Gizmo’s Freeware Reviews

The site intro states: At this community website you'll find the very best freeware programs each selected by our independent editors because of their quality and performance. Many of these programs are as good as or better than their commercial counterparts so why pay for what you can get for free?

First class material on a site that is easy to search and navigate, not to mention just fun to surf.
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Jasc Paint Shop Pro Version 4.14 Free

Good free paint programs are hard to come by these days and the free paint program that comes with Windows is mostly useless. But this one is great; I have been using it for years.

Jasc Paint Shop Pro (PSP) is a bitmap graphics editor and vector graphics editor for computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system that was originally published by Minneapolis-based Jasc Software. In 2004, Corel Corporation purchased Jasc Software, and with it, the distribution rights to Paint Shop Pro.

Originally called simply Paint Shop, the first version, 1.0, was released in early 1992. Paint Shop was originally distributed as shareware, but is now sold in the United States for about $100 which is considerably lower than the price of its main competition, Adobe Photoshop.

There is a later free trial version but to test Paint Shop Pro you need to create a Corel account on the company's Web site…forget that. There are also later versions available downloadable by torrent, but I don’t like the idea of using torrents, so forget that, too.

The older version (V.4) has served me well for years and has proven more than satisfactory for my needs of manipulating digital photos, making drawings or anything else I might want to accomplish with a paint program.

The more recent free versions available from Corel have not received favorable reviews. There have been reports of frequent crashes with one reviewer stating the free downloads, even from the Corel website, are so unstable they are almost worthless. His final words of advice: Stay away from Corel products. Poor products. poor tech support.

I have not tried any Corel products, but this older version of PSP is great. So, if you are looking for a good paint program with lots of features as one that is easy to use, try the old version 4.

Download no longer available...download from my Dropbox link:

 

Click HERE to download

Google Chrome

Google Chrome is a freeware Web browser developed, of course, by Google. Chrome is packed with highly convenient features. One great feature is privacy browsing. The browser boasts an incognito mode, which doesn’t track your browsing as you navigate webpages. When a browser in incognito mode is closed, it also deletes cookies and passwords from that session.
       Chrome is designed to keep you safer and more secure with its built-in malware and phishing protection, auto-updates to make sure you have all the latest security fixes. When you navigate to a website suspected of phishing or containing malware, the internet browser displays a warning. Chrome employs something called “sandboxing” which helps block malware and isolates what happens in one tab from affecting the others, so once you close a tab, that process is completely terminated. Sandboxing is an effective method for preventing malware from installing itself on your computer and monitoring your online activities or stealing personal information.
       Chrome also offers the Chrome Web Store which is an online store from Google.  You can install and run web applications unique to Google Chrome.  The store hosts free and paid applications.

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CCCleaner

CCleaner is a freeware system optimization, privacy and cleaning tool that removes unused files from your system allowing Windows to run faster and freeing up valuable hard disk space. Just in case you feel it necessary, it also cleans traces of your online activities such as your Internet history.

CCCleaner is a fully featured registry cleaner that will allow your computer be free from all kinds of trash.  It has   drive wiping tool that can wipe all the data from your hard drive or just  scrub the available free space.  This includes a simple one-pass overwrite or you can use a full-blown 7-pass overwrite, but it will be a much longer process.  It also has a cookie deleting feature.

In addition to the above, CCCleaner will empty your recycle bin, delete temporary files, and clean your Registry and it will also back up your Registry before you hit delete.  This is an important feature just in case it accidentally removes a crucial component. There's also an uninstaller for removing any program on your computer, but for this I prefer to use the Windows uninstaller.

CNET secure download

Free Online File Storage Dangers

There are many sites that offer cost-free file storage, but be aware that stored files, whether stored on internal and external drives, face a variety of dangers of being lost because of virus, corruption or crashes.

Advantages of free sites are, for example, files can be shared in situations where e-mail attachments of large documents can be sent.  It is much easier just to send a link to the document.  In addition, personal files like photographs, videos and music files can be shared publicly or privately through free file storage sites.

However, one must remember online storage companies don't guarantee customers a fail-safe backup system and legal experts say there is generally little recourse for consumers in the event of data loss when using such services.

"In general, consumers are out of luck," said Ira Rothken, an attorney based in San Rafael, Calif., who has litigated such cases in the past. "Frankly, it's understandable. There are always going to be glitches that lead to data loss."  He said consumers can protect themselves by ensuring that valuable files are adequately backed up. Some Web-based e-mail services, such as Yahoo Mail, allow customers to download e-mail to their desktops and retrieve them using a PC-based e-mail client such as Microsoft's Outlook.

Remember: it is a good idea not to store personal information of any kind on these sites.

ADrive File Storage

Offers 50 Gig of free storage

ADrive delivers online cloud storage services to millions of individuals, businesses and enterprise-level users. Our goal is to provide users with a convenient and reliable way to better manage their data from virtually anywhere, at any time.

Are you an individual user needing to back up your desktop files? A CIO needing to mirror your data to geographically diverse locations? We have a solution to meet your requirements!

Anytime access to your data, wherever you are.  Conveniently access your ADrive files at any time, from wherever you are. Simply log in to your ADrive account through any device to store, share or edit your files online. All you need is access to the Internet!  LINK TO SITE