Completely FREE Software - CFS Weekly Newsletter #501 issued January 16, 2009

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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(does not take you directly to the program listing) it is probably because the site has been upgraded and the link is no longer valid.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

Sniper Defense – Win98/ME/XP/Vista
Sniper Defense is a fun shooter where you must protect the castle against legions of suicide bombers. It features 2 levels of difficulty, choose from 6 characters (each with separate attributes), various types of enemy bombers, powerups to collect, excellent animated graphics, 3 levels of image quality, and more. This is an excellent little game which utilizes the mouse to aim and fire. You have a number of suicide bombers attacking the castle of which you are its sole defender. There are various types of bombers – some you can destroy by shooting the bomb on their backs, others you should avoid as they are dummy bombers, some others are carrying such a powerful bomb that you must shoot them in the head to avoid exploding the bomb on their backs which could still destroy your castle, etc. Fortunately they are color coded (how helpful of them!) so you know which ones to shoot and which ones to avoid. The gameplay is traditional and gets progressively harder with each new level. There are six characters from which to choose, and each of those have different attributes with different weapons. Theoretically you could call this six different games using the same basic interface/scenario. It is hard to fault Sniper Defense as it relies heavily on the tried and true shooter genre for the base game, and then adds some nice little touches to enhance the genre further. Our biggest complaint is that it displays ads (from MochiAds) at the start of the game and, while these appear to be benign (they don't transmit your banking details to a third party), they are mildly invasive as you must wait for the ads to finish so that the game will load. While this takes about 15 seconds, we have no doubt that the game would take virtually that long to load if it didn't display these ads. That aside, we enjoyed playing Sniper Defense. It is a great little shooter that is lots of fun to play. Try it for yourself. Access this 3.61MB download from: Win98 General Games

Screenshot-by-Email v1.0 – Win98/ME/XP/Vista
Screenshot-by-Email is a small utility that creates a snapshot of the screen, or just the active window, compresses it into a Zip-archive, and composes an e-mail message with your screenshot ready to be sent. It features very small ZIP size, can save a screenshot to file, resides as an icon in the tray, has an optional hot-key operation, can be started with Windows, and more. If you have a need to send screenshots to other people via e-mail then this is the answer to your prayers. While you can manually place the screenshot in the Clipboard, use an image editor to save it to file, use a compression tool to compress the image file, then attach the file to a new e-mail message; Screenshot-by-Email does all of that with a single click! You can preset the recipient's e-mail address in the Options dialog box but, if that is left blank, you can fill that detail in when it opens up a new e-mail in your default e-mail client (Outlook, Eudora, Thunderbird, etc). E-mails created through Screenshot-by-Email do include a comment that the e-mail was created by the program and includes the program's homepage, but this information can be deleted before an e-mail is sent if that is offensive to you. We didn't find it at all offensive and consider that any recipient of these attached screenshots might want to grab a copy of the program for themselves. We created and e-mailed a screenshot that was only a 45kB Zipped file but which contained a 1.63MB BMP image – an excellent reduction in size! Screenshot-by-Email is only free for non-commercial use, but that is its only limitation. Impressive every way you look at it, Screenshot-by-Email is a very handy little program to keep on hand. We loved! Note: we have been advised that this program is not suitable for Windows 95. Access this 530kB download from: Win98 Internet Related

TwistedBrush Open Studio v15.65 – Win9x/ME/XP/Vista
TwistedBrush Open Studio is a digital paint and photo editing program. It features layers, masks, tablet support, scanner support, over 100 filters, Lua scripting support, supports 12 image formats (BMP, EMF, GIF, PCD, PCX, PNG, PSD, TBR, TGA, TIF, WBMP & WMF), drawing guides, image warping tools, text support, gradients, tracing paper, reference images, recording to video files, up to 500 levels of undo/redo, and more. This is an amazing photo-editing tool and digital paint program. It has an amazing array of features but, unfortunately, has only nine brushes. The Pro version has over 5,000 brushes, but you can purchase additional brushes for the free version, but the nine basic brushes provided in this version should be sufficient as a starter for the amateur digital artist. But TwistedBrush Open Studio is not just about creating digital art, it is also about photo editing and the tools provided are superior to most other free image editors. We were most impressed with TwistedBrush Open Studio. It has an easy-to-use interface, is extremely powerful, and offers a wide variety of tools. That it is slightly lacking in the brush department is its only downfall. A "must have" for anyone into digital imagery. Access this 11.0MB download from: Win95 Graphic Programs

Minimalemmings v1 – Win9x/ME/XP/Vista
Minimalemmings (also known as "Lemming Rescue") is an Adobe Flash-based challenging 4-level puzzle where you must save the Lemmings by dragging the blocks at the bottom of the game screen to direct the Lemmings to the exit point. Existing gray blocks are fixed but you can move the blocks from the bottom to any supported free location on the screen. There are a number of the same type of block (indicated by the number underneath the block). This is not an easy puzzle to solve, specially on the third and fourth levels, but the challenge is worthwhile. There are numerous solutions for each level and you can restart a level by clicking on the "Kill Lemmings" button. We enjoyed the challenge of this puzzle. Minimalemmings is a little frustrating initially, until you get the feel for the game and how to manipulate the path of the Lemmings to direct them to the exit point. Graphics are minimalistic but more than adequate for your enjoyment. Worth grabbing! Note: this game is hosted by CFs but is freely available to everybody – you can also share it with your friends. Get this 37kB download from: Win95 General Games

MP3 to CD Converter & Burner v2.5 – Win98/ME/XP/Vista
MP3 to CD Converter & Burner is a program that creates audio CDs from MP3, WMA, WMV or ASF files. It features an easy-to-use interface, the track order can be determined, it plays audio files with a built-in audio player, you can edit ID3 tags, there are a variety of burning speeds, 4 burning modes, and more. This is a simple program that can convert those MP3 files you purchased over the Internet into an audio CD capable of being played in virtually all CD players. It lacks all the (usually unnecessary) bells and whistles of the heavy-weight burning tools but is small and fast to load. The only issues we had with MP3 to CD Converter & Burner is that there are some settings in the Burn dialog box which could cause confusion – six or seven burn speed settings (the default is the slowest!) and four mode settings. We were caught when we did a test burn and wondered why it was taking so long until we realized that it was set to the minimum 4x our burner can handle whereas our hardware can burn at up to 48x. The program queries the burner hardware to see all the viable burning speeds and then uses the minimum as the default. While it is simple to re-adjust the burning speed every time you use the program, unless someone is using MP3 to CD Converter & Burner regularly he or she would probably forget this step until after burning had started, and then be annoyed at how long it was taking. The four mode settings would mean little to most users and they would wonder which of those settings is correct. There is no Helpfile with the program and the on-line tutorial does not explain those four mode settings. Apart from our issues with those two settings, MP3 to CD Converter & Burner is a superb burning tool that can turn a complicated job into a relatively easy one. We liked! Note: we have been advised that this program is not suitable for Windows 95. Access this 2.21MB download from: Win98 Multimedia Programs
COMMENTS
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