30+ More Great Freeware Programs That [many] People Don’t Know About - But Should

The previous post, Top 10 Freeware Software Nobody Knows About - But Should, has gotten a lot of press - especially from Digg and Reddit. This brought great comments regarding more recommendations for freeware software. Here is a collection of the software that was recommended:

7Zip
7-Zip is a file archiver with a high compression ratio.

Anim8or
Anim8or is a 3D computer animation program that is designed to allow straightforward creation of animations. You interactively create and edit objects, figures, and scenes directly on the computers screen. The basic interface is similar to most 3D animation and CAD programs, as shown in the following screen shot

AutoIt
AutoIt v3 is a freeware BASIC-like scripting language designed for automating the Windows GUI and general scripting. It uses a combination of simulated keystrokes, mouse movement and window/control manipulation in order to automate tasks in a way not possible or reliable with other languages (e.g. VBScript and SendKeys). AutoIt is also very small, self-contained and will run on all versions of Windows out-of-the-box with no annoying “runtimes” required!

Crimson Editor
Text editor

Colibri
Colibri combines the raw power of the command line with the intuitive nature of a modern graphical user interface to define a revolutionary new way of managing your computer.

CPU-Z
CPU-Z is a freeware that gathers information on some of the main devices of your system.

doPDF
doPDF is a free PDF converter for both personal and commercial use. Using doPDF you can create searchable PDF files by selecting the “Print” command from virtually any application. With one click you can convert your Microsoft Excel, Word or PowerPoint documents or your emails and favorite web sites to PDF files.

DYNAMIC 3i Free Edition
A full ERP and MRP solution that can run any business.

FastStone Image Viewer
An image browser, converter and editor that supports all major graphic formats including BMP, JPEG, JPEG 2000, GIF, PNG, PCX, TIFF, WMF, ICO and TGA. It has a nice array of features such as image viewing, management, comparison, red-eye removal, emailing, resizing, cropping, color adjustments, musical slideshow and much more.

FreeMind
FreeMind is a premier free mind-mapping (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_map) software written in Java. The recent development has hopefully turned it into high productivity tool. We are proud that the operation and navigation of FreeMind is faster than that of MindManager because of one-click “fold / unfold” and “follow link” operations.

Gadwin Printscreen
Gadwin PrintScreen is an easy to use utility that allows you to capture any portion of the screen, save it to a file, copy it to Windows clipboard, print it or e-mail it to a recipient of your choice.

Google SketchUp
3D modeling software tool that’s easy to learn, simple to use, and lets you place your models in Google Earth. Are you remodeling a kitchen, landscaping your back yard or adding a deck to your home? Google SketchUp makes it faster, easier and a lot more fun. From simple to complex, from conceptual to realistic, Google SketchUp helps you see your vision before you build it.

GParted
GParted is an industrial-strength package for creating, destroying, resizing, moving, checking and copying partitions, and the filesystems on them. This is useful for creating space for new operating systems, reorganizing disk usage, copying data residing on hard disks and mirroring one partition with another (disk imaging).
It comes as a bootable CD so it is OS independent.

InfraRecorder
InfraRecorder is a free CD/DVD burning solution for Microsoft Windows. It offers a wide range of powerful features; all through an easy to use application interface and Windows Explorer integration.

Inkscape
Inkscape is an Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, Freehand, CorelDraw, or Xara X using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format.

jEdit
Text editor

Launchy
Launchy is a free windows utility designed to help you forget about your start menu, the icons on your desktop, and even your file manager.
Launchy indexes the programs in your start menu and can launch your documents, project files, folders, and bookmarks with just a few keystrokes!

MWSnap
MWSnap is a small yet powerful Windows program for snapping (capturing) images from selected parts of the screen.

Notepad2
Text editor

Notepad++
Text editor

Paint.NET
Paint.NET is free image and photo editing software for computers that run Windows. It features an intuitive and innovative user interface with support for layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools.

Process Explorer
Ever wondered which program has a particular file or directory open? Now you can find out. Process Explorer shows you information about which handles and DLLs processes have opened or loaded.

Pspad
Text Editor

RealVNC
RealVNC provides remote control software which lets you see and interact with desktop applications across the network. The software has a widespread user base from individuals to the largest multi-national companies. The company was founded by the original developers of VNC to promote, enhance and commercialize VNC.

SequoiaView
Standard treemaps often lead to thin rectangles. We have developed a new method to display files : Squarified treemaps. The screen is subdivided such that rectangles approach squares as closely as possible. The screenshot gives an example.

SIW
SIW is an advanced System Information for Windows tool that gathers detailed information about your system properties and settings and displays it in an extremely comprehensible manner.

SlickRun
SlickRun is a free floating command line utility for Windows. SlickRun gives you almost instant access to any program or website. SlickRun allows you to create command aliases (known as MagicWords), so C:\Program Files\Outlook Express\msimn.exe becomes MAIL.

Sumatra PDF
Sumatra PDF is a slim, free, open-source PDF viewer for Windows.

Transfz
Transfz is an integrated search agent, it allows the user to launch online searches from any document or application on both the desktop and the web.
The search takes place by simply selecting the bit of text that one would like search for and pressing the default hotkey (ctrl+d). This brings up the Global Menu which behaves like any standard windows context menu except for the fact that it can be called up anywhere and lets the user pass the selected text automatically on to his favorite searchengine (or dictionary, thesaurus, or any other online encyclopedia or wiki).

TUGZip
TUGZip is a powerful award-winning freeware archiving utility for Windows that provides support for a wide range of compressed, encoded and disc-image files, as well as very powerful features; all through an easy to use application interface and Windows Explorer integration.

VIM
Text editor

Win-Get
win-get is an automated install system and software repository for Microsoft Windows written in pascal (for the command line client) and php for the online repository. The ideas for its creation come from apt-get and other related tools for the *nix platforms.

Xnview
XnView is a utility for viewing and converting
graphic files.

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