Tag Archives: Freeware

Dear Readers: Computer Borders is back!

We need to apologize to all of you because we promised weekly posts and then we took quite a long hiatus. We didn’t mean to be gone for so long, but life got strange, and so on and so forth. But now we are back, and we would like to apologize with all you.

On a more positive note, though, we just checked our reader’s statistics, only to see that we still have almost 200 daily readers. And, believe us, we are shocked! Thanks for waiting our return, everybody.We decided to change something on our blog. First of all we will not duplicate our posts in the Linux and Freeware pages but we post them just in the homepage. In this way, we will have some posts in English and other in Spanish… it is not orthodox but…. why not? We dare!

We would like to know what you all think of the blog so far. What would you like to read? Leave us plenty of criticism in the comment sections. And, you will see a weekly post, starting Monday! AddThis mp3 link

Best 10 Freeware Sites

This week, in our Freeware Page, we would like to share our personal list of the 10 best freeware websites. Of course, this is just our personal opinion but we are 100% curious to learn new website from your comments!

#1 http://sourceforge.net/
In our opinion FileHippo is the #1, a lighthouse for all the other freeware distribution sites. The programs here are open-source and you can find freeware for all the most used OS: Linux, Windows and Mac

#2 http://www.filehippo.com/
Full of real freeware, well structure and it has developed a powerful “update checker” http://www.filehippo.com/updatechecker/

#3 http://www.techsupportalert.com/
Well organized, contains brief but effective review about each software

#4 http://download.cnet.com/
The software is categorized between Windows, Mac, Mobile and a very interesting Webware category for the online stuff. Use “The Download Software Finder” to be sure to surf between real free programs

#5 http://majorgeeks.com/
Good site, full of stuff and Shareware programs are clearly labeled!

#6 http://www.tucows.com/
An evergreen site; it was one of the first to share freeware, interesting but it does not contain a huge variety of freeware as others site

#7 http://www.nonags.com/
Elementary graphics but it contains a site menu and the proposed software is really freeware so….

#8 http://www.freewarefiles.com/
Interesting site but sometimes you find old version of proprietary software distributed as free…

#9 http://www.snapfiles.com/Freeware/
Well structured, easy to navigate and updated. Watch the tags (freeware or free trial) before downloading programs!

#10 http://www.dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Freeware/
Basic graphics; it has many freeware but you have to dig them from the lists.

We wait your comments!

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How to keep your Windows PC always updated: FileHippo Update Checker!

This week in our Freeware Page we posted a brief review about FileHippo Update Checker for Windows. This Updater is very light (just 155 Kb) and very fat. This particular checker has uses the large software database contained on FileHippo.com and in just 2-3 seconds is able to detect all the necessary updates and it also find the beta version ready to be installed. During the installation you can decide if FileHippo Update Checker has to run at each start-up or if you prefer to use it only when you prefer. Anyway, FileHippo Update Checker easily shows the results of the available updates on a html page on your browser. Recommended! AddThis mp3 link

How to listen online, legally free, music: Pandora.com

Today, in our Freeware Page we posted a review about Pandora.com: an online free website which offers free music listening based on your preferences. Once on Pandora.com you can decide to try it or to register for free (just an email and a new Pandora password are required). After this you can start creating new radio stations based on your favorite artists. In just few clicks, you can even listen your Pandora stations directly on your Blackberry, iPhone, PalmPre or Windows Mobile device. Using the QuickMix feature you can melt different stations in just an unique selection to share (if you want) with your friends. Pandora is legal and free but sometimes (not very often for my experience) some commercial ads are broadcasted. Anyway, in a couple of hours I was able to refine my new station options & variety and till now I am really satisfied by this service. Recommended! AddThis mp3 link

Mojopack 2.0: a software to create a portable Windows XP VS Damn Small Linux

Today, in our Freeware Page, we have posted a brief review about Mojopack a free (for  90 days, sic!) software which allows to bring your personal OS (with all the configurations) practically everywhere with you. To use Mojopac you need a working Windows XP OS, an USB portable disk or key and the Mojopac software. After the download, you can install it on your USB key in just few minutes. Mojopac works sufficiently silky on USB 2 connections but if you have time and are very patient you can use it with USB 1.1 ports. Last but not least, be sure to have administrator access privileges but some new versions, able to solve this problem, are in the plans.  On the other hand we want to focus your attention on Damn Small Linux which is 100% free and can be intalled on CD, DVD, USB devices or simply embedded on your Windows XP computer. After some tests we really preferred this Linux solution because is completely free and very intuitive to use after just a couple of hours. Recommended! AddThis mp3 link

How to share notes and images using thepiratebay.org satellite websites: PasteBay and bayimg

Today, in our Freeware Page, we added a brief review about two, multiplatform free services offered by th piratebay.org. The first one is PasteBay which allows you to quickly create, save and protect (in a basic way) your own notes when browsing on internet. PasteBay is very intuitive, quick to use and effective. The only “trouble” could be the simple http connection (instead of https) and the password you choose that could be weak if you do not choose it in a proper way. The second online service offered by thepiratebay.org is bayimg which allows you to store images for your websites in 140 different formats. Each image could be uploaded till 100MB so it is possible to save online also high resolution images. We have spent five days testing the features offered by these two websites and we have really not found any problem or bug. Recommended! AddThis mp3 link

How to synchronize Gmail, Google Docs and Google Calendar with your PCs: the cross-platform Google Gears

This week, on our Freeware Page , we have posted a brief review about Google Gears which allows you to keep, for example, your Gmail and Google Docs perfectly safe and synchronized with your computer. Google Gears does not add any new features if you think about what Thunderbird or Sunbird (now also known as Lightning) offer. On the other hand, Google Gears is very useful if we think it is very easy to setup and allows you to directly manage offline your email, documents and calendar without using other email applications. In the post we fastly show how to install Gears on your  browser and how to start to use it. When you activate Google Gears a pop-up windows will remind you that this particular feature is totally experimental and you use it on your own risk but for our personal experience Google Gears works very well, in particular we really appreciated its Flaky option which allows you to synchronize your datas without “burning” too much band. When you are on a public PC you can also click on – load with offline disabled – button (on the below right corner) soon after the login window. Interesting!! AddThis  mp3 link

How to easily check HD health using a cross platform software: GSmartControl 0.8.3

GSmartControl is a multiplatform (Windows, OS X, Linux) freeware drive health inspection tool which is very useful in all that case when you think something is not working perfectly on your HD. Today, in our Linux Page (in Spanish) we have posted a brief comment about this software which basically is the graphical user interface for smartct. The program is very intuitive and easy to use; it automatically detects all your internal HDs (with some external USB disks we had some problems because they were detected as unknown) and let you decide if you want to activate the SMART feature. This particular feature let you “predict certain kinds of failures with certain chance of success” so you have a better chance to avoid HD crashes and all the consequent data loss. If you prefer, clicking on the “Enable Auto Offline Data Collection” the HDs will be tested every four hours without impacting your CPU performance. I would like to focus your attention that GSmartControl is very well developed and it is possible to download many “personalized” versions for all the main Linux distributions, OS X and Windows. Last but not least, do not forget that SMART could predict some HD crashes but it is not 100% safe; for this reason we strongly recommend you to backup your PCs, at least every week! AddThis mp3 link

Google Chrome: how to neutralize the unique ID tracker and partially preserve your privacy

Today, in our Freeware Page we added a post about two useful freeware which are able to remove the ID tracker contained in this new browser. Using them you will able to defend your privacy a little more effectively your navigation when using Google applications. The first is Chrome Privacy Guard (CPG), a useful tool, whose icon you will click on to activate Google Chrome. When using CPG you have to remember not to run directly the Google Chrome icon. Moreover, this software contains also a command which allows you to disable the CPG option inside Google Chrome, so your browser will send again statistical data to Google. The second one is UnChrome, an Abelssoft creation which definitively remove the unique ID contained in Google Chrome. Last but not least, I want to focus your attention on the fact that these two freeware run only in Windows PCs but we hope that a MAC and Linux version will be released in the next months. Useful!! AddThis mp3 link

NoteCase: a simple multiplatform (Linux, Windows, OS X) freeware to preserve the privacy of your notes!

Today in our Freeware Page we added a brief post about NoteCase a powerful note editor for Linux. In our tests we installed NoteCase on a Ubuntu 8.04 with positive results. This free software allows you to write complex notes dividing them between “nodes” and, if you need, it is also possible to easily create child notes at each level. Moreover, using NoteCase you can insert  images and links to your text. Using NoteCase, for complex projects, you can decide to insert tag in each node and find them in just few clicks with the “Find” feature. Last, but not least, when you save your notes, you can decide to save them into an encrypted file. In few wordsNoteCase is one of the best freeware to manage notes using different OS without risks. Recommended! AddThis mp3 link