Tag-Archive for ◊ Top Software ◊

The 10 best cross-platform applications
Tuesday, May 25th, 2010 | Author: admin

In this cross-platform world, you need apps that can handle whatever systems you’re supporting. Jack Wallen lists the cross-platform applications he thinks are indispensable.

From Windows to Linux to Mac and back, it’s becoming more and more difficult for companies to pin themselves down to one single platform. As a result, we need applications that can span those various platforms. Here are 10 of my favorite cross-platform applications. How do they compare to your own list?

1: Firefox

There is little doubt that one of the most popular cross-platform applications is Firefox. No other browser has come as close to usurping Internet Explorer as the reigning king of the Web as Firefox has. A good cross-platform browser has become essential, since so many applications and services are now handled online. Thankfully, the rise in popularity of cross-platform browsers like Firefox has helped ensure that companies don’t lock down their sites and services to a single browser.

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Category: Top Software  | Tags: ,  | 14 Comments
Best Free Music Creation Software
Monday, May 10th, 2010 | Author: admin
Introduction
Hello and welcome to Best Free Music Creation Software. First off, I’m not a tech wizard, I’m just a musician who loves music, guitars and cool technology. I could not tell you what a LumiBatch Object is, nor could I tell you what ST transform and Quantile normalization means, but I can tell you about good freeware to make music with and hey, that’s what matters right? Anyway, what I’m going to do is tell you about three applications that I’ve found and tested and I’m going to review them in terms of: Ease of use, Functionality and Overall Performance, and I will do it in plain English. Each application in this section must be “pick up and playable”  without the user needing to install third party hardware drivers or use extra external hardware. These apps (except Jackbeat) do provide a full MIDI working environment, but that’s a different topic.

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Category: Top Software  | Tags: , , , ,  | 10 Comments
Best Free Software for Linux
Monday, May 10th, 2010 | Author: admin
Introduction

LinuxLinux, occasionally referred to as GNU/Linux, is an open source and free operating system predominantly known for its use in servers, but has increasingly become commonplace in the desktop, notebook and netbook computers in recent years after newer and enhanced versions of Linux distributions, Ubuntu for example, are developed and offered free to users.

While you can get the Linux system and use it for free, you can also run on the system a wide range of free applications such as well-known and commonly-used software including Firefox web browser and the OpenOffice application suite.

Among various free applications, here you might find the best free software for Linux, including those products reviewed and recommended by our editors in the various sections.

Other programs that work as potential alternatives to Windows applications or even perform better than them are also listed here for the benefits of users who migrate from Windows to Linux or run dual systems on their computers.
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Category: Top Software  | Tags: ,  | 44 Comments
Best Free Windows Driver Backup
Wednesday, April 28th, 2010 | Author: admin
Introduction
Whether or not you do a full system backup, it’s a good idea to backup your windows drivers. It provides an easy way to protect you when testing new drivers and recovering if a driver is mistakenly deleted or corrupted.You can also improve performance by removing outdated or conflicting drivers and you can restore them if it turns out they were needed. It is suggested that before backing up it’s a good idea to use Windows Device Manager to check that all your drivers are working properly.
Discussion
DriverMaxThere are a number of free solutions. My favorite is DriverMax. It has a nice clear GUI, lets you backup, restore, generate reports that include if there is a newer version available and even gives you the option of storing your backup in a zip file.

Recently updated to support Vista, they are working on updates that will allow you to quickly find updates for your drivers.  Note it does require free registration to get full access to all of its features.

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Category: Software Review, Top Software  | Tags: , , ,  | Leave a Comment
Top Digital Photo Software
Tuesday, April 27th, 2010 | Author: admin
Digital photo software is designed for people who want to organize and share personal and family photos, but don’t want to spend a lot of time editing them. In addition to helping you browse and sort through your image collection, they also allow you to catalog your media with keywords, descriptions and categories. These tools usually do not offer pixel-level editing capabilities, but they do provide easy, one-click corrections plus printing and photo sharing features.

1. Picasa (Windows, Mac and Linux)

Picasa
Picasa is a flashy and functional digital photo organizer and editor which has improved considerably since its first release. Picasa is excellent for beginners and casual digital shooters who want to find all their pictures, sort them into albums, do quick edits, and share with friends and family. I especially like the Picasa Web Albums integration which gives you 1024 MB of free space to post your photos online. Best of all, Picasa is free!
Category: Graphics Software, Top Software  | Tags: ,  | 36 Comments
Best Free Firewall
Wednesday, April 14th, 2010 | Author: admin

No other freeware product causes as much angst to users, whether in installation or day-to-day use, as a firewall. To find a stable and high quality firewall for windows often involves a process of trial and error. Firewalls should protect while not being too intrusive or too complicated to handle. This article gives you a selection of the best free software firewalls available.

If you want to learn more about firewalls, visit these excellent sites: How Firewalls Work and Microsoft Security Firewalls FAQ. If you don’t decide to use one of the firewall products in the article, at least remember to turn on the Windows firewall. Be sure to use only one software firewall at a time. But feel free to combine a hardware and a software firewall to improve protection. Additionally, most products highly recommend uninstalling other third-party software firewalls before installation (and disabling the Windows firewall if they don’t).

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Category: Antivirus & Security, Top Software  | Tags: , , ,  | 13 Comments
Best Free File Rename Utility
Wednesday, April 07th, 2010 | Author: admin
Introduction
In these days of MP3 libraries and vast collections of digital images, many of us have faced the necessity of renaming our files for organizational purposes. If you’ve come here looking for a solution we have some good news. There are great (and free!) programs to suit your needs.

There are many different methods to achieve the desired result, from laboriously renaming files one at a time using Windows Explorer, to bulk renaming utilities that can pull out metadata or execute powerful Perl based regular expressions. Some programs focus on simplicity and others are designed for power users. Most of the renamers support a basic set of features such as crop, insert, remove, replace, case changes, and auto number. And some renamers have more powerful features that others don’t.

Because the programs reviewed here are designed for different purposes, there isn’t a renamer that is vastly better overall but there is a renamer that is best for certain situations. These differences make it easy to find which file rename utility is right for you.

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Category: Top Software  | Tags: , , , , ,  | 3 Comments
Best Free All-In-One Design Tools
Monday, March 22nd, 2010 | Author: admin
Introduction
There are a lot of design programs out there that specialize on one individual feature. For most of us though, we just need a single program that can cover most (if not all) of our needs.

This section covers these programs. With any of these free applications, you get a tool covering a wide range of features (from screen capture, color picker to an image editor among other things). As most features are covered under one roof, you won’t need to install and run too many programs (for every different tool that you need). It’s simply up to you to decide which of these applications have the right combination of features for your needs.

As with most all-in-one applications though, the following are designed to meet the needs of most average users who prefer one program that can cover as many basic functions as possible.

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Category: Graphics Software, Top Software  | Tags: , , , ,  | 2 Comments
Best Free Outlook Express Backup
Sunday, March 21st, 2010 | Author: admin

Many email programs do not provide a practical way to back up messages, contacts and accounts. For example, Outlook Express (OE) uses an arcane data store that makes it difficult for ordinary mortals to back up, much less restore email messages. Backup programs potentially offer a more straightforward way to back up messages, account settings and contact details (address book).

Comment: I know there are valid reasons for staying with an old friend, but Outlook Express is past its “sell-by” date. ;-) Microsoft’s new Windows Live Mail is similar to Outlook Express, but it is improved and more secure. It also replaces Windows Mail in Vista, and will soon be required to access Hotmail. You can easily import your messages, contacts and accounts directly from Outlook Express when you install Windows Live Mail.

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Category: Top Software  | Tags: , , , ,  | 18 Comments
Best Free PDF Writer
Thursday, March 11th, 2010 | Author: admin
Introduction
All of the PDF writers in this review are programs that function by creating a pseudo printer on your system.  When you want to create a PDF document from pretty much any application you just choose to print it to the PDF printer and it creates a PDF document.  The thing that distinguishes one product from another is the number of options and flexibility available.  The one problem with this approach is that you need to have a program that will open the file on your system.  If someone sends you a file created with a program you do not have and you can’t open the file then you can’t print it and if you can’t print it then you can’t convert it to a pdf using a pseudo printer technique.  The two online products do not suffer from this problem but are limited only by the file formats recognized by the online vendor.

After eliminating those PDF Writers suggested by readers that were not free, were limited time trials, and basically adware (the product was free but forced the user to endure various ads as a punishment for using it), there were only six candidates left.  These were (alphabetically) Bullzip PDF Writer, CutePDF, doPDF, PDFCreator, PrimoPDF, and TinyPDF.  Which one of these is best?  That really depends on the options you need.

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Category: Software Review, Top Software  | Tags: , ,  | 11 Comments
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