I have compiled a list of some of my favorite programs which are available for download over the internet. Best of all, every single program in the list is freeware, meaning there are no trial periods, locked-out features, or costs to own the program. Just read the program description and click on the link to jump to the download site. The most recent additions are on the last few pages.

1st Page 2000

Evrsoft created 1st Page 2000 to be a HTML editor that anybody can use, from the novice to the expert user. At start up, the user can pick from easy, normal, expert or hardcore user modes. The program has quit a few pre-written javascripts, CGI scripts and Perl scripts, as well as a feature to easily make mouse rollovers.

Home Planet

Home Planet is a comprehensive astronomy, space, satellite-tracking program. It can display day & night regions of the earth, the location of the moon and it's current phase and the positions of the planets from the observer's location. It also contains a database of the orbital elements of 5632 asteroids and principal periodic comets. The program also allows you to pick an earth satellite from the database and track its current position and altitude. The program also allows the user to customize various databases and aspects of the program.

Wallpaper Changer

This is a nice program that I use. The program will change your wallpaper at the time you specify. It can be set to change once a day, once an hour, every time the computer is booted up or any number of other times you specify. Set up a list of JPEG graphics to use and this program will cycle through them. It's nice to see a different image on the screen once in a while instead of seeing the same thing all the time!

Bugnosis Web Bug Detector

A web bug is a small graphic, which is usually only 1 x 1 pixel, and often the same color as the background (so you can't see it), on a web page or in an e-mail. The "bug" is designed to monitor who reads the page or message. They can relay information such as the IP address of the computer that retrieved the web bug, the URL of the page that the web bug was loaded onto, and various other information. While surfing the web, Bugnosis analyzes every page you visit and alerts you when it finds something suspicious which it thinks may be a web bug.

DLL Archive

How many times have you uninstalled a program only to have a message appear that says something like, 'the file you want to delete may be a shared Windows resource. Do you still want to delete?' How do you know if getting rid of that DLL file will cause problems? There won't be any guess work involved after using the Analog X DLL Archiver. This cool program will search all the files on your computer and let you know if any of them contain references to the DLL's in question!

BC Wipe

After a file is deleted it can still be recovered or viewed because the data remains on the hard drive until that space is over-written by other information. If you have sensitive data which you don't want sitting around on the hard drive then use BCWipe. The program will over-write, several times, the area occupied by your data. It even 'wipes' the swap file so that no fragments remain behind.

WinAmp

Winamp is a music player for Windows 95/98/NT. It supports MP3's, CD's, MOD's, WAV's and other audio formats. You can also customize the look of your WinAmp player by adding custom graphics called skins.

Link Sleuth

Xenu's Link Sleuth (TM) is a spidering software that checks web sites for broken links. Link verification is done on "normal" links, images, frames, plug-ins, backgrounds, local image maps, style sheets, scripts and java applets. It displays a continously updated list of URLs which you can sort by different criteria. A report can be produced at any time. This is a real nice tool for people designing their own web sites.

Reptile Texture Maker

A very cool program which makes it easy to create your own textures. Use the textures as backgrounds for your Windows desktop or for your web pages. It has various presets and excellent on-line documentation. You'll probably catch yourself just playing around with the program because it is really addicting.

Zone Alarm

If you access the internet through a dial-up connection, or have a continuous connection through a cable modem or a DSL line, a firewall is probably a good thing to have so you can keep unscrupulous people from getting a look at the contents of your computer. This program will block attempts to gain access to your computer made by other computers. Commercial firewalls can be costly, but this program is supposed to be very good, and better yet, it's free!

Download Accelerator Plus

Be more efficient while downlaoding files from the internet. This download manager and accelerator is similar to GoZilla, only it doesn't include the spyware to track your surfing habits. One of the nice features of this software is the resume function which allows you to resume a downlaod after it has been interrupted for whatever reason.

ZPaint

This small program is great for creating 3D-looking graphics for websites. You can easily create raised or lowered shapes such as buttons, rings and boxes, or add those effects to existing graphics. There is easy control over color, texture, extrusion depth, gloss and other effects.

Clean Tray

If you have too many programs sitting in the system tray and don't know how to get rid of them then try this program. Clean tray is a simple little utility that scans your registry and displays a list of programs which load at startup. Then, simply highlight the program you want, press Delete, and the program will no longer load when you start your computer.

BeLarc Advisor

This interesting program will go through your computer and print up a list of everything you have installed. It will list what type of processor you have, how much memory you have and how many memory sockets are free, info about the motherboard and BIOS chip, what type of controllers are installed, as well as other important information about your system. It will also list all the software you have installed and what directories the files are installed in.

Exact Audio Copy

Using this program you will allow you to make copies of your audio CD's so they sound exactly the same as the originals. Some CD-R's obtain their faster speeds by sacrificing on the quality. This program helps create better sounding copies by comparing files to the source and then making corrections. It also contains a built in editor with glitch and pop removal, DC offset, normalizing tools, and it encodes MP3s at up to 320 KBps.

Palm Desktop Software

Download a copy of Palm's desktop version of its personal information manager. The desktop version contains many of the same features as the PDA version, such as a calendar, address book, to do list, and memo pad. You can customize your information and it can be easily transferred to a Palm PDA if you decide to buy one.

ADRIFT

Do you remember those old text-based adventure games like Zork? Now you can make your own text adventures by using ADRIFT. The program has an easy-to-use Windows-like GUI which you use to construct your adventure. Try this out and take a nostalgic step back in time.

Popcorn Email Client

If you get a lot of spam or have mistakenly opened an email only to infect your system with a virus, then the Popcorn email client is for you. Popcorn allows you to read email directly from a POP3 server, without downloading it to your computer (although you can save messages locally if you want to). With Popcorn you can read your email and clean out any spam or suspicious files before you download them to your computer. Popcorn supports multiple user profiles, which allows you to read and send messages from a number of different POP3 accounts.

Sandra Benchmarking Tool

SANDRA is a free set of system diagnostic and benchmarking tools designed to help you keep your computer running at peak performance. The various tools allow you to run tests on things such as the CPU, modem, BIOS, drives, graphic cards, and memory. If you're curious as to how your computer is performing then run these tests on your system.

Tweak UI

By using Microsoft's Tweak UI you can adjust various aspects of the Windows User Interface, including menu speed, window animation, and various options in Internet Explorer. All these tweaks can be performed without having to venture into the cryptic, Windows registry and the newest version works with all versions of Windows.

Dot Color

With Dot Color you can zoom into any area of the screen and examine the color of the pixels under cursor. The program will then display the color in the various color values, such as hex, decimal or CMYK. You can also copy part of the screen to the clipboard. It even has a color mixer so you can change certain pixels on the screen to a different color.

Web Accessories from Microsoft

Get the IE5 web accessories, IE5 toolbar wallpapers, IE 5 Power Tweaks Web Accessories, and the Web Developer Accessories. These various programs help you customize the appearance of your browser and provides you with added browser functions.