Author Scott Dunn believes that the “best freeware” lists published by Web sites and magazines frequently trumpet dozens of programs, but the results reflect the subjective opinions of just one or two testers. Thus, to find out the best of the lot, he compared roundups of “great” freeware conducted recently by four reputable publications to find the programs that were endorsed by at least three of the reviews. And the result is an awesome list of the Best Windows Freeware.

Here are the list;

1. Avira AntiVir Personal: Good malware detection rates and its ability to take on rootkit viruses makes it an ideal Free Personal Anti-virus solution. However, it does not scan incoming e-mail though it can scan it once the attachments are saved. It does detects malware if you open an infected e-mail.
2. Comodo Firewall Pro: Comodo comes with a long whitelist of safe sites, which you can add to as you surf and is regarded to be better than the firewalls built into Windows XP or Vista. Though a little complicated for novice users, this is regarded as one tough and robust software.
3. TrueCrypt: TrueCrypt is an open-source program and can create encrypted files that appear as disk drives. It also lets you encrypt an entire drive (such as a USB flash drive), a drive partition, and — for extra safety — hidden drive volumes.
4. CCleaner: This software scrubs your system by removing temp files, cookies, browsing history, recent-document lists, log files in the Recycle Bin, and a lot of other digital detritus. The utility can also be used to uninstall applications and scan for orphaned and unused Registry entries.
5. Lightning for Thunderbird: Lightning is a plug-in from Mozilla that combines Sunbird calendar program with Thunderbird’s e-mail features.
6. Foxit Reader: A much faster alternative to Adobe PDF Reader, and has more options for viewing, printing, and annotating PDFs. You can even use Foxit to fill out PDF forms.
7. Audacity: An open-source audio editor that supports .mp3, .wav, and other popular audio formats.
8. Wavosaur: A single executable file, making it easier to run from a USB drive, Wavosaur is another free audio-editing software. Note that you may need to download the free Lame Encoder .dll file to allow the program to export to the .mp3 format.
9. Pidgin: One client to rule all Instant Messaging protocols — AIM, Yahoo! Messenger, Windows Live Messenger, or another messaging network. This open-source IM client (formerly called “Gaim”) lets you communicate with users of all the above and a dozen other chat networks.

Well, Mac OS X Leopard users have enjoyed the awesome Time Machine feature that does pretty much the same and now Windows users got to enjoy a pretty similar feature with DocShield. This is utility software that you can setup once and let it do the hard work of versioning and backing up your files. The Freeware Genius Author have highly recommended this software for Windows users. DocShield is compatible right from Windows 98 to ME, to NT to Windows 2000, XP and Vista. It requires .NET Framework 2.0.

Backup is in fact an irritating habit which majority of Computer user tend to overlook unless there is an un-obstructive way to do it. Mac user’s issue was solved in a fantastic way by Apple through Time Machine (Time Capsule can be used for the storage device but is not mandatory). Time Machine is a free utility that comes with Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5.x).

DocShield for Windows, free for personal use (commercial usage needs a license), is a very matured utility that just runs in the background and automate your backup process. It features functions such as archive management, on-the-fly compression, and FTP backup.

Here are some of the notable points as described at Freeware Genius;

• Well designed User Interface.
• File monitoring of local files, files on the network, or files on an FTP server.
• Setup activity monitoring at 5 minutes interval (default) or your own settings in any number of seconds, minutes or hours.
• Easily browse the archives.
• Smart Archive Management to avoid backup archives growing too large and out of control by allowing the user to control the size of the backups.
• Ability to remotely FTP your archives.
• DocShield USB utility will allow you to carry your archives on a USB Drive.
• Less resource consumption makes DocShield ideally un-noticeable in the background.

Good piece of Windows utility worth a try.

Via: Google System Blog

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