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It may seem odd that some of the best programs in any particular category are free. But work that is done as a service -- out of the goodness of someone's heart -- is sometimes the highest expression of craftmanship.
   technofile
Al Fasoldt's reviews and commentaries, continuously available online since 1983

Good sites for the best Windows freeware


Feb. 6, 2000

By Al Fasoldt
Copyright ©2000, Al Fasoldt
Copyright ©2000, The Syracuse Newspapers

   You don't have to pay a lot of money to own good software. In fact, you don't have to pay any money at all. You can find high-quality free software on sites all over the Web. This week I'll share some of those sites with you.
   In the Windows world, this kind of software is called freeware. Some freeware is given away with no conditions at all, but most modern Windows freeware is copyrighted. You can use it and share it, but you're not allowed to sell it or call it your own.
   It may seem odd that some of the best programs in any particular category are free. But work that is done as a service -- out of the goodness of someone's heart -- is sometimes the highest expression of craftmanship. What I do for you if you promise to pay me might not be what I really want to do and I might not do it very well. But what I give to the world through my volunteer efforts might be the best endeavor I can possibly give.
   And so it is with a lot of freeware. Much of it is given away as a tribute to the goodness of life. But there's a lot of Windows freeware of different kinds -- programs that were tossed off in a few minutes to serve one purpose and have almost no value to you and me, software that was once commercially available but is now so old the programmers know they can't sell it any more, software that serves as a demo for a fancier program, and so on.
   (Another kind of freeware is starting to enter the Windows area. It's open source software, which requires cooperating programmers to freely share their original code. The Linux PC operating system is the best example of open source software.)
   Fans of freeware sometimes lament the fact that programmers who write freeware seem to get themselves into disk-and-file trouble all the time, as evidenced by the fact that a many of the programs they write are utilities -- programs that fix this problem or that one, software that tweaks Windows in various ways, and so on.
   But if you set aside enough time for a good search, you can come up with programming gems. I located what seemed like a gift from heaven at once site when I found a program that activated the TV recording software on my ATI graphics card in Windows 2000, for example. (Neither Microsoft nor the company that makes the graphics card were able to get the card working properly, but a programmer in the Netherlands did it just fine and released it as freeware. Go to this Freeware Home site and download CapTV from the list.
   You can also find major programs. The top rank has to go to Sun's Star Office suite, a freeware replacement for Microsoft's expensive Office 97 suite. Star Office is available for Windows and Linux. Go to http://www.sun.com and look for the Star Office link. (Beware of the gigantic download! You can order Star Office on a CD for a few dollars if huge downloads take too long.)
   Sites that specialize in freeware sometimes fail to point out the differences among various types of "ware," and you sometimes discover that the program you thought was free starts to beg you for payment. Programs of that kind are "nagware." I've tried to winnow out the sites that mix up freeware and nagware, but the job probably is impossible.
   Perhaps the most serious of all the Windows freeware sites is Freeware Home at http://freewarehome.com/. This site organizes Windows freeware into easy-to-search categories. And Freeware Home has a newsletter with hyperlinks to new and interesting files.
   A favorite for years is Nonags at http://www.nonags.com. Don't be put off by the "members" area, because you don't need to be a member of any organization (not to speak of Nonags) to access the site and download the software. Nonags is surely the only site to visit if you could only visit one site. It's superb. Be sure to pick a mirror site close to you and bookmark the mirror site, not the main one.
   Try http://www.freewareplus.com/ for a site with a large selection and a simple menu. I had fun in many of the sections of this site, happily wasting an evening when I should have been doing something useful. (But the visit turned up some great audio and video utilities, so it was worth the time.)
   Go to the Freeware Connection at http://www.freewareconnection.com/ for a good selection of Windows freeware as well as links to freeware for Macintosh computers and Windows 3.1 computers. But hold onto your mouse: the Freeware Connection also has links to more than 60 other freeware Web sites. Be sure to click the "Freeware Super Sites" button for some of the best Windows sites on the planet.
   A great site for quick downloads is Freeware 32 at http://freeware32.com/. The "32" in the name means this site has ben around a while. Nobody thinks much about it now, but in 1995 and 1996 the big thing in personal computing was the shift from 16-bit Windows to 32-bit Windows. (We didn't know then that we were also moving down the ladder of operating system stability.)
   Finally, a site you simply must bookmark: The Freeware Guide at http://freewareguide.freeservers.com/. It has links to other freeware sites and a lot more. I counted more than 600 interesting links on this site.