Free daily software

There are many websites where you can find free software. Many of the applications are wonderful value for money (I have raved about some of them before). In other cases, I can see why they are free - no-one in the their right mind would pay for them.
Needless to say, and quite rightly, the majority of the computer world's best software is only available for a price. However, there are some websites where you can obtain legal, free copies of applications you would otherwise pay for. One such that I monitor daily is giveawayoftheday. The deal is that one application per day is offered, and you have just 24 hours to install it and download an unlocking code; after that, it is no longer free. I have picked up a few very good bargains here; the downside is that if/when I reinstall my operating system or buy a new computer, I will lose access to these programs, as the code will no longer work (it also stops you sharing the files with another person). New items are entered each day about 7pm NZ time.
Daily Freeware is a similar service, except the offerings are not fresh daily. However, there have been some very good packages on offer over the past month.
A last mention to LastDownload software archive. This is different from the others in making all titles available all the time. You can download over 30,000 software titles, from audio/video converters to CRM and accounting software, and there are applications here I have not seen anywhere else.
Happy hunting!

Portable applications

Most computer technicians use USB flash drives to store useful diagnostic/cleaning/maintenance tools and utilities, but what about the average home user? Portable applications (or portable apps) are computer programs that can be stored on and run from a flash drive, mp3 player, CD, or whatever without having to be installed onto the host computer. What are the advantages of portable applications? Apart from the obvious, that the device on which they reside can be moved from computer to computer they save valuable hard drive space, do not create any registry entries or store files on the host machine, so no uninstall is necessary; removal is simply a matter of deleting any associated files from the portable device. All kinds of portable applications are available: browsers, media players, email clients, security products, office components and lots of lovely tools and utilities. Portable applications will generally download in a zip package which can then be unpacked to the flash drive. Or you can download to the computer and then move the file onto the flash drive. Quite a few sites are dedicated to listing free portable apps, for example App-Stick, and PortableApps.com.

Video editors - you get what you pay for

Since I splashed out on a home video camera a year or two back, I have spent a lot of time exploring editing programs, after upgrading my computer to provide more grunt. At the time, I bought Adobe Premiere Elements, which is mid-way between a low-end program such as MovieMaker (Windows) and iMovie (Mac) and the fully professional programs. Mid-range software of this kind is sometimes called "prosumer". Premiere Elements has most features you would need to produce a very respectable end product, although it has one or two funny quirks that frustrate me. But I wondered whether there were any free programs that could do a bit better than MovieMaker or iMovie. The particular limitation of these two is they only allow one video track (although the Vista version of MovieMaker has expanded that) which renders it impossible to do many standard effects.
After a long search, I can tell you one thing for sure - you get what you pay for, in this field at least. After testing close to a dozen free programs, I found only two that were better than what I already had.
TrakAxPC is a well designed piece of software, whose best feature is the ability to match music with picture. It shows you each bar, so you can change photos on the beat. Sadly, it still allows only one video track, but it is a nice hybrid between video editor and music sequencer.
Photostage slideshow is another beautifully designed program that specialises in making slideshows of still photographs. It has a particularly good pan and zoom control that is just so easy to use. Beats anything else I have seen.
Of the rest - in a word, don't waste your time. Here are some of my conclusions:
Jahshaka: An open-source project, which appears to be still very much under development. The interface looks promising, but the program kept crashing every time I tried to do anything.
t@b ZweiStein: This used to be called just ZweiStein, but has some fancy new marketing. Unfortunately, despite getting good reviews all over the place, the interface is totally inscrutable, and despite a fair amount of experience using video editors, I could not figure out how to use it. The help files were also hopeless.
SuperDVD creator - An attractive interface, but the free version offers nothing more than MovieMaker or iMovie.
SuperDVD Video Maker - Same comments as above.
Here is a very full list of video editors, both free and commercial. Surprisingly, it leaves off the main choice of professionals, the Mac-based Final Cut Pro.

EndItAll before you end it all

We've all got to that stage with Windows where we feel like ending it all (or buying a Mac). As you sit in front of your PC with a gun to the screen, you might first like to try this free program, though. EndItAll is a Windows process killer than attempts to rid your system of those files that have either frozen your system or simply refuse to budge. However, unlike Windows very basic process manager, it also indicates what programs each process relates to. The program will not close everything - it will stop short of closing anything essential, so it's fairly idiot proof. The interface is simple and if you need to suddenly free up some RAM, it's a much better option and vastly more powerful.

Repairing Word documents

If you've been working on a Word document for a long time, it's a nightmare when it suddenly corrupts or won't open. The reasons for this are numerous and usually it's not your fault. If you've ever received any of the following messages then you'll know what I'm talking about: "The document name or path is not valid..."; "Word cannot open the document...."; "Word cannot open the document: user does not have access privileges."; ...and so on. Fortunately, a number of programs are available that attempt to repair a document so you can at least extract the main body of text. They do this with varying degrees of success, but two to try are Kernel for Word, and Word-Repair. The latter is free, while the first has a free evaluation version.