Windows utilites

Author: Frank | Category: other

These are some Windows freeware utilities I use,  they are not specifically privacy related, but help to keep the computer in order and secure.

Free Antivirus

-Avira: Anti-Virus and Malware detection software. Protection for your entire network, including desktop PCs, file servers, proxy servers, email servers and mobile end devices.

-Avast: Antivirus software providing desktop security and data protection. avast! detects and removes all forms of malware, including spyware, rootkits and trojans.

- ThreatFire: Not specifically an antivirus, but a complement. ThreatFire uses heuristic protection and boosts your traditional antivirus software detection rate. Specially indicated to catch zedo day threats.

Free Firewall

- Comodo Firewall: Defense+ proactively protects your critical operating system files, registry entries and personal data from internal attacks by root-kits, key-loggers, Trojans and other malware.

- PC Tools Firewall Plus Free Edition:  From the primary interface to the packet content logs, simplicity is the key to PC Tools Firewall Plus Free Edition. This application makes it easy to set filtering rules, provided you know what you’re doing

Free Windows Defragmenter

-  MyDefrag: Fast, low overhead, with many optimization strategies, can handle floppies, USB disks, memory sticks, and anything else that looks like a disk to Windows. Included are a set of easy to use scripts for end users, a scripting engine for demanding users, a screensaver, and a combined Windows plus command line version.

-Smart Defrag: It will defragment your computer and optimize disk performance working automatically and quietly in the background on your PC. (It will ask you to install a toolbar during installation process, uncheck box to reject it)

Free Encryption Software

-GPG4Win: Gpg4win is a installer package for Windows with computer programs and handbooks for EMail and file encryption. Both relevant cryptography standards are supported, OpenPGP and S/MIME.

-AXCrypt: Encryption software for single files with AES-128 file encryption and compression.  Store strong keys on removable USB-devices. AXCrypt is an open source project.

-KeePass: KeePass is an open source password manager. You can store all your passwords in one database, which is locked with one master key or a key file and you only have to remember a single master password.

- FreeOTFE: You can create one or more “virtual disks” on your PC/PDA. FreeOTFE is specially indicated for portable encryption, the FreeOTFE Explorer version does not need administrator rights to be executed, it will work at libraries and internet cafe from inside a thumbdrive.

Free File Archiver/Compressor

-PeaZip: Open source file and archive manager, PeaZip can extract most of archive formats both from Windows and Unix worlds, ranging from mainstream 7Z, RAR, TAR and ZIP to experimental ones like PAQ/LPAQ family, currently the most powerful compressor available.

-7-Zip: A file archiver with a high compression ratio, For ZIP and GZIP formats, 7-Zip provides a compression ratio that is 2-10 % better than the ratio provided by PKZip and WinZip. Strong AES-256 encryption in 7z and ZIP formats.

Free Usenet Newsreader

-Mesnews: A newsreader with support for decoding of the messages in multipart, base64, yEncoded ,etc. Setting color of the messages according to criteria, multi-servers, sending in text and html format and much more.

-MicroPlanet Gravity:  Open source Usenet newsreader for Windows. Gravity is a full featured Windows Usenet online/offline Usenet news client with an extensive feature list including Rules, Scoring, and Filters.

Free Usenet Binaries Posting Software

- yEncBin Poster:  Freeware Windows tool to upload binary files to Usenet newsgroups, IT DOES NOT SUPPORT SSL, but it is very easy to use and has a nice interface. You can create NZB from finished uploads too.

-EasyPost: Another easy to use software for posting to Usenet, with no SSL support.

-SharkPost: No longer in development, this is fork of PowerPost-A&A, it supports SSL posting but it has some problems with file names, it will refuse to post files named after characters like [] and others.

Free Media Player

-BSPlayer: YouTube support, playlists support, display subtitles, multilingual, drag & drop and multiple volume rar archive support, resolution changing, frame capture, playback of AVCHD (Advanced Video Codec High Definition), etc.

-VideoLan:  VLC media player is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, …) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols.

Free Office Software

-OpenOffice: Leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. It is available in many languages and works on all common computers.

-Abiword: AbiWord is a free word processing program similar to Microsoft® Word. It is suitable for a wide variety of word processing tasks.

Free FTP Software

-FileZilla: FileZilla is open source software cross-platform FTP, FTPS and SFTP client with lots of useful features and an intuitive graphical user interface.

- CoreFTP: This secure FTP client gives you a fast, easy, reliable way to update and maintain your website via FTP. It also provides a secure method (via SSL, TLS, or SFTP) to upload / download files to and from FTP servers

Free Virtualization Software

-Virtualbox: A family of powerful x86 virtualization products for enterprise as well as home use. Presently, VirtualBox runs on Windows, Linux, Macintosh and OpenSolaris hosts and supports a large number of guest operating systems.

-Qemu: EMU is a generic and open source machine emulator and virtualizer. When used as a machine emulator, QEMU can run OSes and programs made for one machine (e.g. an ARM board) on a different machine (e.g. your own PC).

Free Email Software

-Claws Mail: Claws Mail is an email client and news reader. Threaded display, PGP plugin available, SSL over POP3, SMTP, IMAP4rev1 and NNTP protocols,etc…

-Opera M2:  An e-mail client built into your browser with offline access, low bandwidth mode and spam filter.

- Zimbra Desktop: An open source full desktop suite with calendar, email client and organizer. Available for Windows, Mac and Linux. Well integrated with some Yahoo services.

- Sylpheed: Sylpheed is a simple, lightweight but featureful, and easy-to-use e-mail client, it runs on Unix-like systems such as Linux, BSD, and Mac OS X and it also supports Windows. Distributed under the GNU GPL license.

Free Telnet/SSH Software

-Kitty: KiTTY is a fork from 0.60 version of PuTTY, a  telnet / SSH client. KiTTY is only designed for Microsoft Windows platform and adds some extra features that PuTTY does not have like automatic password and transparent background.

-PortaPuTTY: A modified version of PuTTY that stores configuration and session data in flat files instead of the Windows registry. This is especially useful for running portaPuTTY from a USB drive or for moving commonly used sessions from computer to computer.

Free WebDAV Software

-DAV Explorer: A WebDAV, DeltaV and ACL client application that uses the WebDAV, DeltaV and ACL protocols. DAV Explorer is a multiplatform Java application.

-AnyClient:  A free platform independent file transfer application that supports all major file transfer protocols including FTP/S, SFTP and WebDAV/S.

Free BackUp Software

- GFI Backup Home Edition: A free easy-to-use backup software solution with strong 256-bit AES encryption, incremental and differential backups, task scheduler, Windows registry backup, detailed logs of all backup operations and much more.

-  Paragon Drive Backup Express: This is a lite version of their paid for product, it does not have differential backups (version 9.0)  but you can do incremental backups. Extremely easy interface, with wizards for the most common operations.