Microsoft

Did you know that Microsoft provides many free software ? Blake Handler has gathered all in his live website. This is so amazing . There must be more than hundreds of free software on that list!

The ones that I am currently using are

Alt-Tab Replacement: showing the preview image of each application. It is nicer than the default Alt-Tab, but much lighter then other Alt-Tab applications
Clear Type : You have to use this . The screen is a lot clearer and I just can’t live without it.
Tweak UI
Process Explorer: originally developed by Sysinternals . It is a must utility if you want to know detail information about the processes that are running on your desktop.

There is a free Microsoft word too! Word 5.5 for DOS ! 🙂

Also there are free development tools available. Of course they are somewhat limited in functionality compared to the commercial version, but they are really great!

SQL Server 2005, SQL Server 2005 with Advanced Services
Visual 2005 Web Developer
Visual Basic, C#, C++, & J#

Ultimate List of Free Windows Software from Microsoft

For Office 2003
For Office 2007

Just great!

Site: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/default.mspx

You may already know this package of free system utilities. Originally SysInternals was a website with developers providing free windows system utilities. I guess it was bought by Microsoft at some point.

There are lots of useful utilities in the SysInternal. However, not all utilities are attractive to you since some of these are strictly useful for IT person or Software Developers. There are also many familiar shell utilities if you come from UNIX (du, whois, strings)

But here are the three most interesting utilities to me.

Process Explorer : Process monitor that shows related files, registry keys, loaded DLL files ,company name and. You can easily see what’s going on in your computer.
Autoruns : shows complete list of auto startup programs.
ZoomIt : Powerful presentation tool. You can zoom and draw lines on the screen. Ctrl + 1 will start the screen zoom by default. Zoom In and Out can be done with the mouse wheel.

This is a Process Explorer in action.

There is a fun screen saver too. Blue Screen screen saver simulates the blue screen of Windows System Crash. It is very similar to the real one and it even shows reboot screen!

List of Free software from Microsoft

Microsoft SysInternals