Stardock: Object Dock (4/5) Get the Apple-alike navigation bar on yourt PC. If Elvis could come on stage as his own look alike, he would call himself Stardock. Rolling icons growing tall & small. Easy navigation. But uses resources. So,... only a 4/5 quote.

Alt-Tab Thingy (5/5) Well,... you could swich to Apple OS X. But if you really want to stick to Windows XP, perhaps use Alt-Tab Thingy to navigate through you open programs. Thingy previews using the alt-tab keys. Great little stable tool.

sTabLauncher (5/5) This is what I use for navigation on my PC’s today in combination with Alt-Tab Thingy. The alternative for icon & links organisation on the desktop. Forget Mac alikes. Some critisize sTabLauncher because it looks and feels simple,... as it should. It does the job better than any tool and uses little resources. It helped cleaning up my icon-overcrowded double desktop. Yes,... it can handle a double monitor.

Samurize (4/5) A desktop enhancement tool (hosted by Stardock) with hundreds of plugins.

Avedesk (4/5)
Installs Apple-like desklets like a clock, the time and more. Read More.

Desktop X (4/5) helps you customize your Windows Desktop.

Wincustomize.com (4/5) Setup the looks of your windows the way you like it.

Mozilla Firefox (5/5)
The standard in open source webbrowsing.
With a lot++ of extra features for users and webdeveloppers*. (* custom installation).
Get Mozilla Add-ons.

+ Texturizer (4.5/5) Firefox Extensions & help.

+ Tune your Mozilla browser with Firetune (5/5) from Total Idea.
This tool does a lot more with Firefox than speed it up... Firetuning on the rocks!!!

And get security related advice while surfing with Firefox with Siteadvisor. (5/5)

Flock (testing)
Based on Firefox. Build by former Mozilla software developpers. Read RSS, write a blog, shore pictures,.. and more.

Avant Browser (4/5)
Internet Explorer shell, supports RoboForm, Flash filter, pop-up stopper, multi window browsing, full screen mode, records cleaner, skins, translations,...
Other IE shells are:
 Crazy Browser (4/5)
 MyIE2 Browser (4/5)

Opera Software (4.5/5) offers a brilliant free browser that is faster & more stable than IE. The free version is adware. I recommend this as a second browser. In case you need to go to Microsoft to download IE again after corruption ;-)

WebReaper (5/5) (Website ripper)
Rips an entire website to your HD for off line browsing. Supports flash, drag and drop, filters, explorer style interface.

HT Tracker (4,5/5)
Another great Website Ripper that will allow you to read a website offline.

For safe surfing, go to other pages: Antivirus & firewall, anti-spyware, anti-spam, registry & system cleaner.

Netscape (AOL) (4.5/5)
Now a Mozilla clone... once it was the other way around ;-) They offer tabbed browsing but also a whitelist and a blacklist of sites that push spyware. Once you enter a whitelisted site, it will use the Internet Explorer engine.

AbiWord (4/5)
Open source text editor with spelling control, standard .abw extention but exportable to doc. Imports trf and simple doc files. Has plug-ins to support wpf (Wordperfect) files.

ACF Text editor (4/5)
For ‘Alt Comp Freeware’ freaks a small and simple plain text editor.

Avery (Brochure maker) (4/5)
<MightyKitten>You cannot add your own label definitions to it but if you use Avery compatible labels, knock yourself out. </MightyKitten><Poko>They have many free templates from which you can make a brochure among other things </Poko>

Budgie (Office) (4/5)
Low resources office packet

Charts & plots (Excel alike) (4/5)
TeeChart’s powerful Excel competitor.

Easy Noter (PIM) (4.5/5)
PIM looks like real agenda

Encrypto Deluxe (4/5)
Encrypt multiply files at once

Essential Pim (4.5/5)
Personal Information Manager. Stand alone. Synchronizes with Pocket PC, Google agenda and Apple iCalc. Also available for Memory stick. Comes in a freeware & payware version.

Flow Charts (TeeTree) (4.5/5)
Add animation, collapse and expand nodes, import trees from dbases.

Free Agent (news) (5/5)
An honest news reader. Trialware scales down to free version after 30 days.

HTML Calendar Generator (4.5/5)
from www.dbhsoftware.com
With built in FPT client. Screenshot.

I Carbon (copy) (4.5/5)
Transform your scanner into a copy machine. Runs on all twain compatible scanners.

Jellybean dictionary (dbase)
Linked to server dbase. (4/5)

KeyNote (pim) (4/5)
PIM looks like word processor

Mozilla Thunderbird (Mailclient) (5/5)
If you allready use Mozilla Firefox (see above) as a browser (what you should).
It has full potential.

Open Office (5/5) if no MS office user.
Does it all for free - well known.

Restoration (undelete) (4/5)
File undelete utility. Scan for files that may be recovered after deletion. Wipe files beyond simple recovery. FAT, NTSF & camera card compatible.

Shirusu Pad (5/5)
Awesome mix of a post-it and a notepad. Transparent on your screen,... for quick notes during work. Better that a post-it. Right click on the tray icon, it’s fully customizable. A must have imho.

Stickies (4.5/5)
Is a simple alternative or supplement for Shirusu Pad. These are real post-its on your screen. It’s small and stand alone.

Time Stamp (clock) (4/5)
Track invested time in project
I think i will not install this...

Tkexe Kalendar (4.5/5)
This German software comes in many languages. It lets you create kalendars with your pictures. As good as it gets. Not the easiest to handle, but you can shape your kalendar. It knows the national hollidays in many countries.

Word Web (dictionary) (4.5/5)
Free English thesaurus and dictionary.

Zip Genius (5/5)
Zip, unzip more than 20 compressed formats. Darg and drop support. 5 compression levels. Integration in Windows Explorer. <Bob> Does also many things that are unrelated to archiving. It is big, complex and a really good archiver. </Bob>
Other nice (up-)zippers:
 zipcentral.iscool.net (Zip Central) (4.5/5)
 izsoft.dir.bg/izarc.htm (Izarc) (4/5)

Futuris Imager (4/5)
Includes printing & scanning from imager, editing filters, slideshow & screen capture.

IrfanVieuw (5/5)
A powerful lightweight player
With a lot of plug-ins.

Koolplaya (4/5)
Does all MS Media Player does

Cute pdf (4/5)
Well known. Does a fairly good job.

Open Office (5/5)
Has an integrated pdf exporter. Remind that you need to install the Office suite. The pdf-convertor is not stand-alone.

Primo pdf (4/5)
Print to pdf from any application

PDF Recreator (5/5)
Friendly pdf creator. If you only need a tool to transform a document into PDF, this is it.

Sourceforge PDF creator (5/5)
Open source alternative for Windows application using windows printer.
<S.Suikkanen>It is possible to print from application with PostScript -printer driver to .ps -PostScript file and then open it to GSview / AFPL Ghostscript combination, which enables to use more refined optimizations for resulting PDF file creation. The settings can be selected from GSview menu, or by editing settings files. The AFPL Ghostscript is more advanced than GNU Ghostcript, which some packaged solutions have mostly used as a part of the package. </S.Suikkanen>
www.ghostscript.com
www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost

Sumatra PDF (4,5/5)
This is a spartan PDF reader thats is no more than a single exe file. So it’s perfect for portable use like on a USB stuck.

 

db Power Amp (5/5)
<website> Rip digitally sound from Audio CDs and store in a multitude of formats. Convert from one format to another, just about every audio type is supported. </website>

CD Burner XP Pro (4/5)
Burn CD’s & DVD’s

CD Doctor (4/5)
Burn audio from MP3 & WAV

CD n GO (4/5)
Burn, compress & rip audio

DB Power Amp (4/5)
(Scores (5/5) as audio convertor)

DeepBurner Free (4/5)
(Pro version = payware)
creates and burns all types of bootable data CDs and DVDs, not video or photo cd’s. The free version can neither copy disk-to-disk.

Jet Audio (4/5)
Burn & Rip audio

IBeat (4/5)
8 track loop generator

Quartz audiomaster (4/5)
4 track record, edit, mix.

MP3Tag (4.5/5)
Finds mp3 and allows tag editing

geocities.com/ian_l_williams (5/5)
Check MP3 files for corruptions with MP3 Checker. You can check up to 800 MP3 files in one single movement and delete the corruptes files. No installation required, only open the zip-archive :

<Cris - Canada wrote> Check out http://www.mediamonkey.com (4/5)
Its a cool library tool for mp3s and even has an automatic audio adjustment to keep mp3s playing at the same volume. </Chris>

... about streaming music

3D Canvas from Amabilis (4/5)
Real-time 3D modeling and animation tool that incorporates an intuitive drag-and-drop approach.

ArtRage (4/5)
Pain on virtual canvas as if you were Picasso or Breughel. Exportable to jpeg & bmp.

Blender (4/5)
Open source 3D modelling, animation, rendering & playback.

Exposed (Red Dragon) (4/5)
Display forgotten internet images. Find those long forgotten pictures.

Gimp (4.5/5)
Full photo editing software.

IncScape (4/5)
Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, Freehand, CorelDraw, or Xara X using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format.

JAlbum (4/5) Web Album generator,...
Hint:
Use this setup for watermarking:
4th tabpage (advanced)
User defined variables:
Filter 1 class=WatermarkFilter strengthPercent=50 text=" © myname"
color=#aaffaa face="Verdana" style=bold size=10 antialias=true valign=bottom
margin=5 closeups

Jpeg cleaner (4.5/5)
Removes all additional date from a jpeg that is not picture related.

Jpegcrop (4/5)
Brilliant but Spartan. You’ll have to make a map and a link yourself to this fully stand-alone prog. All it does is allow to cut out jpeg images without any loss of quality... hot technology for free.

Oriens (4/5)
image enhancer.

Paint.NET.(5/5)
The Washington State University gave Microsoft a helping hand in developping the old Paint software. Consider it an upgrade of your Windows.

Pixia (4/5)
Japanese painting & retouch image software. English version available. Supports masks, layers, and more... read more.

Photofiltre.com (4/5)
A complete immage retouching programm with loads of interesting plug-ins. Great tool for webmasters.

PrintScreen (screen capture) (5/5)
A perfect screen capture utility. Define a hotkey. (1 Mb HD-space for full install)

Rahmanlmanager (4.5/5)
A fully blown immage processor end minipulator with layer support, filters, effects, tools, optimizers, aso... A free replacement for complex and expensive editors like Photoshop, Corel,...

Safe MailTo from XDenser (5/5)
allows you to create an immage with adaptable disruption to avoid spybots from finding your sensible information when you place it online. Ideal for mail but also for phone numbers and addresses.

XN Vieuw (4/5)
image convertor.

GenesisII free
From www.geomantics.com

Terragen
From Planetside

Bryce (= Payware - 30 days trial.) <MightyKitten> Once magazinware. The last known owner of the software is Corel. but they don't do any developing for it anymore. </MightyKitten>

Amabilis Canvas (4/5)
basic 3d modeling

More 3D free stuff:
www.3dcafe.com (4/5)

Powerbullet (4/5)
works like a word editor

Avid Free DV (4/5)
Basic free version of a payware professional tool.

Camstudio (4/5)
Screen registration into AVI

DVD Shrink (5/5)
DVD back-up & compression. Some commercial DVDs are now protected against this kinda back-up software. To burn your back-up, it needs Nero (payware).

SSMM (4/5)
create AVI FROM JPEG 1 BMP

VCDEasy (4.5/5)
Transfer picture, video, auto to dvd

Winmorph (4/5)
Morph images into another

Zwei Stein (4/5)
Video compositing & editing

NetStumbler (4.5/5)
Track down any wireless network in your environment. Get all hardware details. Test the speed & signal strenght.

The Open CD
The opensource and freeware programs directly on your CD for distribution. They also ship CD’s for a small fee.
 

Colibri is a performant alt-tab search tool to find any program on your PC. Launch bookmarks, play your MP3, integrates in iTunes, WinAmp, Mozilla and a dousaine others. Colibri is kinda like the functionality of Quicksilver for Apple.

Launchy is another alt-tab start menu replacement that runs on XP-up only, kinda based on Quicksilver. It’s open source.

Pablo Commander (5/5)
For those - like Nondisputandum - who crave for Norton Commanders dual pane vieuw under a Win 3.xx Explorer look alike shell for Windows XP that only weights 0,3 Meg... this is it. A stand alone exe file, stable a rock,... looks good,... feels good,... works good. A must have! Also has build in FTP transfer. Check also some other soft from the developer Pablo Vandermeer.

Xplorer²
Feels like the Windows explorer but a lot more powerfull.
.

Microsoft’s Baseline Security Analyzer (5/5)
Check what needs to be updated.
I trust this piece of software. Don’t worry,... it was developed by non MS engeneers www.shavlik.com ;-)

More security information:
Read the Basic Advice page.

Aida32 (4.5/5)
The very best diagnosis tool that stopped it’s development... a pity!
Free alternative are:
www.lavalys.com (4.5/5) (Home edition)
www.freshdiagnose.com (4.5/5)

Emsa Bandwidth Monitor (testing)
Emsa Bandwidth Monitor allows monitoring your inernet connection speed, total traffic, average download/upload speed, etc. It is very simple to use, runs as system tray icon and shows a small, transparent-able, repositionable window that you can place on your desktop. It also allow viewing extended Net adapter interface settings, like MAC address, speed, etc. It allows viewing traffic data per interface or as a whole.

Belarc (4.5/5)
Another systemdiagnosis, MS hotfixes,... shows in browser window.

Bigfix (4.5/5)
Keep your system updated !!!
Finds software that needs to be updated & gives the download url. Old but gold soft!

CatMouse (5/5)
This superb little thing ads a mouse utility that allows you to scroll the window directly beneath the mouse cursor,... not the active window. A must have for anyone with multiple monitors of lots of active windows.

Chipset Identification (Intel) (4.5/5)
See what processor you have,... if it is overclocked.

Clone Maxx (4/5)
Copy your HD