Completely FREE Software - CFS Weekly Newsletter #533 issued January 22, 2010

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(does not take you directly to the program listing) it is probably because the site has been upgraded and the link is no longer valid.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

Rescue Mission v1.0 – Win98/ME/XP/Vista/7
Rescue Mission is a multi-mission shoot 'm up where you kill the terrorists and free the hostages. It features time-based gameplay, powerups to collect, 3 levels of graphics' quality, optional sound, game pause, high scores, and more. Rescue Mission is a great little game that is extremely re-playable, many times over. You must free the captives and kill as many terrorists as you can. There are eight hostages to free in each mission, and a huge number of terrorists to kill. The author says that you should move fast, kill quick, and win! Good advice. This is a side-scrolling run 'n shoot game, and the gameplay varies as you progress through the game. We loved Rescue Mission. It is a terrific little time waster that most people should enjoy. The game is played through a Web browser that can play SWF files (all modern browsers should be able to handle this format). We have posted a copy of the game on CFS but it is freely available to everybody, not just to members. You can grab a copy of Rescue Mission and share it with your friends. Have fun. Note: we have been advised that this program is not suitable for Windows 95. Get this 1.54MB download from: Win98 General Games

Windows Double Explorer v0.3.6.0 – Win7
Windows Double Explorer is a Norton Commander-style twin pane file manager (Explorer replacement). It features a favorites toolbar (supporting drag 'n drop), displays 2 or more Explorer panes, integrates with the Windows user interface, supports shell extensions, and more. This is an excellent replacement for the poorly thought-out Windows 7 file manager. It emulates the Norton Commander or Total Commander twin pane file managers but it adds a third and fourth pane, depending on the configuration you require. It lacks many of the bells and whistles that other Explorer replacements offer, but it is targeted at Windows 7 users who, we are sure, are not very impressed with the version which Microsoft has included with that OS. Windows Double Explorer is still in early beta and should continue to improve with every new release. Even in this version, Windows Double Explorer is vastly superior to Windows Explorer, but we would like to see some more tweaking over future releases. To us, one of the drawbacks with this file manager is that it does not give the user a choice of file size configurations and only presents data file sizes in kilobytes – not very good if you have a 200+MB file! We would also have liked to have been able to tweak the appearance of the toolbars a little more, specially to be able to remove, say, the favorites toolbar if it is not in use. However, we were very impressed with Windows Double Explorer and we will be looking forward to seeing new releases as they become available. A "must have" if you are using the standard Windows 7 Explorer. We loved! Note: we have been advised that this program is not suitable for Windows 95, 98, ME or Vista. Access this 1.01MB download from: Win7 Windows Enhancements

DevVicky Word v1.0.0.0 – Win98/ME/XP/Vista/7
DevVicky Word is a stable, feature-full word processor that supports DOCX, DOC, RTF, ANSI, etc formats. It features a spell checker, has unlimited undo/redo, offers HTML & PDF import & export, bullets & lists, has nested tables support, XML editing support, a Doc Reader (reads a document out loud), is skinnable (10 skins included), and more. This is an excellent word processor that supports the Microsoft Word DOC format (97 to 2003) and the Microsoft Office Open XML format (DOCX). It also supports the popular HTML and PDF formats (including editing). While it is not quite as feature rich as Microsoft Word, it offers most of the requested and oft-used features of a commercial word processor. These include headers and footers, stylesheet formatting, tables, hypertext linking, Clipboard operations, find and replace, and lots more. It can also insert images into a document, and supports JPG, GIF, PNG, WMF, BMP and TIF images. Of course, there are some issues with DevVicky Word which we are looking forward to seeing fixed. The first is the spell checker, which looked for an Australian dictionary (we are based in Australia). It could not find one because only a US English dictionary is included in the download, and there was no option to select this dictionary. However, by renaming the 60,000 word US dictionary file (en-US.dic) to "en-AU.dic" we were able to fool the program (even though spelling checking was still in US English). We were also disappointed that, of all the Word formats to support, DevVicky Word does not support the generic Word 6.0/95 format used by Wordpad – when all else fails, all Windows users should be able to read a Word 6.0 document through Wordpad. DevVicky Word has a couple of other minor annoyances, like not having a recently used file list, and always defaulting to the RTF format, but overall it is a superb word processor that should be high on anyone's list of word processors. Even though we were critical of some aspects of DevVicky Word, it is a remarkable word processor, and one that most people will enjoy using. Grab a copy now! Note: we have been advised that this program is not suitable for Windows 95. Access this 15.0MB download from: Win98 Text Programs

Time Zone Calculator v1.2 – Win98/ME/XP/Vista/7
Time Zone Calculator is a small utility that calculates the time difference, and the current time, between any two major cities in the world. It features time zone information for over 820 cities worldwide, adjusts for daylight saving time (DST), "remembers" the previous city settings, optional calculation for midnight or noon of base city, and more. This is a handy little tool for travelers and Internet users. You can find out what time it is in another city in another time zone, virtually anywhere in the world. All time zones are covered so even if a city is not listed, a nearby city in the same time zone can usually be found. It has a built-in database of cities with their time zones and DST settings, but you would have to constantly check the DST information as this can change from year to year, city to city. To use Time Zone Calculator you set up your "base" city on the left, and select your remote city on the right. Current time, time zone and DST information (if applicable) is displayed for both cities. It also shows the difference in hours between the two cities. Dates are shown in the US format which does not allow for different formats used elsewhere (ie many countries use dd/mm/yyyy instead of mm/dd/yyyy). As the current time and date is drawn from Windows, it would not be hard to use the regional settings from Windows too. Apart from the date format problem, the only real worry we had about the program was the continued accuracy of the DST information. It might also have been nice for some visual assistance (for example, a map of the world showing time zones in different colors). Overall, Time Zone Calculator is a worthwhile utility to have around so you can check times in cities in other time zones (specially across the world). We liked! Note: we have been advised that this program is not suitable for Windows 95. Access this 428kB download from: Win98 Desktop Utilities

Super MP3 Download v3.3.1.8 – WinXP/Vista/7
Super MP3 Download is a program to download over 100 million MP3 for free from the largest download network, and listen to music online before downloading. It features a built-in MP3 player, you can search title/artist/album, there are 14 music categories, a "hot song" list (USA Airplay Top 100), and more. This is an extremely fast MP3 finder that allows you to listen to a track before downloading it. Once you have decided on the track(s) you want simply click on the download button and you will prompted where to save it on your hard drive. This could be a fantastic MP3 downloader except for one major problem – it is crippled so you can only download five tracks on the same day. It is also crippled with the download speed which, while not snail pace, is much slower than it should be. Get the expensive Pro version and you will get unlimited downloads and much faster downloads. This free version nags for you to purchase the Pro version. We can live with the slow download speed, but the five-track daily limit cripples the program too much for us. We are also concerned about the legality of the music available for download. If you only want to grab five tracks per day, and the copyright problems do not worry you, then grab a copy of Super MP3 Download. You will probably love it! Note: we have been advised that this program is not suitable for Windows 95, 98 or ME. Access this 3.75MB download from: WinXP Multimedia Programs

BackUp Maker v6.001– WinXP/Vista/7
BackUp Maker is a data backup & restore program that can backup to local (your hard drive, a CD/DVD, a USB drive, etc) or remote sites. It features scheduled or "on demand" backups, it backs up files/folders/drives, offers password protected backups (AES with 256-bit encryption), includes an integrated CD/DVD driver, can back up to secure SSL connection (FTPS), compresses data using the ZIP compression algorithm, Wizard setup, and more. This is a backup program that ticks all the right boxes. It offers virtually every feature you could desire, including a Wizard-style setup to create your backup data. While not the fastest backup program we have used, BackUp Maker combines an easy-to-use interface with a powerful backup engine. Our main criticism is that if you select to backup the Windows user data (by selecting your username from the list) you will find that it will take hours to complete a backup, and you will have to keep on telling it to ignore certain files which are currently in use by Windows (we had hundreds of these files!). If we had set up the backup to occur when we weren't there we would have come back to a stopped backup while it waited for our input to "try again" to backup a file (don't bother) or ignore. When we finally gave up, stopped the backup, removed the requirement to save our user files, and then started it again, it only took about 5 minutes to complete a quite large backup. The completed backup can be saved with the date included in the filename (handy if you are saving multiple backups) and it can either be opened by the program, or by any ZIP archive manager. Either way, specific files or folders can be selected to be restored, you don't have to restore all backed up files. Apart from the username issue, the other thing we didn't like about BackUp Maker was that every time you load the program you get a 10-second nag screen to buy the commercial version, even though it is the same program which is free for non-commercial use. Overall, BackUp Maker is a well constructed, powerful backup tool that is easy to use. If you aren't already backing up your data then this program is a "must have". Get a copy now! Note: we have been advised that this program is not suitable for Windows 95, 98 or ME. Access this 4.32MB download from: WinXP General Programs

Photo Wall v0.75 – WinXP/Vista/7
Photo Wall is a small program that generates a single image (a photo wall) consisting of different photos or other images. It features selectable canvas size, selectable thumbnail size, optional random placement, saves the "wall" as a JPG image, it is simple to use, and more. This is a fun little program to create a single image of a collection of images. By changing the canvas size, and the size of the thumbnails, you can vary the number of images required to fill the "wall". The maximum canvas size of 3,000 x 5,000 pixels, and the maximum size of each thumbnail is 5,000 x 5,000 (yes, you read correctly – the largest thumbnail will not fit on the canvas!). Photo Wall has a couple of potential problems. First, your images must be all the same size, and all the same orientation (horizontally or vertically) or they will stretched to fit the selected thumbnail dimensions. Secondly, the program does not prompt for a filename when it saves the "wall", it is saved in the Photo Wall folder as gallery.jpg. Unless it is immediately renamed or moved it will be overwritten the next time you click on the "Save to JPEG" button. Photo Wall is a fun little program that could be easily improved to make it more user-friendly and more practical. Even as it is, most users will get a lot of fun creating "walls" of their photos. Give it a try! Note: we have been advised that this program is not suitable for Windows 95, 98 or ME. Access this 237kB download from: WinXP Graphic Programs

Fun Pool 9 v1.0 – Win9x/ME/XP/Vista/7
Fun Pool 9 is a billiards-style simulator to play Pool 9 (or 9 Ball) where you must sink the balls in order, from lowest number to highest. It features 1- & 2-player modes, includes ball path indicators to see the likely direction of the cue ball, adjustable power levels, simple rules, addictive gameplay, and more. We had a problem when we tried to play this game on our test computer. It uses Adobe Flash Player, but Flash Player kept on crashing so we reviewed the game by playing it on Virtual XP (a feature of Windows 7). We are still unsure if the problem is just with us, or if the game really will not play under Windows 7. The screenshots we took are from the on-line version. To the game itself. Fun Pool 9 is a terrific way to play Pool on your computer, either against the computer or against a friend. The computer opponent is not perfect, and makes lots of mistakes (just like a human player) so it is not intimidating to play without a human opponent. Rules are simple, but the game is, like the real thing, quite challenging. We had some issues with the cue going outside of the game window and therefore not being effective, and also with the touchiness of the mouse controlled cue. These very minor issues aside, if you enjoy Pool, Billiards or Snooker, you will probably love Fun Pool 9. We did! Access this 2.83MB download from: Win95 General Games
COMMENTS
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