Free Software

[pesoto74]

This is probably one of the best programs that Microsoft offers that is free. If you do anything with digital photos you'll find this useful.
Photo Story 3

Create slideshows using your digital photos. With a single click, you can touch-up, crop, or rotate pictures. It's that easy!

Add stunning special effects, soundtracks, and your own voice narration to your photo stories. Then, personalize them with titles and captions.

Small file sizes make it easy to send your photo stories in an e-mail. Watch them on your TV, a computer, or a Windows Mobile–based portable device.

Photo Story 3

[pesoto74]

"If you want to listen to podcasts, this program is for you. Juice is the premier podcast receiver, allowing users to capture and listen to podcasts anytime, anywhere. "
http://juicereceiver.sourceforge.net/index.php

[pesoto74]

This looks like a good program if you would like to make some tutorials to put online.  It is kinda surprising that it is free.

"Wink is a Tutorial and Presentation creation software, primarily aimed at creating tutorials on how to use software (like a tutor for MS-Word/Excel etc). Using Wink you can capture screenshots, add explanations boxes, buttons, titles etc and generate a highly effective tutorial for your users."
http://www.debugmode.com/wink/

[pesoto74]

AbiWord is a free word processing program similar to Microsoft® Word. It is suitable for a wide variety of word processing tasks.
http://www.abisource.com/

[pesoto74]

Ask the eConsultant
I want a Freeware Utility to ... 300+ common problems solved.
Extremely useful free utilities that do specific jobs really well and save time and money.
http://www.econsultant.com/i-want-freeware-utilities/index.html

[pesoto74]

If you don't have any software that you like for working with your digital images you might want to check this one out.  It looks simple to use and it is free.

Using PhotoMeister you can...

    * Import the photos from most digital cameras directly into your PC
    * Sort, arrange, filter and crop your photos and even remove red eyes
    * Convert your photos into web pages, emails or screensavers
    * Create Photo Albums to print or export as PDF files
    * Create VCDs for your DVD player to show your photos on your TV


PhotoMeister helps you...

... to handle, edit and publish photos from your digital camera. Everything that you need to manage your photos and to impress your family, friends or customers with your photos are included in one piece of software - easy to install and even easier to use!
http://www.photomeister.com/

[pesoto74]

If you have ever deleted a file by mistake this program might help you get the file back.
Restoration
Restoration is a free program that can scan your hard drive, floppy diskette or USB thumb drive and find files that have been deleted (Windows doesn't actually destroy files that you delete: it just marks the space they occupy as being available). It can then recover any recently deleted files it finds with a single mouse click.
http://pcworld.com/downloads/file_description/0,fid,23108,00.asp

[pesoto74]

It is probably a good idea to have an emergency boot disc.

BartPE
This free tool lets you create a bootable emergency disc customized for your PC. Short for Bart's Preinstalled Environment, BartPE copies the Windows files from your hard drive or Windows Installation CD and creates a bootable CD or DVD that you can then use to boot into Windows if your installation of Windows gets trashed.
http://pcworld.com/downloads/file_description/0,fid,63901,00.asp

[NAVY5150]

With all the different programs around for music what is the best site, for the best dollar?  I know some sites charge you 1.00 a song, is there a site where you can pay a monthly charge and get as many songs as you would like?  Been on the freesites, and have had to wipe my computer after all those.  If you have any good ideas, I am open to possibilities.  Thanks

[pesoto74]

From a review I read a while back the Yahoo music service was supposed to have the best price.  Still I think that was around .79 to .99 a song.  I'm not sure what the advantage to these service are since by the time you pay for the songs and maybe burn them to a cd you might as well buy a cd.  I do have one of those portable digital players and I like it.  However I mostly listen to podcasts on it.

[pesoto74]

If you have downloaded some video files but can't get them to play right you might want to try installing K-Lite Codec Pack.  It should allow you to play most of the video that you might download.

About the K-Lite Codec Pack

The K-Lite Codec Pack is a collection of codecs and related tools. Codec is short for Compressor-Decompressor. Codecs are needed for encoding and decoding (playing) audio and video. The K-Lite Codec Pack is designed as a user-friendly solution for playing all your movie files. With the K-Lite Codec Pack you should be able to play all the popular movie formats and even some rare formats.
http://www.codecguide.com/about_kl.htm

[pesoto74]

I haven't posted anything here for a while, however I saw this image resizing software and thought someone might find it useful.  It will help you make digital images smaller so you can more easily send them by email or post them to this forum.
PIXresizer