There are thousands of useful programs readily available for download over the internet and often the person who wrote the software is more than happy to make it available free of charge.
There are several sites that specialise in bringing together collections of these programs, known as freeware.
CFI Software offers a great little program called ShellToys, which is actually a collection of 19 tools and utilities that add handy new features to Windows. You can use it to add new items to the send-to menu, flip through image thumbnails, change file extensions, view folder contents without opening them first, mask lists by file type, print folder contents, set file attributes and permanently delete files.
Yes, all the tasks can be done in other ways but with this program all you need to do is right click.
And the best part is, it’s free.
Another useful program is Clonespy. This little beast will save hard drive space by detecting and removing duplicate files.
There are plenty of other sites offering software as well but it’s worth noting that not all software available on the net is meant to be freely available.
With all the publicity about software piracy and of course the worries about computer virii and worms it pays to be reasonably cautious and to only download software from reputable sites.
While on the topic of software piracy, probably the most interesting and under-reported piece of news relating to the geek world I’ve found lately is that the company that coined the term software piracy has been convicted of just that.
Yes, last year a French court found Microsoft guilty of illegally including another company’s proprietary source code in SoftImage 3D.