LastPass takes the pain out of password management, providing users with an excellent cross-platform password management tool that allows users to easily keep track of logins, passwords, and other online credentials through the use of an encrypted password vault that only you know the password to. The service provides free cross-platform syncing, a password generator, and an auto-form fill tool for a variety of browsers, with premium subscriptions unlocking more features such as premium two factor authentication, account sharing, and LastPass for Applications.
Why blow your budget on expensive subscriptions for office applications like spreadsheet or document editors, or be dependent on the vagaries of the cloud with browser-based tools when you can get an excellent productivity suite for your desktop free, open-source, and offline? That's the idea behind The Document Foundation's LibreOffice , a free suite of office tools that provide users with a complete set of productivity tools for handling everything from documents, spreadsheets, slideshow presentations, and more.
LibreOffice is that wonderful combination of free and polished, making it a great alternative to expensive professional office tools. Need to keep in touch with friends and family from across the world?
Tell them to download and install Skype on their computer, and do the same with yours. Skype remains popular because it makes free video calls over the internet possible, even with contacts that are literally halfway around the world.
The only problem: you need a good internet connection to maximize it. Need to play that video or audio clip stored in an obscure file format? Chances are VLC get the job done. Even if you can play almost any kind of music or video on your computer, what about your smartphone or tablet? Free Video Converter can take your media and make it compatible for mobile consumption.
Need to keep important information within reach no matter what computer—or gadget—you use? The setup is a potential alternative to bringing around files on a USB hard disk or flash drive. But for slightly more complicated visual manipulation, Paint.
NET is a free option. This program is actually so versatile, since it mimics some significant features found in more advanced image editors like Adobe Photoshop. Windows' built-in Notepad program is quite functional and works as advertised. However for those who write code web designers, web developers, programmers, etc. This very versatile text editor supports hundreds of formats, and even features support for plugins that make it much more useful. Ninite is a bit of a cheat, in that it's less a program, and more an automated installer for a variety of popular PC utilities.
Hop on over to the Ninite website, and you're presented with a menu of programs that you might want to install, such as browsers, productivity tools, and media players. Check off the ones you want, and then download the custom Ninite installer, and the app will handle the rest on execution, downloading the latest installer for each app and installing it in the default location with extra crapware and bloatware offers automatically declined.
It's a handy one stop shop for getting your new machine in gear. Comments John Corpuz. Topics Software. See all comments Might as well load them up now, or you'll end up groaning when some program asks for one. Maybe none? IrfanView - Optional You probably already know how to take screenshots on your PC or otherwise deal with images in bulk, but IrfanView can run automatically in the background taking shots at different intervals.
It is also our favorite tool for mass resizing, cropping, conversion, and so on. Powerful automation tools, and good for just viewing images, too. Windirstat - Right now your new PC is whistle-clean, but it won't always be that way. Windirstat gives you a nice visual breakdown of how all your storage is allocated, making it easy to locate some big chunky files you might want to toss in the recyle bin.
TeamViewer - A very handy tool for accessing your PC remotely. A free, easy-to-use remote desktop program. Also a good way to help parents troubleshoot their computers, if you can walk them through installing it. Otherwise, grab the more bloated but more powerful Adobe Acrobat. If you're assembling your own installer, give each of the above programs a checkmark, then click "Get Your Ninite" to create an installer that bundles all of these programs together. Then run it, sit back, and watch your PC fill up with the utilities you'll be using all the time.
You probably know exactly which launchers you need, but depending on what games you play, or where you like to hunt for deals, you should consider installing the following:. Afterburner is an awesome free combo package for overclocking your GPU and making your games run better. The graphics overclocking part of the program will let you tweak the settings of your GPU, getting even more performance out of a card with higher memory and processor clocks.
The built-in hardware monitoring will help you tune in performance. But plenty of overclocking utilities can do all that. Some games deliver frames at an uneven pace, making performance choppy, and their own framerate controls aren't up to par. Oh yeah: it can capture screenshots, too. Yes, it makes your screen look orange and weird. But stick with f. The tagline "software to make your life better" may sound trite, but when you're preventing headaches and improving your quality of sleep, it really is true.
It kicks in towards the end of the work day, warming the typical LCD white-blue to something much easier on the eyes. If you use iOS's "Night Shift" mode, you've already experienced what f. Glimpse is a bit easier to use but can do all the same stuff as GIMP. It's probably the best free tool around for editing images if you need to do anything more complicated than cropping.
In the rare instance that one of them doesn't work, the other almost certainly will. We prefer MPC by a hair, mostly due to its menu layout and how quickly instantly, really it starts up. Plus, if you ever want to play two big video files side-by-side, why not have both? Another very handy free tool.
SoundSwitch lets you set basic keyboard shortcuts to swap between audio inputs and outputs. If you tend to swap between speakers and headphones, for example, you can make a shortcut for that, instead of having to open the Windows sound settings.
I also love that it lets you set a pop-up to show which device you've switched to—so if you can't hear anything, you can easily tell which device your PC is trying to output sound to. It's a small utility and a cinch to install. I wrote more about it in a full article here. Whatever gaming mouse you use, it's got software to go with it that will let you bind your keys, adjust the DPI, and more.
Download it to configure your mouse to your liking. Our favorite gifmaking tool. Gifcam is a free, very small program that lets you record an area of your screen, edit the gif frame-by-frame, add effects, and export at a nice compressed size.
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