1. I actually do pay for most of this stuff. Not much, but if somebody has a donation button, I pretty much always donate somewhere between $5 and $20. It’s the right thing to do.
2. As they say in the open source world, this is all free as in beer, but only some is free as in speech.

Everybody knows about browsers and email clients, so that stuff comes last. I’m trying to list some stuff that you might not know about, but which will (er.. may) improve your life. Then again it may not. I’ve arranged the list in increasing order of geekiness, so things like MySQL clients are way down the list. Also, I have not bothered to include things like Firefox, Thunderbird, Winamp and such that everyone knows about.

So here’s the list. It’s Windows-centric, though some apps are available for other platforms.

Desktop Timer

• Egg Timer. How can this top my list when it’s such a small app and not actually even free? Is it really my favorite almost-free software? It’s not, but I like it a lot and it runs constantly on my computer because of the particular way I use it: I set it to go off every 40 minutes and when it goes off, I do some pushups, pullups or ab exercises. I keep a set of Powerblock dumbells near my desk (someday I have to write about why these are the best adjustable dumbells), so sometimes I can do curls or flys as well. Sometimes I just get a cup of tea if I’m lazy. These exercises every forty minutes are great for the health of my back and my eyes. My wife just started using it to time her rehab exercises for her frozen shoulder throughout the day. After months of frustration and no progress, her range of motion has finally started increasing again . I used to use a program that I wrote called Drop 20 because it goes off every 20 minutes and says “Drop and Give Me Twenty!” but I didn’t make the timer adjustable and I found every twenty minutes was just too frequent. Disclaimer: Egg Timer is actually not free, but since it only costs $5 and you can try the full version for free, it’s a lot like free and think it justifiably belongs in this list, rather than a list of $$$ tools that I like. Maybe some day I’ll get back to Drop 20 and fix it up, because it’s funnier than Egg Timer. You can download Drop 20 for free, no spyware, no obligations (but my copyright!). Seriously, the one thing I do like better about my app besides the humor is that it runs from the system tray, rather than taking up all that space on the task bar.

Foreign Character Typing

• AllChars. This tool is fantastic. Literally. If you type in more than one language or regularly use characters that are not on the keyboard (en and em dashes, copyright symbols, things like that), this thing ROCKS! It can be customized with your own characters and snippets and also handles a variety of special characters — that em dash was typed in .03 seconds using CTRL+m+- … and so was that ellipse with a simple CTRL+3+. One thing that’s cool is that AllChars does not interfere with other control sequences because it is sequential. In other words, you type CTRL, release it, type “m” and release it, type “-” and release it. That actually makes it much faster than having to hold down the CTRL key (and if you type one-handed while eating, it’s easier too.

French Dictionary a.k.a. Dictionnaire française

• XMLittré. As the name implies, this is the famous Littré multi-volume French dictionary available for download to run on your desktop. A few years ago, it would cost you perhaps the equivalent of 1000 euros to own this. Now it’s free and, if you’re like me with a penchant for the old and literary, this is superior to more recent dictionaries in many respects. Note: this is not a French-English dictionary, it’s a French dictionary and it runs on the open source StarDict engine, which you must install.

Task Reminder

• TaskPrompt. I’ve tried some paid task managers and of course there’s always Outlook if you have Microsoft Office. I like this one. It has everything I want.

Email Backup

I like to keep my inbox clean and I get some big attachements, so my account fills up from time to time and I have to delete messages. But sometimes I wish I hadn’t. But how do you back up you accounts?

• IMAPSize – a tool to backup the mail in your IMAP folders. Does one thing. Does it well. Free. It actually does some other stuff, but that’s what I use it for.
• Mozbackup – to backup of Thunderbird mail (and all Mozilla stuff). Too bad I’m not using Thunderbird anymore because it was crashing literally every five minutes. Someday perhaps they’ll fix it up and it will work again for me.

Desktop Search

The dominant conceptual model for a computer is still the desktop and file cabinet metaphor. That metaphor was fine when you had all your files on a 720kb floppy (which is the computer the Apple engineers invented for). The problem is, that model is broken and I have grown tired of looking through eighteen levels hierarchical directories. In steps search.

• Copernic Desktop Search. It still indexes the broadest variety of file types and I still have a certain number of legazy WordPerfect files, though the new version annoyingly always wants to open my browser and take me to the web. If I wanted all that web integration, I would use Google Desktop search. I don’t really want the browser interface/internet integration. I want a desktop tool and Copernic allows all sorts of filters (file type, file name, and so forth). I’ve lost my love affair with Copernic.
• Windows Vista Integrated Search via the Start Bar. For 90% of what I need, I use this, but for more obscure searches and anything based on file content rather than file name, I still use Copernic. It’s one of the few things that Vista brought me, aside from the ability to run Adobe CS3 as I’ve already mentioned (see my post on WebmasterWorld—Vista: get ready for pain). Yes, I know, it’s not free unless you already have Vista. And if you don’t already have Vista, do not crossgrade (I don’t use the word upgrade unless I truly feel it’s essential).

Graphics and Image Management.

• Irfanview. Irfanview is a simple image viewer and allows for some simple manipulation (resize, convert to other formats, rotate, lossless rotation, rename, gamma adjustment and a few others). It’s not Photoshop, but more often than not it’s what I use. I particularly appreciate the ability to do lossless JPEG rotations in batch based on EXIF information. In other words, my camera attempts to add a note to the EXIF information in the JPEG file that tags it with the orientation of the camera when the picture was taken. I can just Select All in Irfanview thumbnail view and rotate all my images correctly in one go. I can also batch resize, add a little sharpening, and batch rename all my images. Unless I have an image that needs a lot of manipulation, I just don’t bother to fire up Photoshop.
• Exifer. This really fits the “Do one thing and do it well” definition. It didn’t used to be totally “free” in that it was a “postcardware” (i.e. you have to send the author a postcard). Now it’s unmaintained and no postcard required and, though five years old and the author says it’s not up to modern standards for speed and whatnot, it works just fine for me on Vista. Exifer allows you to edit EXIF info in your image files. One of the cool things it lets you do is sort images by the timestamp in the EXIF info, and then rename them with a sequential counter. So when my wife and I take pictures on different cameras, if the clocks in the cameras are synched up, it will sort them nicely even if you’ve changed the file creation timestamp. That sounds obscure, but it can be real handy.
• Iconico Color Picker. A really great color picker. Similar to the Whatcolor tool above—a little more sophisticated for picking colors, but without the color names for most colors.

Mapping and Hike Planning

• Google Earth. Nothing more fun when planning a hike. Has Yosemite Trails on it.

Search Tools

That’s for another article as there are a zillion search tools, but just to throw one out:

• Quintura Search maps your search as a sort of linguistic web. I’m sure there’s a practical usage for it, but I enjoy it’s entertainment value.

Zip Utility

• IZARC. I’ve tried so many of these over the years. Got sick of paying for them, but was disappointed with the free versions until I found this one. It is much faster than the other free utility I used to use, is much more stable with Vista, and can handle almost every format.

FTP Client

• Filezilla is excellent and, in fact, also has a free FTP server as well, but I’ve never had a need. As good or better than any free or paid tool I’ve used.

Registry Cleaners and System Cleanup Tools

These might scare you a bit, but I’ve never had a problem. I have over the years had various paid ones and don’t see any real advantage — none of them really get everything and these are a lot less bloated.

• Eusing Free Registry Cleaner. Does one thing and does it pretty well.
• CCleaner – a registry cleanup and file system cleanup tool. So it does two things. It doesn’t matter which of these you run first, the other will find some remaining junk. Run them both. Watch the options on CCleaner and make sure you set it as you want.
• Startup Inspector. Lets you get control of everything that loads into your computer at startup. Slowing down? You probably have all kinds of junk running in the background that you don’t even know about.

File Rename

• AF5 batch file renamer. Why would need a file renamer when you can just right click and rename? If you asked that, you don’t need one. If, however, you sometimes need to batch rename, perhaps even based on regular expresssions, then this can save you a lot of time. You can definitely download it, install, and then use it to rename 100 files a lot faster than you’ll ever do it using the Windows interface.

Simple Programming Editors

• HAPEdit. I use this when programming in PHP. Good syntax highlight, code suggestion, brace and parenthesis matching. Everything I need. I’ve tried a lot open source PHP IDEs and they’ve never really had much value to add, but did add a lot of bloat and instability. If you really want something better, you need to pony up $300 for the Zend Environment, which has kickbutt debugging. But this is a list of free tools and $300 ain’t free. Some people tell me they don’t need code suggestion because they know PHP well. My response is: I don’t need spell check, because I know Englsih rreally wlle… oops. It will save you a lot of bugs from typos.
• Notepad++ has a lot of the same features as HAPEdit, but does not have code suggestion. is a bit different. It’s a bit lighter, a more appropriate Notepad replacement, but not quite as feature-rich for PHP programming.

MySQL Desktop Client

• SQLYog. Wait, doesn’t MySQL come with a perfectly adequate command-line interface? Yes, it does, but so does SQLYog, but SQLYog aslo comes with a GUI table browser, and lots more. Awesome productivity tool. The free version doesn’t do HTTP Tunneling to let you connect to a remote server that has only the SSL port open, but for developing in your sandbox, the free version is awesome. By the way, you can also use PHPMyAdmin… if you really have to… but you will suffer. Not to knock it, but being browser-based, it is just not anywhere near as fast and versatile as SQLYog (though it will work on a remote server).

Testbed Server Sandbox

If you’re going to build websites, you really need to have a testbed server so that you can test your PHP scripts. It lets you test WordPress, Drupal or what have you locally before showing your mistakes to the world or bringing your site down with a typo.

• WAMPServer — there are many packages to install a free server using Apache and MySQL and PHP. I used to install them all separately and you still can of course. I also used to use ApacheFriends until I went to Vista and it had problems. Now I use this one. They all get you to the same point but lately this one works best for me. The ApacheFriends package will also install PERL if you need that, and I don’t think WAMPServer does.