We all have our favorite “free” software. 

And I am no different.

I would like to share with you five downloadable programs that are free, or have free versions. 

I use these programs all the time.

Sure, sometimes with the free versions you have to endure a few pop-up advertisements, but hey, we’re talking free here, right?

Now, I use them on a PC.  Only the first one listed, Jing, is also avail for  Mac.

I would like to take credit for finding these, but alas, all five of these programs were referred to me by folks within my network – (all much smarter at IT than I.)  I credit each below accordingly.

Here goes:

Jing (PC & Mac):  http://www.jingproject.com/  Leslye PJ Reaves www.reflectiondigital.com told me about this.  It allows you to crop and save any portion of your computer screen as an image file.  Excellent when you want to insert computer screen images into a presentation like PowerPoint.  I REALLY REALLY like this one.

Pdf995 (PC): http://www.pdf995.com/  This allows you to save a Word doc as a .pdf.  Man, is this useful!  Andy Hemmendinger of GVI www.g-v-i.com turned me on to this one years ago.  (Fyi, Andy has updated me that recent versions of Word do now actually allow you to save out to .pdf – so this program might be obsolete for you in that case.  But there are some other features of Pdf995 that you still might find useful even so.)

CCleaner (PC): http://www.ccleaner.com/  Video Labs’ IT guru, Randy Thomas www.VideoLabs.net , told me about this one.  It is a great “cleaning the pipes” program.  It goes through and determines what files are “clogging up the works” in your computer, and it suggests which ones can be deleted without harming your computer’s function.  

This is particularly handy if your computer seems to be running a bit slow.  Granted, that could be caused by other reasons, but I find this program can really be of benefit in most instances.  

Malwarebytes (PC): http://www.malwarebytes.org  Randy also told me about this one.  This is a further check to use after you do your regular anti-spyware scan.  (So it doesn’t compete with your first-line protection software.)  I know firsthand just how valuable it can be.  Yep, I recently got a “trojan.”   After I thought I had deleted it with my normal security scanning program, I ran this program.  Sure enough, there were more hidden files that it found.

HijackThis (PC): http://free.antivirus.com/hijackthis/ Bryan Hurley datilus@gmail.comrecommends this one as a final check after you have deleted malware.  You can run this program and create a report.  As the homepage advises, you should be an expert before acting on the resulting report, but having the report avail to e-mail to your IT expert (or an online community of expert advisors - see site) is a great benefit.  It allows them to confirm that all is clear.  I know.  Bryan had me do that when I engaged him to assist us remotely after I realized one of our family computers was infected.  By looking at the report, he was able to “bless” our work.  Whew, that was a relief.

Bryan made another good point.  He cautioned that whenever looking at ”free” software, be sure to check whether the usage is restricted to only personal non-work use.  As our clients know, we here at Video Labs observe closely all licensing parameters.

I welcome your comments below.  And be sure to peruse the many great multimedia and IT articles written by Leslye and Bryan on this site:  http://tinyurl.com/d6wtrg

And I invite you to follow me on Twitter www.Twitter.com/DRMediaSolution for more media news and info and exclusive short-term, deep discounts on Video Labs’ media replication and related multimedia services.

David Ryan dryan@videolabs.net    301-217-0000 x104