My guide to being Warez-free
 

I wanted to try and see if I could live without pay software and switch all payware apps to freeware without much BS. I came up with these apps and now only use free software. I post it in case you want to be warez free or can't afford to pay for apps. I also want to support the use of free software so developers will know there is demand and continue to develop it. At any rate whatever your reason here is my list.



Archiver:


7 Zip replaces Winrar. They have a comparison chart for compression.


IRC:


Xchat is the best alternative I've found to mIRC. It uses perl scripting so you can use
the same script in Xchat Linux.


Usenet:


I replaced Newsbin Pro with Grabit and BNR2. I haven't decided which I like better at this point, but BNR is the most like newsbin. Both are good binary news readers.


CD burning


I replaced Nero with two apps:

burnatonce for ISO and Cue/bin burning,as well as Data CD compilation mastering and even has DVD data and movie mastering support.
I use VCD Imager GUI for creating CD images for my (S)VCDs to burn in burnatonce.

I replaced Alcohol 120% with good old Daemon Tools. It doesn't quite have the reach Alcohol does but it does the job 99% of the time for me.


Photo manip:


I know the diehard photoshoppers will never give up their PS but these will do well for the casual user.

Irfanview is the best little image handler freeware there is. It does wayyy too much to list here. I use it to scan things off my flatbed, grab cam caps, resize, and crop pics.

Need something a bit heavier? try the GiMP


Video Authoring/editing:


TMPGENC is great for mpg editing and format conversion to VCD.

DVD2SVCD is a great ripping program.

Virtualdub is a great AVI joiner/splitter. You can also use it to make cam movies.


OS:


Windows Server 2003 is free for a 6 month trial period.

After that period you can always go to Linux if you need a free OS.


Office Suite:


darkure recommends Open Office for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations. A great MS Office replacement.



Feel free to add your freeware replacements for pay apps and I'll edit this post to include them. Remember they have to be comparable in ease of use and features as possible.

Open Office for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations. A great MS Office replacement.

Re: My guide to being Warez-free
 

Great thread idea.
I've been using EnZip, which hasn't been updated in 3 years, but seems to do everything I need on WinXP. Might checkout 7-zip, however.

Open office looks cool, I'm going to install in tinker with that tonight when I get home.

OpenOffice 1.1 is fantastic for the price.

;)

The best open source MS document integration i've seen.

nuff respec'.

*beats chest with right hand*

Putty or Cygwin for all your (s)ftp, telnet and ssh needs.

Not to mention all the other stuff that comes with cygwin.

(these are probably the most obvious things to mention, just wanted to make sure they weren't overlooked.)

i love open office, has everything you will need to fully replace ms office.

When I first saw the topic of this thread I was going to come in and simply say "My method of avoiding warez is to buy the software, you deadweights!"

How wrong I was!

This is a great idea for a thread and I commend Holo for his idea. Unfortunately for me, I can't really contribute as I tend to pay for shareware and use software purchased by work.

Great reading though!

Mr Mephisto

Thanks a bunch for the list, Holo! I've downloaded everything 'cept for Open Office and BNR... Everything works great!

I really appreciate the info!

im a poor and cheap bastard.. i use warez, but im always open to good freeware programs

EXCEPT for easy creation of tables - the one shortcoming that keeps Office XP on my system (along with Corel Office 2002 and of course OO 1.1.0). The current builds still emulate the awkward limited tables from word 6.0 and earlier. For everything beside my custom CD jewel case inserts I use OO and almost never touch MS Office.

Very nice list. Thanks a lot!
I know I'm gonna be using a few of those links ^_^

wow, someone else who uses irfanview.

Ive been using it for over a year now.. dang.

i love this program :D

excelllent program that I use almost daily; XnView has a few small features that iranview is lacking, so I use them both.

Winamp2/Free Trillian are both standards anyway, but probably deserve inclusion on this list.
If I'm not using mIRC (which I will happilly pay for, Khaled is awesome!) then I'm using BitchX. Yeah it's text-based, but it's not all that weird to use. I use it over a shell connection but there are DOS versions, I think.
Also Free Agent for news. Sure it's 7 years old, but it's still got enough to offer that you should at least check it out (I use regular Agent, but I think both versions support yENC).

don't forget filezilla for ftp

oops one more - cdex for ripping your legally purchased cds for fair use etc

I use SmartFTP. I forgot to add that. Please also make links to your recommendations everyone. Thanks for the replies.

I personally prefer EAC. It's a lot more thorough and has a CD-burning engine built-in but CDeX is also a good program.

I just format my compuer at the end of every month and reinstall all of the programs with 30 day trial periods.

2 Hard Disks allow me to save everything I want to keep and it only takes me 45 minutes to reinstall Xp and the drivers.

Keeps my PC running at top speed and virus and spyware free.

I've got to second that recommendation for EAC -- and I'd add that a great mp3 encoder to use with it is LAME

Here's a great site to explain how to install, and if you read a bit further on the site, he promotes the advantages of sharing high-quality MP3s

This list hasn't been updated in about a year, but it still has some gems. It is a compilation of free/cool software by members of another forum I frequent:

http://www.dma.org/~millersg/CoolSoftware.html

Assuming you are running Windows, all you need is <a href="http://www.pricelessware.org/2003/about2003PL.htm">this site</a>. A list of the best freeware. I use it quite often, I have a lot of great software that I wouldnt have known about if not for that site.

Thanks for that link, a lot of useful stuff there that I didn't know about.

Wow this is a great thread Holo. Thanks for the contribution.

I had been looking everywhere for a copy of photoshop for some photo manip, when all this time I could have just gotten GiMP! I completely forgot about that program until you posted this. Thanks!

Yeah. My problem with gimp is that it feels like the UI was designed by a monkey on crack. So hard to use, so unintuitive... Once you figure it out, its fine, but there is quite a steep learning curve.

I would suggest Gaim (or WinGaim) for your IM needs. Trillian was OK.. but Gaim has a nice clean intuitive interface.

(I'm sure Trillian has skins or something.. I'm not a fan of their default one).

http://gaim.sf.net

Also, OpenOffice is an excellent suggestion.

Thanks for posting this man - I needed a good free LEGAL dvd ripping program
thanks again
-SImo

This is a great post!!! Not to give a shout out to anybody else but if you goto http://hardforums.com under the general software forums they have a thread that offers the same suggestions but it's been going a while longer so it has more. May be worth checking and posting some of there ideas here. If I get a chance I'll try to put something together when I get home.

Hey just came across this old thread, and thought it was a great idea that could maybe use some updating...
So through out your guys ideas if you have any.

It has not been listed, so:

http://www.audiograbber.com-us.net/

Audiograbber is a beautiful piece of software that grabs digital audio from cd's. It copies the audio digitally-not through the soundcard-which enables you to make perfect copies of the originals. It can even perform a test to see that the copies really are perfect. Audiograbber can also automatically normalize the music, delete silence from the start and/or end of tracks, and send them to a variety or external MP3 encoders, such as Fraunhofers L3enc, or even use some MP3/WMA encoders internally for automatic creation of MP3's. Audiograbber can download and upload disc info from freedb, an Internet compact disc database. You can even record your vinyl LP's or cassette tapes with Audiograbber and make wav's or MP3's of them. There are a lot more functions in Audiograbber, but to put it simply: Audiograbber has the most features one can wish from such a program!

and it's free :-)

I have to say.. I used 7-Zip the other day (for the first time) and loved it.. what a great program.. and completely free and opensouce!

Good job on the thread revival ;)

I used Irfanview for a while too and liked it until I found PhotoFiltre. It's pretty awesome for us amateur photographers. Check it out.

That's an old goodie. Most of the sites are offline these days so it can take a bit of searching. The German and Dutch sites still have it.

firefox: replaces internet explorer or any other browser you might need.

thunderbird: replaces outlook.

Opera is now a freeware browser too!

Avast! for Anti-virus gets my vote

It wasn't designed by a monkey on crack, it was designed by a geek. The difference is subtle but important.

Seriously, Geeks are notorious for their lack of any sort of stylistic sense. GIMP is designed to be powerful and it is; user-friendly is not an emphasis, as it's expected anyone who needs to do what GIMP lets them do will take the time to RTFM and figure it out.

As for my votes, AVG is a decent anti-virus program that I've used for years. They have a free edition specifically for private, non-commercial use. While it does lack some of the features of AVG Pro, those features are ones that the average user has no want or need for anyway.

Continuing on the security front, ZoneAlarm is notoriously championed by Steve Gibson as the premier firewall. I've never used it myself but have heard mixed things, so it's a case of caveat emptor.

I've always used Freerip to convert my cd's to mp3's. I was eternally grateful that I have when my car was broken into about a year ago and approixmately 20 cd's were stolen. Fortunately for me, I still have digital copies of said cd's residing safely on my hard drive as well as backup dvd's.

I put Kerio Personal Firewall slightly below ZoneAlarm for ease of use, but above it for functionality. They're both effective but ZA has runaway memory leaks that arise during heavy use. It wouldn't bother me as much had ZoneLabs not stated they aren't addressing the problem since only a minority of users are affected. Guess who's in the minority. :/

I actually purchased Audiograbber YEARS ago when it was the only program that did everything that I wanted (as far as ripping CDs). I love that it's free now ... hopefully it means the guy actually made some money with it.