There are whole communities for open source software. These are legally created programs that have been designed by programmers who are tired of the strangle hold certain industry giants have on the market. They are called “open source” because the source code is transparent and can be redesigned by anyone who wants to improve or alter the program. However, if you aren’t a programmer, this isn’t necessary. The programs are constantly being improved. Linux is one such site and program. Linux is a computing platform that replaces Windows. Many consider it to be easier to use than Windows, less cumbersome and of course, it is free.

There are also websites that provide feedback and links to various types of free software. One such site is PC-WORLD. If you navigate to their site and click on “downloads” they have categories like; utilities, anti-virus and security, office, etc. If you click on one of these links you will get a whole list of screened software. Some of the software is for sale, some is “shareware” and some is free. Most of the free programs are just as good as the programs for sale. You should stay away from “shareware” as most of it requires you to sign up for a website or allow tracking cookies to be placed on your computer. Compromising your security isn’t necessary. The free software is usually well written, user friendly and often takes far less of your computers thinking power to operate. For example, there is a search utility called “Agent Ransack”. It is completely free, is tiny compared to Microsoft’s search feature yet does a MUCH better job at quickly searching your computer.

Of course there are the free software programs that are becoming quite famous and are readily available. Internet browsers are the most common because they can easily pay for their development by selling advertising. Mozilla’s Firefox is a very popular free browser. Google Chrome is another. There is a full office suite called Open Office that is becoming more common that replaces Microsoft Office while still being compatible. Open Office provides word processing, a spreadsheet program compatible with Excel, basically everything offered by Microsoft office but it is completely free.

What you get from commercial software is a look. Commercially sold software is almost always bloated and saps computing power because it has a very sharp color scheme and looks really slick. If you aren’t hung up on looks, free software performs as well or often better. And with the more popular free software like Firefox, their graphics are becoming higher and higher quality. One word of caution: When searching for free software, go directly to the download site. Don’t download from the many “free software” sites that offer pages of links. You often have to compromise your privacy or security to use these sites. Find the name of the software then go directly to their site to download directly from the developers. And no matter what, always scan you new software with an anti-virus program before opening and installing it.

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When you subscribe to a mailing list, you generally have the option of receiving every individual message or receiving a daily digest. However, if you need to read a few, this can still clog up your inbox.

Whilst you could read web-based archives, my favourite option is reading them though Gmane – an NNTP/mailing list gateway.

Gmane allows you to read newsgroups through a USENET newsreader (basic newsgroup facility is built into software like Thunderbird . I find this a more manageable way to read mailing lists, because the client threads them for me.

Gmane works both ways: it allows you to post to newsgroups through USENET too. All it does is the first time you try to post to a mailing list, it sends you a verification email to confirm it is indeed you.

Gmane also allows you to read newsgroups through RSS, so you could use a feed reader (online or desktop)!

There are currently over 10,000 mailing lists accessible through Gmane, ranging from the Wikipedia mailing lists to a blackjack group! To find groups, browse their website or browse their newsserver.

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The following software programs are available as special editions:

• Paragon Total Defrag 2009 Special Edition
• Paragon Rescue Kit 9.0 Express
• Paragon Partition Manager 9.0 Special Edition
• Paragon Drive Copy 9 Special Edition
• Paragon Drive Backup 9.0 Personal
• Paragon Hard Disk Manager 8.5 Special Edition

Just follow the links. They lead to registration websites that ask the visitor to enter a few basic information including the name, email and country. Paragon will send an email to the email account containing the product key and serial number needed to activate the software program on a local computer system. The very same email contains a link to the user profile page at the Paragon website from where the software program can be downloaded.

Update:

Download links for programs that are not listed under My Downloads in the Paragon profile.

Drive Backup 9.0
Partition Manager 9.0
Drive Copy 9
Hard Disk Manager 8.5

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BTF Sniffer is at its core a software to display usage traces left by a user on a computer system. Unlike other tools of its kind it displays the traces that it found in its interface. The interface itself is divided into two panes: The left pane displays various types of traces, for instance Microsoft Windows, Internet and Communication or Security and Control. The right pane will display all traces of the specified category. It is important to note that traces will only be displayed for subcategories (that is always the last entry in the tree structure).

What makes BTF Sniffer special are the manipulation options. Single entries can be executed, copied, sorted, exported or deleted by right-clicking an entry. It can currently discover more than 1270 traces left by 370 software programs. Besides the obvious Microsoft Windows traces it can for example detect traces from Sysinternal software, ftp applications, web browsers and document viewers.

The software is portable which means it can be downloaded and run after unpacking it to the computer system. The major problem that English users could run into are the category descriptions but it is usually possible to identify what a category does by looking at the traces in the right pane.

Two functions need explaining. A click on Bearbeiten (Edit) in the top menu will reveal options to clear all categories (Alle Listen löschen) or only selected categories (Ausgewählte Listen Löschen). Reports can be created by clicking on Datei (File) in the top menu and selecting Vollständigen Report erstellen (Export all items in a text document) or Report erstellen (Auswahl) which means to export only the selected items.

Single traces can be manipulated and exported with a right-click. There are additional features but they are not necessary to run the program. If you have any questions about usage let us know and we provide the answers.

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We have already covered two of the applications and would like to recommend a few more that might be interesting to try out. Comparer is a file comparison tool that can compare (among other things) all file properties. File Replicator is another interesting program. It can search for a certain file in a selected folder and replace that file with another one. Think of updating files that reside in multiple locations on the computer’s hard drive.

I do not want to spoil the fun of exploring all those new programs. What you find there is a wide variety of software programs from Notepad++ plugins to cryptographic applications and a dog breeding records keeper. It is definitely worth a visit; And who knows, maybe you find the program there that you have been searching for all of your life.

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Many well known and respected companies have already agreed to provide us with free software products that we could hand out to lucky readers. I do not want to spoil the fun just yet and announce which products we are going to offer but you can be sure that they have been selected because they are excellent.

A new post with additional details will be posted on December 1 when the Ghacks Christmas Giveaway officially starts. It will include all rules and information needed to grab a few nice software packages. Stay tuned. We are counting on you to spread the word of the giveaway.

We are still in the talks with several software developers and would like to use this article to listen to you. Do you have a software company in mind that would make a good fit for the Ghacks Christmas Giveway? We cannot guarantee anything but we might contact the company to see if they would donate a few software packages. Let us know in the comments.

All posts related to the Giveaway will be tagged as “ghacks christmas giveaway” which should make it easy for anyone to stay up to date with the latest posts.

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