Freewaremakers are usually enthusiastic computer users who do not program for profit, but use their skills to improve things. Thanks to the free programs, computing becomes more fun and convenient! We discuss the best programs of the moment and new versions of “evergreens”.
Can’t get enough of our freeware tips? On computertotaal.nl/freeware we collect them all for you, handy in one overview.
Tip 01: Reading material
Suitable for: Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8.x, 10; macOS; Linux; iOS; Android
Although social media platforms are active in our country that regularly remove unpleasant opinions, there is no question of government censorship because, since Thorbecke, we have all agreed that statements can only be judged afterwards by a judge for admissibility. There are many countries where it is different and you cannot read everything you want on the internet. And because Elon Musks Starlink initiative – which is meant to bring the internet to all corners of the globe – is still in its infancy, there are still quite a few places without access to that sea of ​​information that we take for granted. Kiwix offers a solution for both problems. Kiwix is a program (also available as a plug-in for Chrome and Firefox) with which you can read so-called zim files. These are highly compressed offline versions of, among others, selections of Wikipedia articles and the book collection of Project Gutenberg. In addition to all this, you can often choose from many languages ​​and, to limit downloads, even versions without images, so that you can already own a complete English Wikipedia offline as a 35 GB file. In addition, there are some apps specialized by topic (especially for Android) that you can get started right away.
Tip 2: Nice weather
Suitable for: any system
KNMI is the weather institute of the Dutch state and therefore of all of us. But don’t think that means that you have easy access to all the data that is collected in De Bilt. It is true that you can easily view a long-term forecast, so that you are not dependent on what Gerrit Hiemstra has to say in the eight-hour journal, but it can all be so much better. The American counterpart NOAA, for example, once developed the GFS (Global Forecast System) prediction model, the data of which may be used free of charge. However, GFS is only one of the models used to predict the weather and several of them can be found at our eastern neighbors at www.wetterzentrale.de. Here you can view current weather data in detail and view the predictions of various systems (including that of the KNMI) side by side on themes such as expected rainfall, wind and the like. You can also easily access historical weather data from the Netherlands, so that you can request temperature and precipitation graphs from the many weather stations in our country. And although a German site, the rich content is simply available in Dutch.
Read the complete Wikipedia offline with Kiwix
Tip 03: Fire loose!
Suitable for: Windows 7, 8.x, 10
Although disks are increasingly becoming obsolete as storage media, we still cannot do without them completely. Maybe you still have a DVD player somewhere in the house or you can still play music from CD in the car. Or maybe you still have old photo collections on a disc and you want to make a security copy of it. All of these are legitimate goals for wanting to burn something, but it will not be enough for most people to purchase a burning program. Fortunately it is fine for free with Ashampoo Burning Studio 2018 Free.
This program offers the possibility to describe all types of CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray discs. You can, for example, fill CDs with data or burn them as an audio CD. The program also supports the now antique video CD and super video CD. With regard to DVDs and Blu-ray, you can easily burn movies from folders. They must of course have the structure that matches the format chosen; Burning Studio, for example, does not convert an mp4 file itself (but there are other free software for that).
Finally, with Burning Studio you can easily copy discs and the program offers the possibility to backup data over multiple discs. With the low prices of external hard drives and SSDs, the latter is also a dying phenomenon.
Tip 04: Webwise
Suitable for: Firefox
Although Google Chrome has become the most popular browser in recent years, there is still a lot to be said for the use of Firefox, if only because we do not give Google even more power and because Firefox unprecedented collection of add-ons. One of the gems in this collection is Flagfox.
As the name suggests, the add-on displays the flag of the country where the server is located on the page you visit. That seems of little importance, but there are of course countries that do not have such a good reputation in terms of cyber security, and then a warned person still counts for two. Much more useful than that flag are the many tools that you can then release on a site. For example, Geotool shows a more accurate location and WolframAlpha knows how to report all kinds of statistics about a site. Even more interesting are the statistics that Alexa knows. Here, for example, you can quickly find similar sites.
In addition to requesting general information, it is also possible to check the security of a site, for example via Virustotal. In short: a wealth of tools to thoroughly examine every site you visit.
Tip 05: Get out!
Suitable for: Windows 7, 8.x, 10
Windows is not called ‘operating system’ for nothing. It is almost only a software layer that allows interaction between the hardware and the user. Of course Windows contains some applications, but if it stopped there, nobody would own a PC. After all, it really comes into its own with tons of third-party programs (or from Microsoft, of course). But yes, sometimes you want to get rid of everything you put on it and of course Windows offers a part for removing programs. Unfortunately that is very thin and so it can happen that a mess is left behind. On the other hand, it is conceivable that you accidentally remove the uninstaller of an application, so that Windows can no longer remove it in the regular way. The specialized removers that belong to an application can also be left behind while the mother program is already deleted. All situations where heavier guns are needed than what Windows offers. We find that gun in the sublime Bulk Crap Uninstaller, BCU for short, which shows much more software than Windows and which after removing a program offers the opportunity to search for left-over remains.
Tip 06: Search sample
Suitable for: Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8.x, 10
If you have ever searched a large folder of files from the Explorer’s search box, you know that you can safely go and get coffee and drink the cup and wash the dishes before the result is there, if the assignment has already been completed successfully. Stuckers and poorly executed searches are also not unusual. Fortunately, there are alternatives to search for files, whether or not by indexing your disks in advance.
Everything is a program that indeed needs to be pre-indexed before you can start searching, but that happens frighteningly fast. Everything on our test PC indexes around 5 TB of files and folders in seconds; it also shows it as an alphabetically sorted list that you can export if you wish. You can then release all kinds of advanced searches on this list. In addition to the usual wildcard search, Everything can find certain types of files, such as audio. You can define new categories and adjust existing ones yourself. And that is just one of the many possibilities.
