining you with music, videos, photos and games. We paid special attention to programs and services you may not have heard of before. 

We also singled out two free offerings -- one download and one online service -- as the best of the bunch. We want to hear your picks for the best freebies, too, whether they appear in this article or not. Please let us know by joining our forum discussion.

In This Article:

• File Sharing and Storage
• Security
• Video and Photo
• System Utilities and Backup
• Maps and Directions
• Communications
• Time Management
• Music
• Desktop Customization
• News Readers
• Games
• Best Download and Web App
• Fantastic Freebies, by Category
• Fantastic Freebies, Alphabetical Order

Productivity

AbiWord (download)
Tired of expensive, slow, bloated word processors? Download this surprisingly powerful freebie, which includes sophisticated features such as mail merge and advanced layouts. The program handles a wide variety of document formats, including those of Microsoft Word, Rich Text Format, OpenOffice.org and other programs.

TrackMyShipments (service)
If you place orders often via the Web or phone, here's a site for you. When you get a shipping notification, forward the e-mail to track@trackmyshipments.com. The service reads through your message for the tracking information and keeps it in one place for all of your orders. Log in to the site to see the progress of your shipments, including a map showing their progress.

Buzzword.com (service)
You have plenty of free Web-based word processors to choose from, but most aren't as slick as this one. The design is tasteful and elegant, menu items slide in and out of place, and it's incredibly simple to use. But don't let the pretty face fool you, because Buzzword is feature-packed as well. Inserting tables and graphics is a breeze, you can easily select background colors, and the document manager is a standout too.

ThinkFree Online (service)
Don't want to fork over several hundred dollars for Microsoft Office? Try this Web-based productivity suite, which covers word processing, spreadsheets and presentations. The service can create files compatible with Microsoft Office, so you can download files to your own PC where you can work on them offline using Office applications, if you wish. You can also edit your Office-created documents in ThinkFree, though you have to be connected to the Internet to do that. But if you're always connected, you can't beat free.

StarOffice (download)
If you prefer offline apps that reside on your PC, download the free StarOffice suite, which includes a word processor, a spreadsheet app and a presentation program, among other goodies. It's part of the free Google Pack, which also contains a bunch of other programs you might not want. During the Google Pack download, simply check the box next to StarOffice and uncheck all the others.

Foxit Reader for Windows (download)
High on our list of the most annoying applications of all time is Adobe Acrobat Reader. It's slow, bloated and buggy and it often crashes some systems -- all of which can drive you insane. Foxit lets you read and even fill out PDF files, without touching Reader. This small and compact tool loads fast, won't hog RAM or system resources and won't crash your PC.

Microsoft Office Live Small Business (service)
With this service, you can share documents and collaborate with co-workers and customers, build a Web site and manage your contacts. A variety of for-pay options are available as well, but you don't have to pay for the basics.

Blist (service)
If you own a small business, you need a database to create and track customer records, among other details. At home, you may want to organize information related to hobbies, such as your fantasy football stats. With Blist, you can do all of that online for free. You just drag and drop column types, such as numbers, dates, names and money amounts, onto a grid. Then type in your data, and voilá -- instant database.

Moffsoft FreeCalc (download)
For simple, basic operations, the calculator that ships with Windows is fine. But if you need more, get this great free download. It has a variety of new keys, such as memory subtract, and its nifty "tap" feature keeps a running history of all your calculations.

File Sharing and Storage

4Shared (service)
This clever site combines personal, online storage with file sharing. You get 5GB of free space to store your files. You can either keep the files private or share them with other users, on a folder-by-folder basis. The service imposes just one limitation: No file can be larger than 100MB.

Torrent Swapper (download)
Though BitTorrent has become the de facto protocol for sharing files, the BitTorrent client leaves a lot to be desired. Get this far superior, and faster, open-source client instead. It's easy to use, and it lets you get recommendations from others about files to download; it also allows you to stop, pause, resume and queue downloads.

Shareaza (download)
Want to share files, but don't want to be tied exclusively to the BitTorrent protocol? This simple-to-use free download allows you to share files on multiple networks and protocols, including BitTorrent, Gnutella, Gnutella2 and eDonkey. It offers fast search and chat capabilities, and you can skin it to your taste as well.

(Editors' note: After publishing this article, we heard from a member of the open-source team that originally developed Shareaza. The developers say that the version of Shareaza we pointed to is based on the open-source code they developed, but is not authorized by them. For more on the controversy, see this article. And to download the open-source version of Shareaza, go to shareaza.sourceforge.net.)

Microsoft Office Live Workspace (service)
This is, by far, the most powerful free file-sharing site you can find. It's closer to