My Top Free Tools

This isn’t exhaustive, but I have a hard time remembering all the apps I use when I reinstall my various PCs. The aim here is to remind myself, and maybe help someone else find a useful tool!

Graphics

Tools I use for graphics or image manipulation

    • Paint.Net - Paint.NET is free image and photo editing software for computers that run Windows. It features an intuitive and innovative user interface with support for layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools. An active and growing online community provides friendly help, tutorials, and plugins.

    • Snippy - How often have you carefully selected some text from a Web page and copied it to an email message? Snippy makes this a snap! Simply click on the little Snippy icon in the taskbar notification area, and mark out the region of the screen that you want to copy — that's it, you're done! The cut-out image will now be in your clipboard, and you can paste it in another application.

    • CamStudio - CamStudio is able to record all screen and audio activity on your computer and create industry-standard AVI video files and using its built-in SWF Producer can turn those AVIs into lean, mean, bandwidth-friendly Streaming Flash videos (SWFs)

      Web Development

      Tools I use for web development

      Remote Management

      Tools I use for managing and administering systems remotely

        • PuTTY - PuTTY is a free implementation of Telnet and SSH for Win32 and Unix platforms, along with an xterm terminal emulator.

        • RDTabs - Windows Remote Desktop is great, except when you have to connect to dozens of them and it fills up your taskbar! Enter RD Tabs: the ultimate tabbed Remote Desktop Client.

        • WinSCP - WinSCP is an open source free SFTP client and FTP client for Windows. Legacy SCP protocol is also supported. Its main function is safe copying of files between a local and a remote computer.

          Network Administration

          Tools I use when managing and troubleshooting networks

            • Wireshark - Wireshark is an award-winning network protocol analyzer developed by an international team of experts

            • GetIF - Getif is a free multi-functional Windows GUI based Network Tool written by Philippe Simonet. It is amongst other things, an excellent SNMP tool that allows you to collect and graph information from SNMP devices.

              Windows Administration

              Tools I use for managing and administering Microsoft Windows

                • Process Monitor - Process Monitor is an advanced monitoring tool for Windows that shows real-time file system, Registry and process/thread activity

                • Process Explorer - Ever wondered which program has a particular file or directory open? Now you can find out. Process Explorer shows you information about which handles and DLLs processes have opened or loaded.

                  Blogging

                  Tools I use when I am blogging

                    • Windows Live Writer - Writer makes it easy to share your photos and videos on almost any blog service—Windows Live, Wordpress, Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad, and many more

                      File Management

                      Tools I use for file management

                        • 7-Zip - 7-Zip is a file archiver with a high compression ratio. Packing / unpacking: 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2 and TAR - Unpacking only: ARJ, CAB, CHM, CPIO, DEB, DMG, HFS, ISO, LZH, LZMA, MSI, NSIS, RAR, RPM, UDF, WIM, XAR and Z.

                        • PeaZip - PeaZip can extract most of archive formats both from Windows and Unix worlds: currently 87 file extensions are supported ranging from mainstream 7Z, RAR, TAR and ZIP to experimental ones like PAQ/LPAQ family, currently the most powerful compressor available.

                        • ISO Recorder - ISO Recorder is a tool (power toy) for Windows XP, 2003 and now Windows Vista, that allows (depending on the Windows version) to burn CD and DVD images (DVD support is only available on Windows Vista), copy disks, make images of the existing data CDs and DVDs and create ISO images from a content of a disk folder.

                        • Microsoft Virtual CD Control Panel - Mount your ISO images as virtual CD/DVD drives

                        • Daemon Tools Lite - DAEMON Tools is an advanced application for Microsoft Windows which provides one of the best optical media emulation in the industry. DAEMON Tools enables you to use your CD/DVD images as if they were already burned to CD/DVD.

                          Virtualization

                          Tools I use for virtualization or management of VMs

                            • VMware Server - The free VMware Server is based upon VMware’s proven virtualization technology.