Completely FREE Software - CFS Weekly Newsletter #496 issued November 28, 2008

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This electronic newsletter is registered – ISSN 1441-6840
Welcome to the CFS Weekly Newsletter.
The programs listed here are completely free for non-commercial use, even though some may be shareware or commercial products. None are time-limited and all are fully functional. If you know any that aren't exactly as specified, please let us know and they will be removed immediately.
If the link below does not work (does not take you directly to the program listing) it is probably because the site has been upgraded and the link is no longer valid. Please use the CFS Site Search facility (above) to locate the program.
COMPLETELY FREE SOFTWARE

Marble Arena v1.4 – WinXP/Vista
Marble Arena is a 3D arcade game where you collect stars using your bouncing marble while mastering air vents, jumppads & vortexes. It features 22 levels, several types of surfaces (sand, water, glass, ice, tarmac, grass, etc), optional AI controlled marbles, optional multi-player mode, you can earn upgrades, and more. Using physics, you bounce your marble around a 3D environment, with varying camera angles and zooms (dependent on the mouse cursor). The left mouse button jumps your marble (it behaves more like an air-filled beach ball than a solid marble) and the arrow keys move it around the board. Marble Arena is a challenging game of physics where you must learn to control your marble as you manoeuvre around the field, grabbing stars of various types. A surprisingly addictive game that will get you playing again, and again, and... Well, you get the picture. We loved! Note: we have been advised that this program is not suitable for Windows 95, 98 or ME. Access this 31.8MB download from: WinXP General Games

Hd Fit v1.0 – WinXP
Hd Fit is a tool that performs a test on the hard drive disk surface to determine the reason for slowness, data loss or disk drive malfunctioning. It features fast & advanced tests, HDD scan, it is simple to use, no installation required (just unzip and run), and more. This is a simple little program that can help identify hard drives that are dying and, hopefully, allow you to replace them before a major crash. There are two levels of testing – fast and advanced. We have no information on the differences between them but the advanced test does take considerably longer than the fast test so we assume that it is performing a more thorough surface test. Even with the advanced testing, a 250GB hard drive took only about 6 minutes to be tested so even massive hard drives should not take excessive time (set it going and get a coffee – it should be finished before you). We were disappointed that the information about the testing is not supplied and the results are open to interpretation (unless, like us, there were no errors at all!). Overall, Hd Fit is a worthwhile tool to keep on hand for those occasions when you think your hard drive is not performing to its normal fleetness. Try it yourself. Note: we have been advised that this program is only suitable for Windows XP. Access this 155kB download from: WinXP Desktop Utilities

Process Revealer v1.0 – WinXP/Vista
Process Revealer is a hidden-process detector that reveals running programs which do not always appear in standard detection utilities. It features detailed information about each running process, highlights hidden programs, kills hidden processes with one click, and more. Many utilities that give information about running processes, like the Windows Task Manager, can be fooled into not displaying information about hidden processes. This can be exploited by spyware and trojan writers to infiltrate your computer without being seen. Process Revealer displays all running processes, including the hidden ones, and gives sufficient information for the user to close down any suspect processes, or close down and then automatically delete the file so they cannot run again. While the interface is not pretty, and sometimes the information supplied is minimal, Process Revealer is still a "must have" utility to ensure that your computer is not being hijacked under your nose. We loved! Note: we have been advised that this program is not suitable for Windows 95, 98 or ME. Access this 69kB download from: WinXP Windows Enhancements

Christmas Gifts v1.1.0 – Win98/ME/XP/Vista
Christmas Gifts is a novelty, Christmas-themed vertically scrolling shooter where you must shoot gifts into the houses that come towards you. While this is a light-weight game, it is fun to play and will give you the Christmas giving-spirit all year round. Scores vary depending on how you deliver the gifts – if you can drop a gift down a chimney you get 500 points (200 bonus) or, if you put more than one gift into the same house, your normal 300 point gift delivery is reduced to 100 points. The only real downside to this game is the annoying house ad that appears when you close it. With its on-line high score, Christmas Gifts is a fun time waster. We liked! Note: because this program requires .NET Framework 2.0, it is not suitable for Windows 95. Access this 337kB download from: Win98 General Games

Red Eye Remover Pro v1.2 – Win9x/ME/XP/Vista
Red Eye Remover Pro is an advanced red-eye correction tool for removing red-eye from digital photos taken using a flash. It features automatic red-eye detection, batch processing of photos, supports 3 common image formats (JPG, BMP & PNG), offers manual adjustment of correction parameters, saves images individually or as a batch, optional renaming of corrected images, and more. This is an excellent red-eye removal program that can often detect red-eye and remove it though, if it does not select both eyes (or maybe misses both of them), it is simple to "draw" a box around each of the offending eyes with the mouse cursor and the program will them remove the red-eye. Once you have cycled through all the photos you have selected to be corrected (this is done individually to ensure that each one is corrected) you can then either save them as a batch, or individually save them. The level of correction for each image can be adjusted using slide controls (Darkening, Pupil detection & Correction strength), and there is a "Find" button to assist the program to locate red-eye. One of the better red-eye tools we have seen, Red Eye Remover Pro is hampered by a huge download size, caused by carrying a second program, Web Photo Album. This second program is an optional install. We would have preferred just to download the program we wanted, rather than get this second one which, to us, unnecessarily added to the download size. That aside, Red Eye Remover Pro is worth grabbing if you suffer from red-eye in your digital photos. Access this 9.48MB download from: Win95 Graphic Programs

Read Aloud v1.0.3 – WinXP/Vista
Read Aloud is a text-to-speech program that reads aloud text from various sources, specially the Web. It features a Clipboard monitoring tool, a text-only Web browser, a normal Web browser, an RSS feed reader, it records text to WAV file, and more. This is an amazing tool that can read any text copied into the Windows Clipboard using the default Microsoft Sam voice (included with .NET Framework 3.0), plus any text from a Web page or RSS feed using the built-in Web tools (based off Internet Explorer). It can also save any text to a WAV audio file for later listening. The built-in Web browser includes two modes – a text-only mode that just displays the actual text, and the normal mode (includes all images in the display, though it doesn't "read" the images). While there are other similar programs, we have yet to see one as all-encompassing as Read Aloud, and we particularly like the record-to-WAV function that does not require the text to be read aloud but creates a WAV file out of the text as rendered by the default "voice". The Clipboard Watcher tool resides as an icon the tray and reads aloud any text copied into the Clipboard. While Read Aloud has a definite Internet bias, it is just as much at home amongst other types of text files through the copy function (Clipboard Watcher). Technically, this is an advertiser-supported program as it uses Google ads in the main window. However, like the Google ads you see on Web pages, these are benign. Not just for the visually impaired, Read Aloud can be used by anyone who prefers to listen to text rather than read it. We loved! Note: we have been advised that this program is not suitable for Windows 95, 98 or ME. Access this 401kB download from: WinXP Multimedia Programs

Tidy Favorites SE v3.53 – Vista
Tidy Favorites SE is a program that allows access to Internet Favorites as live thumbnails in IE, Firefox and Opera, instead of trying to work through plain-text links. It features open/delete/move/resize/update bookmarks in a single click, use same Favorites in various browsers, control individual Favorites, animated thumbnails, and more. Unfortunately CFS was unable to review this program. We tried to run it under Windows XP and, while it worked, instead of Favorites being presented it displayed recently used links. The author says: "Too many bookmarks make your favorite links harder to navigate than firing up a search. Hundreds and hundreds of text-only favorites look exactly the same, cluttering your browser and becoming less and less usable with every new addition. Tidy up your links! With Tidy Favorites, you can now organize your bookmarks in a totally new fashion. Imagine how a Mac would do things – only Tidy Favorites does it better! Your favorites are conveniently organized as a set of live site thumbnails, but that hardly describes the convenience Tidy Favorites adds to your everyday life. Add, delete, copy and move favorite links with a single click. Tidy Favorites gives a complete freedom of what you can do to the links and their thumbnails. Select any part of a page to become a thumbnail – and see ground breaking news, weather or stock quotes every time you open your favorites. Hard to see the small print? Just click and drag to resize any thumbnail, making the really important links appear bigger as in tag clouds. Intuitively organized and custom-tailored to suit your needs, Tidy Favorites set a new standard in usability. Find a bookmark by quickly glancing through the list of Web shots, or search through your favorites from the browser's command line. With Tidy Favorites, you are not limited to any one browser – take your bookmarks with you and use them in IE, Firefox, and Opera at the same time!" Note: we have been advised that this program is only suitable for Vista. Access this 3.90MB download from: Vista Internet Related

Nuclear Motocross v1.0 – Win98/ME/XP/Vista
Nuclear Motocross is a horizontally scrolling 2D arcade game where you take your bike through dirt tracks and around mountains. It features more than 15 levels, you can collect bonuses or earn bonus points by performing stunts, it has challenging gameplay, is highly addictive, and more. This is a game of action where you progress through the various levels trying to build your point score. You get extra points for doing a 360 degree flip, or a wheelie, while grabbing bonus icons. It takes some practice to control the motocross bike proficiently, and you must move the rider's weight on the bike, forward and backward, by using the left and right arrows. The up and down arrows control power. For all the limitations of a 2D landscape, Nuclear Motocross is a challenging game that is fun to master. We loved! Note: we have been advised that this program is not suitable for Windows 95. Access this 5.66MB download from: Win98 General Games
UPDATE
Byteria Heroes: The Mother of All Games – an amusing platform game with Scrapper, a screwball who wants to conquer the world – has been updated to version 1.41 with a slightly smaller download size of 2.05MB. The author advises that changes in this version include: default key settings should be more notebook-friendly now; and fixed a problem with the high score list. Get this excellent game from: Win98 General Games
COMMENTS
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