Best Open Source Windows software

Free and open-source software is good for you and for the world. This is the best Windows software that we know of.
No adware, no spyware, just good software.

Web Browsing

Mozilla Firefox

The premier free, open-source browser. Tabs, pop-up blocking, themes, and extensions. Considered by many to be the world's best browser. 
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Video Player / Video Podcasting

Miro

Beautiful interface. Plays any video type (much more than windows media player). Subscribe to video RSS, download, and watch all in one. Torrent support. Search and download from YouTube and others. 
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IM - Instant Messaging

Pidgin

Connect to multiple IM accounts simultaneously in a single app, including: AOL IM, MSN, and Jabber. 
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E-mail

Mozilla Thunderbird

Powerful spam filtering, solid interface, and all the features you need. 
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RSS

RSSOwl

Solid cross-platform RSS client.
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Peer-to-Peer Filesharing

Cabos

A simple, easy to use filesharing program. Gnutella network. 
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Gnucleus

A very good Gnutella search and download filesharing program. 
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Azureus

A powerful, but complicated BitTorrent client. So many features you'll lose your mind. 
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Video Playback

VLC

Plays more video files than most players: Quicktime, AVI, DIVX, OGG, and more. Pretty good interface. 
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MPlayer

Similar to VLC-- plays loads of video formats. 
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Media Player Classic

Compact, but powerful media player. Plays anything under the sun. No install necessary. 
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DVD Ripping / Video Conversion

Media Coder

Great tool for ripping CDs, DVDs, etc and converting between tons of video formats. 
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Word Processing / Office Suites

OpenOffice.org

Big, full featured suite of tools for word processing and spreadsheets. Compatible with and a free replacement for Microsoft Word documents. Also supports OpenDocument Format. 
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AbiWord

A word processor. Leaner and quicker than OpenOffice. Compatible with Microsoft Word documents and OpenDocument Format. 
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Podcasting

Juice

Solid podcasting client. 
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DVD Ripping

Handbrake

DVD to MPEG-4 ripper/converter. 
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Sound Recording

Audacity

Simple sound recording tool. 
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Graphics / Photo Editing

GIMP

Photo editing application that rivals Photoshop in features. 
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Paint.NET

Graphics editor with a very nice interface. 
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Inkscape

Vector graphics application. 
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FTP / SFTP

Filezilla

Excellent FTP program. 
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IRC

X-Chat 2

IRC client. 
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Archiving

PeaZip

Fantastic archiving utility to extract and pack archives of an extensive amount of formats. PeaZip also features password protecting archives, keyfile support, system integration, a lovely interface, and much more.
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More Software on Next Page >>>

SyncBack Freeware V3.2.19.0

SyncBack Freeware V3.2.19.0 [1.77 MB] SCREENSHOT | DOWNLOAD | [ validate ] SyncBack is our freeware program that helps you easily backup and synchronize your files to: the same drive; a different drive or medium (CDRW, CompactFlash, etc); an FTP server; a Network; or a Zip archive. http://www.2brightsparks.com/freeware/freeware-hub.html

STDU Viewer ver 1.5.

STDU Viewer ver 1.5.

Are you tired from many viewers one for each document?
Do you want to have, one program for all your technical documentations, scientific books and so on?
Do you want to have program, which fast opens files, fast loads pages and fast renders page to screen?
And all of this in free software?

View all most popular documents formats by one program.

STDU Viewer is a document viewer for multiple file formats. The goal of this software is to replace the multiple document viewers with a single simple application. STDU Viewer supports TXT, TIFF, PDF and DjVu documents format. This is most popular formats for scientific and technical documentation.

Use content for quick jumping from one section to another.

STDU Viewer gives the possibility to show the content of documents for quick jumping from one section to another.

Create your own bookmarks for quick access to part of documents

You can create your own named bookmarks for easy access to part of document.

STDU Viewer free for non-commercial uses.

Yes. You can use this program without any fees.

home: http://www.stdutility.com/stduviewer.html

free download: http://www.stdutility.com/download/stduviewer.exe

Protected Music Converter

Protected Music Converter is a software which allows you easily convert your protected (or unprotected) music files to most frequently used unprotected formats (WMA, MP3, OGG). Thus you can listen your music on your iPod, burn them to CD, upload them on your cell phone, use them on whatever device you want, even if it doesn't support protected content playback. Installation procedure is very fast and easy, it means no unsigned 3rd party drivers (causing Blue Screens Of Death here and there) installation, no weird sound system detection screens, just usual file copy procedure and that's it. Interface is straight and easy to use, without flashy colours or graphics. All you need to do is to add your protected files to batch list, select desirable output format and press start button. Supported input formats are: M4P, MP4, AAC, WMA, MP3, WAV, OGG, AU audio files, AIFF.

Main features of Protected Music Converter:

- Straight and easy to use interface
You can easily convert your music file with just few mouse clicks: add your music files to batch list, select appropriate output format and press start button. You can create custom profiles for output format settings or use build-in standard profiles, Drag'n'Drop, Copy/Paste from MS Explorer are also included.
- Fast and easy installation procedure
It means no additional drivers are installed , no extra sound system detection screens, just usual file copy procedure.
- Protected music files conversion
All protected music files playable by both Windows Media Player and QuickTime Player can be converted to unprotected MP3, WMA, OGG. This is not protection removal though, software just plays protected files and places resulting sound into unprotected music file.
- Wide range of supported input formats
All music files with filename extensions listed below are supported as valid input files for Protected Music Converter: ulw, au, sd2, amr, gsm, adts, caf, mpeg, mpg, m1s, m1v, m1a, m75, m15, mp2, mpm, mpv, mpa, snd, 3gp, 3gpp, m4a, m4v, swa, amc, 3g2, 3gp2, m4b, m4p, drv-ms, aif, aiff, aifc, asf, asx, wm, wmx, wmd, wmz, mp3, wax, wma, ogg, wav, aac
- Batch conversion support
If you have massive amount of files you want to convert this software is exactly what you need to speed up the process.
- Most recent audio codecs support
Protected Music Converter uses most recent audio codecs, it internally supports WMA and OGG formats, for MP3 encoding it uses LAME encoder 3.97

http://www.wma-mp3.com/protected-music-converter.html

Driver Magician

Driver Magician offers a professional solution for device drivers backup, restoration and update in Windows operating system. It identifies all the hardware in the system, extracts their associated drivers from the hard disk and backs them up to a location of your choice. Then when you format and reinstall/upgrade your operating system, you can restore all the "saved" drivers just as if you had the original driver diskettes in your hands. After one system reboot, your PC will be loaded and running with the required hardware drivers.

Key features:
Back up device drivers of your computer in four modes.
Restore device drivers from backup in one mouse click.
Update device drivers of your PC to improve system performance and stability.
Uninstall device drivers
Live Update device identifier database and driver update database.
Detect unknown devices.
Back up more items such as My Documents and Registry.
Restore more items from backup.
Get detailed information of the hardware drivers.
Clone all drivers to an auto-setup package (.EXE), so you can restore drivers without installing Driver Magician.

http://www.drivermagician.com/

Portable Everest Ultimate 2006

EVEREST Ultimate Edition is an industry leading system diagnostics and benchmarking solution for enthusiasts PC users, based on the award-winning EVEREST Technology.

During system optimizations and tweaking it provides essential system and overclock information, advanced hardware monitoring and diagnostics capabilities to check the effects of the applied settings. FPU, CPU and memory benchmarks are available to measure the actual system performance for comparing it to previous states or other PCs.

Furthermore, complete software, operating system and security information makes EVEREST Ultimate Edition a comprehensive system diagnostics tool that offers a total of 100 pages of information about your PC.

Hardware Information
Motherboard & CPU
Accurate low-level information about motherboard, CPU and BIOS, including chipset details, DMI enumeration, AGP configuration information, SPD memory modules list, DRAM timing information and CPU instruction set support.

Video adapter & monitor
Detailed information about the video adapter, video drivers and monitor, including DDC information, monitor serial number and supported video modes detection, low-level GPU details, OpenGL and Direct3D features list.

Storage devices
Information about all hard disk and optical disk drives, including IDE autodetection, S.M.A.R.T. disk health monitoring, ASPI SCSI devices list and partitions information.

Network adapters, multimedia, input devices
Exhaustive information about network adapters, sound cards, keyboard, mouse and game controllers, including NIC MAC address detection, IP and DNS list, network traffic monitoring, DirectSound, DirectMusic and DirectInput information.

Misc hardware
Information about PCI, PnP, PCMCIA and USB devices, communication ports, power management information, device resources list, printers information.


Software Information
Operating system
Detailed Windows information, including operating system installation date and product key, system services and system drivers list, process information, environment variables list, system folders list, system files and Event Logs content, AX and DLL files list, UpTime information.

Server and display
Information about network shares, users and groups list, logged on users list, account security settings, opened files list, fonts list and Windows desktop configuration details.

Networking
Large amount of information about networking status, remote access and mailing accounts, network resources and Internet settings. List of network routes, internet Explorer cookies and history of visited web pages.

Installed software
Detailed information about installed programs, scheduled tasks and startup programs.


Security
Windows Security
Operating system security information including DEP (Data Execution Prevention) status, list of installed security patches and system restore status.

Security applications
Firewall, anti-spyware and anti-trojan software list. Anti-virus software information including virus database details.


Diagnostics
CPUID Panel
EVEREST CPUID panel to provide a compact overview on CPU, motherboard, RAM and chipset. Invaluable information on overclocked systems, dynamic refresh to support Enhanced Intel SpeedStep and AMD Cool'n'Quiet technologies.

Hardware monitoring
Sensor information including system, CPU and GPU temperature, fan status, CPU, GPU, AGP and DRAM voltage monitoring, S.M.A.R.T. disk health status. Support for Corsair Xpert memory modules.

Sensor icons
Sensor icons feature to display actual system temperature and voltage values on the System Tray.

CPU and FPU benchmarks
State of the art multi-threaded benchmark methods to measure performance of both old and brand new processors. References list to compare actual performance with other systems.

Memory benchmarking
Memory read and write speed, memory latency measurement to stress the memory and cache subsystem, including references list to compare actual performance with other systems.

Disk Benchmark module
Disk Benchmark module to measure performance of hard disk drives, optical disk drives (CD/DVD/Blu-Ray) and USB flash drives. Graphical overview of disk performance measured on different areas of the disk surface.

Tips & suggestions
Detection of possible hardware and software misconfiguration and compatibility issues.


Reporting
Report Wizard
Easy-to-use method to produce report files of the system, by either using pre-configured report profiles or custom selection of information.

Report formats
Three different report file formats: plain text, customizable HTML and the unique MHTML format. MHTML reports including icons are ideal for printing purposes.

Report e-mailing and printing
Built-in e-mail transfer client using SMTP, also support for MAPI and Outlook protocols. Instant report display and one-click printing capabilities using IE4+ technology.

Here are some key features of "EVEREST Ultimate Edition":

Lavalys EVEREST is designed to run on 32 and 64-bit Microsoft Windows operating systems, and it fully supports Microsoft Windows 95, 98, Me, NT 4.0 SP6, 2000, XP, 2003 and Vista. EVEREST has exceptionally low system resource requirements (minimum 486 processor with 32 MB RAM).

Generic features
· Low-level hardware information: 44 pages
· Software and operating system information: 44 pages
· Security related information: 6 pages
· DirectX information including Direct3D acceleration features
· Diagnostics module that simplifies troubleshooting
· Tweaking features

Benchmarking features
· 10 benchmark modules to measure CPU, FPU and memory performance
· Benchmark reference results to compare measured performance to other systems
· Cache & Memory Benchmark Suite
· Hard disk, optical drive and flash drive benchmarking with RAID array support

Unique features
· UpTime and DownTime statistics with critical errors counter
· Monitor Diagnostics to check the capabilities of CRT and LCD displays
· System Stability Test with thermal monitoring to stress CPU, FPU, memory and disks
· Hardware Monitoring to monitor system temperatures and voltages on the System Tray, OSD, Vista Sidebar or Logitech keyboard LCD [*NEW*]
· Temperature, voltage and fan RPM data logging to HTML and CSV log files
· Smart Battery information
· Web links: IT portals, software and driver download
· Manufacturer links: product information, driver and BIOS download
· Hardware information database for over 52000 devices
· Overclock information
· Fully localized user interface: 35+ languages
· No installation or setup procedure required

http://rapidshare.com/files/58787925/Everest_Ultimate_2006.exe

Online fav-icon creator

Online fav-icon creator

Online FavIcon Maker
	- current color	Default colors: <- transparent color Custom color: #

Create favicon from picture:  

How to use it:

• Select one of basic colors by clicking on a color square on the right side of the window.
• Erase pixels by drawing with transparent color (checkboard) or erase the entire canvas by clicking the Clear Canvas toolbar button.
• Select a custom color by typing its hexadecimal web color code to the box under the default colors and click the 'Set' button
• Choose drawing tool by clicking a button in the toolbar:
  • "Pencil" is changing colors of pixels when a mouse is moving over the canvas while the left button is pressed.
  • "Lines" draws a line from the point where the mouse button was pressed to the point where it was released.
  • "Dropper" allows to set current color from an icon's pixel.
• Create favicon from a jpg or png picture using the box under the editor window. (Alpha channel is not supported.)
• Download your new icon by simply clicking the 'Download Icon' button in the toolbar.

More resources

Find out how to modify your web pages to display favicons.

Download icons from the icon library.

Download RealWorld Icon Editor to create professional icons.

Important: This online icon maker requires a web browser with Javascript 1.2 support such as Internet Explorer 6, Firefox, or Opera. If you are experiencing problems, make sure that you are using one of the supported browsers and Javascript ("Active content") is enabled.

http://www.rw-designer.com/online_icon_maker.php