Big and Powerful but Free
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Not all freeware is just a simple utility. Here's a few that are well worth using. As with all freeware, take special care not to install toolbars, Chrome, or other junk with them. Where I have written a review, I give a link to my review page — there's a download link there if it looks to be of interest to you:
- PDF-XChange Editor (Build 10.2.1.385 (Released 22nd January 2024)
- Jarte (Now Freeware, but no longer updated)
- MainType (Updated to version 12.0)
Updated to fix links, remove obsolete software, and to add MainType, which is now available in a free, cut-down version.
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what do you mean by big? jarte is a small program that is resource friendly. its portable zip is under 4 mb.
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Free soft often is a good and powerfull alternative for comercial soft for example
Open Office, Libre Office, Calligra and others ar excelent suites same as MS Office, Gimp, Cine Paint and Krita are very good altenatives for Painshop.
Others no have an alternative comercial, like IrfanView, a very powerfull and fast image and multimedia viewer with a lot of functions for editing, capturing and change formats
A better mediaplayer than VLC? I don't know -
The free alternatives (and powerful in their own right) that I use rather than the big, expensive applications are:
Free Office (by Softmaker) - smaller package, less resource-hungry, and more MS Office-compatible than OpenOffice or LibreOffice.
Paint.NET - VERY capable free image processing software. Does essentially everything.
I have GIMP installed, and it's very powerful, but I'm not terribly fond of it. The learning curve is quite long, I feel. Paint.NET is much more intuitive in my view.
PDF-Xchange
XnView
VLC
Media Player Classic
Any Video Converter Free (converts any cell phone, tablet or camera video to any format that your end user can actually play) - I use free version 3.5.2. There is an actual reason why I decided not to use later versions, but I can't remember what it was. -
The free alternatives (and powerful in their own right) that I use rather than the big, expensive applications are:
Free Office (by Softmaker) - smaller package, less resource-hungry, and more MS Office-compatible than OpenOffice or LibreOffice.
Paint.NET - VERY capable free image processing software. Does essentially everything.
I have GIMP installed, and it's very powerful, but I'm not terribly fond of it. The learning curve is quite long, I feel. Paint.NET is much more intuitive in my view.
PDF-Xchange
XnView
VLC
Media Player Classic
Any Video Converter Free (converts any cell phone, tablet or camera video to any format that your end user can actually play) - I use free version 3.5.2. There is an actual reason why I decided not to use later versions, but I can't remember what it was.Paint.NET is a good alternative, but not more powerfull than some editos online, like SumoPaint, Pixlr and others.
I know XnView, is a good visor, but IrfanView is better.
I´m using a lot of utilities online too.
For videoconverting and editing for example
Animoto
VideoToolbox
YouTube Creator page
and others
For PDF
PDF Tools
PDFtoWord
SmalPDFOffimatic
MS Office online https://www.office.com/For creating music a very powerfull studio online AudioSauna
And a lot of more utílities listed in my page (in spanish, simple design, y used it for save my bookmarks initially, sorry for this)
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IrfanView continues to improve with each new version. The latest version 4.50 available from the revamped IrfanView Website has had a couple of fixes since its release.
The Test Version update available from my website or the IrfanView Support Forum added support for transparent and animated WebP images.
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@catweazle said in Big and Powerful but Free:
A better mediaplayer than VLC? I don't know
VLC is powerful, and I always install it. But I loathe using it. Same with Kodi.
For video playback, I've been using Bomi. Unfortunately, it seems the developer has disappeared. There are a few forks, but it doesn't seem like there has been much progress.
When I was on Windows I used PotPlayer.
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[*nix, win] Gravit Designer, Inkscape
Vector graphics -
[*nix, win] Blender
3D modeller -
[*nix, win] OpenShot
Video editor -
[*nix, win] Handbrake
Video converter / ripper -
[win] XMind
Mind mapping tool (I'm not sure that it's still free) -
[win] Dexpot
Virtual desktop manager -
[win] FastStone Image Viewer
Image viewer and handy editor -
[win] SumatraPDF
PDF, eBook (ePub, Mobi), XPS, DjVu, CHM, Comic Book (CBZ and CBR) reader -
[*nix, win] Qualculate!
Most powerfull calculator
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Another tool I use a lot is ShareX (Open Source, Win only), one of the best screen captors (image, video, gif, text with OCR, editor) that also uploads the captures to the corresponding hosts to share or save them online
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@catweazle Didn't know AudioSauna, but it rocks. o_O It's like a full Fruity Loops in my browser!
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A small utility (2Mb) and very simple to use. It allows us to animate our photos in a very realistic way with water, snow and rain effects and save the result in avi, swf or gif format
Simply select the area to animate and adjust the direction, wave height, strength, transparency to our liking and it is already
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Internet/WEB-Design/Flash/Sqirlz-Water-Reflections.shtml
(Windows all, freeware) -
- [*nix,win] GeoGebra
Interactive geometry: Solve equations, graph functions, create constructions, analyze data, explore 3D math!
- [*nix,win] GeoGebra
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For those who have a 3G / 4G connection it is always a problem to control the volume of data they have monthly at their disposal.
A small utility, NetTraffic, remedies this problem, apart from controlling the volume of data, it also allows to give the alarm when it reaches a programmed limit, put the data that can be consumed daily and also show statistics about other aspects of the connection. (Windows) -
Cherrytree (OpenSource), A hierarchical treestyle note taking application, featuring rich text and syntax highlighting, storing data in a single xml or sqlite file.
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[Most of them are WinOnly]
SMPlayer while VLC is great, I found this have a better handling of video/audio remote streams (on win at least)
Notepad++ always useful for doing some css/js edits under \style..
TrayIT put apps to systray or hide them
WiXKill just xkill for windows (when it works)
VoluMouse change volume with mouse gestures (customizable)
ProcessExplorer explore what process does
Aquasnap enpower Aero features (free only for personal use)
AeroGlass dwm aero glass hooks (win8+). Win-modding rabbit-hole often start here.
AutoHotKey scripting/macro for windows. A powerful tool. Handle with care.
LinuxLiveUsb bootable linux iso to usb
MediaCreationTool same but for win7+ ISOs
Halite torrent client -
Version 4.51 ( - CURRENT VERSION - )
(Release date: 2018-02-27)
- Improved JPG save option: "Set file size" (no RIOT PlugIn needed)
- New options in IrfanView Shell Extension (PlugIns website)
- Support for animated WebP files
- Some fixes (Zoom box text, EXE/DLL icon loading)
- Several PlugIns are changed/updated, please install the newest versions:
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[nix*,win] Krita
Krita is a professional FREE and open source painting program. It is made by artists that want to see affordable art tools for everyone.- concept art
- texture and matte painters
- illustrations and comics
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[win] Jeskola Buzz
Buzz is a Digital Audio Workstation with a unique top-down approach to music composition known as a tracker interface.
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- [online] Photopea
Free online photo editor supporting PSD, XCF and Sketch formats (Adobe Photoshop, Gimp and Sketch App).
- [online] Photopea
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Complete solutions for the office, suites, newspapers, utilities, presentations and much more completely free for all OS. also online
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Real-Time PC Optimization & Automation with ProBalance
Process Lasso is an automated Windows process (program) management and optimization utility. By managing the programs running on your computer, Process Lasso increases system responsiveness and helps to prevents system stalls. It accomplishes this through our ProBalance technology. This proprietary algorithm dynamically adjusts the priorities of running programs so that some are given higher priority access to the CPU(s) than others. With Process Lasso, no longer will single, or multiple, processes be able to bring your system to a virtual stall. Process Lasso will let you keep interacting with your computer, even when it is totally swamped.Process Lasso uses virtually no system resources itself, being written in highly optimized native x32 and x64 C++. The core engine can run stand-alone and consume as little as 1-3MB of RAM.