Free Commercial Application Roundup
At the beginning of each month, when the new pc magazines are published, a flood of free commercial application posts hits the blogosphere. It is practically impossible to avoid these articles but relatively cumbersome to keep track of them. I decided to roundup all the offers of this month so that you can make a decision right here and download and install the applications that you want.
The way to obtain a free commercial version of the applications listed below is normally always the same. You visit a promo page and enter a name and email address in a form. The serial number, or license, will be mailed to that email address. You then need to download the software and register the application with the license key that was send to your email address.
I tried to create the list as simple as possible. You find the name of the product and two links to the pages where you can obtain the license and download the software. I also included a short description taken from the developers homepage: The applications that are given away for free are usually older versions and not the latest ones.
Ashampoo Magical Defrag 1.2:
License | Download
iolo AntiVirus:
iolo AntiVirusâ„¢ keeps you safe by using advanced real-time technology that provides continuous maximum protection and automatically repels viruses before they can enter your computer.
License | Download
Iolo System Mechanic 6:
System Mechanic automatically repairs errors and fragmentation, cleans out clutter, and tunes up your PC -- so that it runs smoothly, reliably, and up to 300% faster!
License | Download
O&O Defrag V4 Professional:
License | Download
O&O DiskImage 2 Special Edition:
With your free O&O DiskImage Special Edition license you can immediately benefit from significant security through a backup of your data. And all this at absolutely no cost!
License | Download
PC Tools Desktop Maestro 2.0:
Desktop Maestro is an all-in-one application that integrates registry cleaning, system monitoring and privacy cleaning. It combines the features of our award winning products, Registry Mechanic and Privacy Guardian to ensure that you have the range of tools at your fingertips to ensure optimal system performance, stability and user privacy.
License | Download
PC Tools File Recover:
File Recover allows you to recover critically important documents, or other files, which have been lost by accidental deletion. These files may be lost by emptying the Recycle Bin, or using other deletion actions that bypass the Recycle Bin altogether. Such actions include Windows® Shift-Delete, command line deletion, deleting excessively large files or using applications that delete files without the Recycle Bin.
License | Download
Update: Please note that these offers have expired by now, and that you can't get a free license for them anymore. We have removed the links pointing to the developer sites as there is no use in keeping them attached to the article.
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Yeah, one of these defraggers which I recognize is really ancient, like a poster above mentioned. Defrag technology has moved on quite a bit since the sizes of both drives and files have exploded in the last couple of years.
Obsolete 4 or 5 year old defraggers will not work with Vista, and more importantly they will still have to be run manually or scheduled even on XP. I have 1.4 TB of drives in my photoediting rig, and I’d guess that the old manual defraggers would take their own sweet time, rendering the system unusable for long periods. That’s why I use an intelligent background auto defragger (yes, paid for, but totally worth it) on that rig.
Now, if somebody started giving away (legally!) freely some of the newer automatic defragmenters, I’d be the first to sign up, ads or no ads, lol.
<3 Ashampoo Defrag, been using it for long and have been very satisfied with it. I actually use numerous apps from Ashampoo since they have a good approach to their customers by often offering older versions of their apps for free etc. Their apps usually aren’t high-end sort of software but are still worth using. Thanks for the nice list.
I think the old O&O Defrag v4 is still much better than Windows defrags. I don’t know about the other stuff.
good job. many thanks from Greece
It’s not older… It’s more like ancient versions. :) I think system mechanic 6 was around late win98 times. I can’t even remember OO defrag v4… Current is v10.
It’s mostly dumb advertising (these magical “we are giving you this fo FREE” words) and such giveaways are of very little use (they are usually inferior even to modern freeware ones).
Thanks for the list. Very useful!!