This free guide to Windows 10 is very useful if you’ve migrated from Windows 7 or are new to Windows 10. It covers the essentials to get users up and running in a relatively painless way. Microsoft’s free downloadable Quick Start Guide takes you through most of the features of Windows 10. The 32 page PDF file has a basic overview of Windows 10, but combined with links to videos, virtual assistants, and how-to articles it extends useful resources beyond the PDF file.
The 5 best free alternatives to Windows DVD Maker
Windows DVD Maker was a free DVD authoring tool that was included in some editions of Windows Vista and Windows 7. Unfortunately, even though it was used by many people, Microsoft decided to stop including it in their operating systems, starting with Windows 8. If you use a computer running Windows 10 or Windows 8.1, you won't find it included. We thought it would be a good idea for us to look for free alternatives to Windows DVD Maker and share them with you. These are the best free alternatives to Windows DVD Maker that we could find: Free Large File Transfers
The best way to send large files in a safe, secure and compliant way. Many are limited in size for free. Often to send larger files up to 20GB you need to pay a subscription. Since writing this I have discovered Smash, and at the time of writing it has NO size limits... Smash is a newcomer, launching last year. It has some nice features, such as changing the amount of days a file is valid, from 1-14 days. The standard is seven days. The ability to preview a file before you download it is a great feature, allowing recipients to see the files before they download them (this can be deactivated). Other features: - no size limits at the time of this writing - files sent as a link or an email - files can be password protected - files can be sent to multiple recipients pCloud is primarily a file storage service with a file transfer feature and the only one to offer file encryption. If you take advantage of the file encryption, you create a password that's shared with the recipient(s) so the files can be downloaded. Features: - 5 GB file size - file sent as email with link - files can be sent to multiple recipients (10) - optional file encryption Filemail's founders couldn't find a good way to send large files so they created one. In addition to adding files, it has an add folder function. Directions for sending folders can be found here. The free plan allows 2 transfers per 24 hours from the the same IP address. Features: - 50 GB file size - files sent as link or email - files can be sent to multiple recipients - files available for 7 days If you send very large files, compressing them before sending them cuts down on the transfer time. WeTransfer: is the simplest way to send your files around the world. Every month, users in 195 countries send one billion files through our platform. Founded in 2009, our team is based in the Netherlands and the US. You can upload a maximum of 2GB per transfer using our free service. This can be 1 2GB file or several files which total 2GB. The files are held for 7 days and you will get an email to let you know when they have being collected. There is no need to register or sign up... MailBigFile: Is another website that allows you to send up to 2GB of files for free before you need to pay for it. You do need to register to use MailBigFile but once registered its free to use for transfers up to 2GB. You are also invited to use their business Account for 30 days free. File Converter is a free open source Windows program that converts and compresses a variety of file formats from the right click menu in Windows File Explorer. Once installed, it appears in the context (right click) menu.
Here's how you can still get a free Windows 10 upgradeMicrosoft's much-hyped free upgrade offer for Windows 10 ended in 2016, right? Not exactly. The GWX tool may be gone, but all the other upgrade tools still work. The end result is an apparently valid digital license, and there's no evidence that the free upgrades will end any time soon. Click here:
The 101 Most Useful Websites on the Internet
Photopea is an advanced image editor designed to be a Photoshop replacement that runs in your browser. Photopea is unique among online image editors because it can open and export PSD (Photoshop) files. It also supports Sketch, SVG, XD and CDR formats. It can easily handle simple tasks like resizing images as well as more complex tasks, such processing photos, creating illustrations, designing webpages, and more. Photopea was built from the ground up with the intent of supporting PSD files. Anyone who uses Photoshop will feel right at home. DuckDuckGo
is the most stupidly named search engine around, but it's actually pretty good to use. It works just as you would expect - type something into the box and the results appear in a familiar format. But the most compelling reason to use it is that, unlike most other search systems, it doesn't track you, doesn't show you ads, and doesn't sell your data to other companies who might want to show you ads in the future for things you've been searching for. DuckDuckGo is free to use. Just head to their website to use it. If you like it, set it as your home page in whatever browser you use. Photo Companion: Microsoft has just released a new app for Android and iOS that makes photo transfer easy, so long as the phone and computer are both on the same WiFi network. Oh, and you'll need to be running Windows 10 on the PC.
With the app installed, choose the photos you want to transfer, and then your computer will display a QR code. Use the phone to scan the QR code, and the transfer takes place. No cable required. The app is called Photos Companion so you can search for it in your app store or the Play store. How to get apps on to older Ipads
The companies who make these devices want them to be short lived. What better way to make money than have us buy a new iPad even year or two? But unless your iPad is really broken or totally shot, you don’t have to get a new one. Also now you can pick up one from €50 and would made a good tablet to use. If you feel that your iPad is not what it used to be, a few simple actions may restore some of its original zest. To install apps: First make sure when setting up your Apple ID on the iTunes store to select None as payment.
A guide to safely and securely installing software -
https://www.comparitech.com/blog/information-security/safely-download-and-install-software/ it probably isn’t for the more advanced visitors but there will be many who will find this incredibly useful. Particularly because downloading software from a CD is becoming a thing of the past and many computer users who feel happier with something physical like a CD now have to switch to downloading files directly from a website so are at risk if they don’t follow some best practices. Free Screen Capture Programs
Greenshot is a light-weight screenshot software tool for Windows with the following key features. Easily annotate, highlight or obfuscate parts of the screenshot. Exports the screenshot in various ways: save to file, send to printer, copy to clipboard, attach to e-mail, send Office programs or upload to photo sites like Flickr or Picasa, and others. ShareX lets you capture all or part of the screen, and you can even capture non-rectangular areas too. Plus, there are dozens of additional options such as being able to apply OCR to text in an image, and upload captured images to various picture-sharing sites. If you often find yourself needing to grab and save images, perhaps as part of a web-based research exercise, then this program will save you loads of time. ShareX is free, and is a 5 MB download from the GetDShareX website. The file is malware-free according to VirusTotal, and the download site is rated as reputable by Web of Trust. Easy Screen OCR, If you see an image of a page from a newspaper and you want to extract the text. The program is called Easy Screen OCR. It's a 7 MB download. The file is malware-free according to VirusTotal, and the download site is rated as reputable by Web of Trust. Top Quality Freeware
If you like top-quality freeware and you haven't yet checked out Ninite, then you really should try it. It's a really quick and safe way to install loads of software on your computer in one hit. To start, head to https://ninite.com/. And make your choice from over 80 different programs. Click to select as many or as few as you want. The site will then offer you a custom-made downloader, which you download to your computer and click to run. The downloader itself is small, at around 0.5 MB, but it contains all the necessary instructions to download and install all of your chosen apps. If you have a physical disability that makes it difficult to use a traditional PC keyboard, or you look after someone who does, take a look at Click2Speak. It's an on-screen keyboard, with predictive text that works like a mobile phone, that lets you create and store a library of sentences. You can then have the PC speak any of those sentences out loud, with a single click.
PeaZip is a really nice, free program for Windows that's a file manager with built in compression/decompression features. It handles loads of formats, and seems pretty powerful. Its main competitor is probably 7Zip, but I reckon that PeaZip looks nicer and is easier to use. it's a 7 MB download. The site is rated as reputable by Web of Trust, and the software is malware-free according to VirusTotal.
Free Web Browsers
Pale Moon: the installer is around 1 MB, although it'll then download a further 32 MB when you run it. From my tests, both the installer and the additional downloads are malware-free and safe to use. If you're still using Internet Explorer (which is now pretty much out of date) or Microsoft Edge (which I personally think is awful), give Pale Moon a try and see what you think. If you don't like it, at least you can use it to download yet another browser to try. Slimjet : is a free browser that blocks ads, down loads videos and is portable. It integrates neatly with Facebook and provides extra features. Just download the file run it to decompress it then double-click the application icon to try the browser. Nothing gets added to your PC's registry so you can simply delete the downloaded folder if you don't like it and every trace of the application will be gone. You can keep it on a USB stick and run it on multiple machines. The Ultimate Free OS For Privacy.
Tails is a version of Linux that's specifically designed to offer the ultimate in privacy and anonymity. Download it, burn it to a USB stick or a DVD, and you have a live operating system that you can use to boot any computer. It's built-in web browser ensures that everything goes via the Tor network. Emails and documents are automatically encrypted. When you turn off the computer and remove the Tails disk, no trace of your session gets left behind. In fact, Tails stands for "the amnesic incognito live system", which pretty much sums up what it does. If you're interested in trying it, head to https://tails.boum.org/install/win/usb-overview/index.en.html where you can download the latest version (3.5) that was released a few days ago. Be aware that the download is a rather hefty 1,800 MB (that's 1.8 GB). It's safe to try on any PC - simply remove the Tails disc and reboot in order to get back to Windows. To use Tails properly, you'll want to burn it to a USB stick rather than a DVD, and then create a persistent storage area on that stick. This will ensure that you have somewhere to save files to when you're using Tails, and will effectively create a secure self-contained operating system that you can boot on any computer when you want to work in private. This is very handy if you often use computers in internet cafes, hotels and so on. Useful Software
FUN STUFF TO DO!
Got An iPad? Try This Instead Of iTunes On Your PC.This will copy documents, images etc from your iPod or iPad to your PC, and back again. And although it normally costs around $30, it's free at the moment if you're willing to take part in Digiarty's research. Just head to https://www.winxdvd.com/ios-android-mobile/itunes-contest.htm and click on the Winx MediaTrans Giveaway tab. You'll see a selection of speech bubbles representing some of the main complaints that people have about iTunes. Choose a few to reflect your own opinion, and you'll then be taken to a download link for the program. You'll receive a 27 MB installer which contains both the program and your licence key.
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eReaders
Free apps for Kindle e-readers and ebooks If you haven't got a Kindle, you can still get free Amazon Kindle books, on either your phone, your tablet or your Laptop or computer:.
Kindle Readers
Free apps for Kobo e-readers and ebooks The Kobo is Kindle's biggest rival, and has a lot more books available to buy (over four million). Kobo's added bonus is that unlike the Kindle, it can read ePub files, one of the most common file types for e-books. If you don't have a Kobo, you can still get Kobo books. Just download the apps to your mobile, tablet or PC:
The free software Calibre is a must for every e-reader owner and it converts file formats to the one supported by your device. More informations on ebooks at this website: Money Saving Experts. Do you you love to read? Then join BOOKBUD by submitting your email address and get free bestselling books for Kindle, Nook, and more. On January 6, 2016, The New York Public Library enhanced access to all public domain items in Digital Collections so that everyone has the freedom to enjoy and reuse these materials in almost limitless ways. Maintenance for your PC
Be sure to keep your antivirus updated on your PC. Uninstall previous Antivirus before putting on a new antivirus. Here is a list of 10 sure-fire signs your computer has a virus with a checklist of symptoms and signs that show your computer has a virus...More...... The solutions are listed below....another good list is this 41 Essential Skills for Windows Users...
Reference: http://lanpcs.com/tutorials.html. Last accessed 4th May 2017. Six free Microsoft Office alternatives Avoid the cost of Microsoft Office with six of the best free Office replacements for Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
Freemake.com have a pretty good list of media programs to down load such as Audio Converter, great to convert wav to mp3 etc. Video Converter and YouTube to Mp3 converter. Be careful downloading as you will have to select custom install, advance and untick backUp myPc or other programs that will be downloaded as well.
23 great places to download fonts for free There are plenty of places to download typefaces on the web. But if budgets are tight, you can't always stretch to a pricey typeface. So where should you look when you need the best free fonts? In this article, we've rounded up all the best places to download fonts that won't cost you a penny. Clipboard Manager
Despite Windows being 30 years old, Microsoft still hasn't improved on the basic clipboard functionality that was introduced in the 1980s. You cut or copy something, and then you paste it somewhere else. Cut or copy again, and the single entry in the clipboard gets overwritten. Clip Angel changes that, and does it very well. You'll find it at https://sourceforge.net/projects/clip-angel/ and it's a 2 MB download. VirusTotal claims it's free of malware, and Web of Trust regards the site as reputable. Once you've installed (or not - there's a portable option too) Clip Angel, you can add multiple items to your clipboard. Scroll through the entries to find the one you want, then hit Enter to paste it. You can even edit the entry before you paste. And you can paste text into the CMD.EXE command line too, if you are a command prompt user. Disc Burning Software: BurnAware is a free family of full-featured and free burning software to create CD, DVD and Blu-ray discs of all types. Home users can easily burn bootable discs, multisession discs, high-quality audio CDs and video DVDs, make, copy and burn disc images.
Whether you need a job application letter, a resume or CV, an award certificate, an invoice, a flyer for your church, a title page for your essay, or just about anything else, you'll find it here. The templates are all free to download and use, and you'll find them at http://www.hloom.com.
High Quality Stock Photos The Ultimate Resource for Free, The Internet Arcade is a huge collection of coin-operated arcade games from the 1970s through to the 1990s. The games are fully playable, right from within your browser, thanks to modern technology that allows browsers to emulate those old arcade machines.
You don't need to download or install anything in order to play all of these great games. Just head to https://archive.org/details/internetarcade and have fun. All you need is a modern web browser. I used Chrome, but others should also work too. 10 Best Messenging Apps for Mobile Phones Here.
MailTag is a very neat extension for Chrome that adds full tracking capabilities to your Gmail account. Once you've installed and enabled the app, which you can download from https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mailtag-email-tracking-sc/oboj... it begins to track all your email. You can then click on the MailTag icon in your browser in order to access your dashboard, which shows you how many messages you've sent and whether/when they were opened. Although there's a paid-for Pro version available as an upgrade, the basic edition is completely free and provides some fascinating data MailStore Home; Is your email cloud-based, using a service such as Outlook.com or Yahoo or Gmail? If so, do you ever think about taking a backup of all your archived messages so that you have a searchable copy in case you have problems with your online account?Mailstore Home makes this really easy, and it works with all the leading email providers.
You can now enjoy the popular Solitaire collection from Microsoft on Android and iOS for free. The Solitaire collection includes long time favorite games Klondike, Free Cell, Spider, Pyramid and TriPeaks. You can download it for free (no Microsoft account required) from Google Play (Android) or the App Store (iOS).
A project management software with built-in artificial intelligence. And if your team consists of 5 people or fewer, it's completely free. No download all online.
Flash CS5 free to download to try. Windows best Security Software list Chrome extension
The extension is called "100 Million Books". You'll find it at http://100millionbooks.org/ and it takes just a single click to install. Now, each time you open a new tab in your browser you'll be greeted by a picture from a random book, plus an excerpt from its text. There are links to Amazon and other sites if you want to buy yourself a copy, but that's not really the point. The main idea is to help you familiarise yourself with lots of different types of literature, and it does that really well. COLD TURKEY
Do you find that you're spending too much time on social media, when you should be using your PC to work or study? One program that I'v come across recently is called Cold Turkey. You'll find it HERE and it's an 8 MB download. Once installed, you first need to create a site (or list of sites) to block. There's a built-in list of 24 such sites, which you can use or edit as you wish. You then set a timer to specify how long your access will be blocked for, and that's it. No access to those sites until the timer's up. What sets Cold Turkey Writer apart from all the other notepad apps out there is that, when you start it up, you're asked to set a target of a certain number of minutes or a specific number of words. Once you've done that, you have no option but to start writing. Because you can't use anything else on your PC and you can't quit the program until you hit target. It is really quick and simple to make an animated GIF by combining two or more images into one with a software application or online service, such as those recommended in this article Best Free Animated GIF Maker.
Or rather, it is even quicker to get one from tons of readily made animated GIFs from Giphy. It puts almost countless GIFs in a huge database for you to explore at your fingertips. |