Top 10 Freeware - February 2006

Top 10 Freeware
(February 2006)

Programs listed alphabetically

Bart's PE Builder
Version 3.1.10a, release date: February 17, 2006
Bart's PE Builder helps you build a bootable Window CD-Rom or DVD from Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 very suitable for PC maintenance tasks. It will give you a complete Win32 environment with network support, a graphical user interface (800x600) and FAT/NTFS/CDFS filesystem support. Very handy for burn-in testing systems with no OS, rescuing files to a network share, virus scan and so on.
Screenshot | Download (3.2 MB)

Belarc Advisor
Version 7.1f, release date: February 21, 2006
The Belarc Advisor builds a detailed profile of your installed software and hardware and displays the results in your Web browser. All of your PC profile information is kept private on your PC and is not sent to any web server. Free for personal use.
Download (911 kB)

CPU-Z
Version 1.32, release date: February 6, 2006
CPU-Z is a freeware that provides some information on your system:
- Processor name and vendor
- Core stepping and process
- Processor package
- Processor current core voltage
- Internal and external clocks, clock multiplier
- Partial overclock detection
- Processor features, including supported instructions sets.
- L1 to L3 cache information: location, size, speed, technology.
- MB information: name, vendor, BIOS, chipset, memory, AGP.
- Memory information: size, type, timings, specifications.
Download (358 kB)

FastStone Image Viewer
Version 2.30, release date: February 10, 2006
FastStone Image Viewer is an image browser, viewer, converter and editor with an easy to use interface and a nice array of features that include resizing, renaming, cropping, color adjustments, watermarks and more. It also includes an intuitive full-screen mode that provides quick access to EXIF information and thumbnail browser via hidden toolbars that emerge when you touch the edge of your screen with the mouse. Other features include a high quality magnifier and built-in slideshow with 150+ transitional effects, as well as lossless JPEG transitions, drop shadow effects, image frames, scanner support, histogram and much more. It supports all major graphic formats including BMP, JPEG, JPEG 2000, GIF, PNG, PCX, TIFF, WMF, ICO and TGA.
Screenshot | Download (2926 kB)

Open Contacts
Version 3.0, release date: February 15, 2006
Open Contacts is an address book with CRM features providing unified, flexible and intuitive interfaces for you to manage and lookup contact info of people and companies. Open Contacts shows only info you inputted. You can seamlessly customize what can be stored in your address book. New ways of communication will be invented in the future, Open Contacts is flexible to such changes.
Features:
- Store details in sections of data fields that are dynamically customizable, with predefined data fields.
- Associate people with companies, and associate companies with departments or subsidiaries.
- Categorize contacts in hierarchy trees, and list contacts of subcategories recursively.
- Search contacts info through any data field.
- Dynamic shortcuts to telephony, Skype, emailing or Web/File browsing.
- Print contact info with built-in functions or external label printing programs.
- Import contact info from MS Outlook, Outlook Express (WAB), Eudora, Netscape/Mozilla, XML, CSV and vCard.
- Export contact info to indented text, CSV, Excel and XML.
- Save and load different customized layouts of contact info.
- Support multilingual features.
- The program is small and green enough to run on a memory stick.
- Native supports for concurrent access of multiple users in Local Area Network.
Screenshot | Download (3268 kB)

Paint.NET
Version 2.6, release date: February 24, 2006
Paint.NET is image and photo manipulation software designed to be used on computers that run Windows 2000, XP, Vista, or Server 2003. It supports layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools.
It started development at Washington State University as an undergraduate senior design project mentored by Microsoft, and is currently being maintained by some of the alumni that originally worked on it. Originally intended as a free replacement for the MS Paint software that comes with Windows, it has grown into a powerful yet simple tool for photo and image editing. The programming language used to create Paint.NET is C#, with a small amount of C++ for setup and shell-integration related functionality.
Screenshot | Download (3.41 MB)

PhotoFiltre
Version 6.2.2, release date: February 16, 2006
PhotoFiltre is a complete image retouching program. It allows you to do simple or advanced adjustments to an image and apply a vast range of filters on it. It is simple and intuitive to use, and has an easy learning curve. The toolbar, giving you access to the standard filters with just a few clicks, gives PhotoFiltre a robust look.

Process Explorer
Version 10.06, release date: February 22, 2006
Process Explorer shows you information about which handles and DLLs processes have opened or loaded.
The Process Explorer display consists of two sub-windows. The top window always shows a list of the currently active processes, including the names of their owning accounts, whereas the information displayed in the bottom window depends on the mode that Process Explorer is in: if it is in handle mode you’ll see the handles that the process selected in the top window has opened; if Process Explorer is in DLL mode you’ll see the DLLs and memory-mapped files that the process has loaded. Process Explorer also has a powerful search capability that will quickly show you which processes have particular handles opened or DLLs loaded.
The unique capabilities of Process Explorer make it useful for tracking down DLL-version problems or handle leaks, and provide insight into the way Windows and applications work.
Download (634 kB)

SEO Note
Version 1.3.11, release date: February 26, 2006
"Your life in a single file!"
Save all your personal and business notes in a single file, easily organise them and make your life easier. Stop spending your life searching for phone numbers, names, plans and ideas!

XP SysPad
Version 6.8, release date: February 19, 2006
XP SysPad is a launcher which makes access to Windows system utilities its specialty. All of the prime Windows system info and utilites such as the individual control panel applets, as well as the "hidden" applications in Windows, can be launched with the click of one button, which makes it easier than hunting around the explorer pane or waiting for menus to fold out. For convenience, it also can minimize itself to the system tray. It launches over 200 functions in all!
Screenshot | Download (738 kB)

January 2006