Watch what you download

When you buy a new computer the main software you get is the operating system and a trial version of any anti-virus programme. However, there are so many other interesting programmes that you can download. But the key here is to be prudent. The website has to be reliable and the programme you are downloading must be spyware free.

Here are some useful programmes you can download; they are free and have no time constraints.

1 IrfanView: This popular image viewer is ranked number one under the image editing category on CNET's download.com website. It supports an impressive range of file formats. You can cut and crop an image or add your own text and draw lines, circles, etc, to the images using the software. Once finished with the work, email the picture to a friend from within the programme. The best part is the size of the set-up file. At 1.25MB it's very light and should take less than a minute to download.
Download Link: http://www.download.com/IrfanView/3000-2192_4-10021962.html?part=dl-irfanView&subj=dl&tag=button&cdlPid=10865169

2 NewsNose: It's a news aggregator that searches over 1,300 news sources. For every news query made, it returns some 50 headlines. Click on a headline and the news article pops up in a new window. There's only one catch, every time you open NewsNose a few banner ads pop up. After all, the site needs support to carry on the free work!
Download Link: http://www.download.com/NewsNose/3000-2379_4-10062748.html?tag=mncol&cdlPid=6940239

3 PDF ReDirect: PDF documents have slowly become the most popular format for online information sharing. Their popularity has a lot to do with the size of the files, which are easy to download and can be sent as email attachments. That's why there is a need for a reliable programme that can convert existing files into PDFs. PDF Redirect fits the bill perfectly.
It's easy to use. Open a Word document, select the 'Print' option, choose the PDF reDirect virtual printer and your PDF file is created automatically. The software works with virtually all Windows programmes.
Download Link: http://www.download.com/PDF-ReDirect/3000-10743_4-10255233.html?tag=mncol&cdlPid=10873927

4 WordWeb: This tool should come in handy for users in general and writers in particular. It is a one-click English thesaurus and dictionary for Windows. All you need to do is to hold the 'Ctrl' key down and right click your mouse on a word that you want to look up, and, voila, the dictionary opens up! The software includes a guide to pronunciation and usage.
WordWeb comes with one condition though. You qualify to get the free version only if you take only two commercial flights in any 12-month period. If not, you need to purchase the Pro version.
Download Link: http://www.download.com/WordWeb/3000-2279_4-10003201.html?tag=mncol&cdlPid=10897446

5 Trillian: Most of us use more than one chat service, and have to open up different chat clients individually. This is time consuming. Trillian saves you from this process by combining four popular chat programmes (Yahoo, MSN, IRC, ICQ and AIM) into a single chat client. You just have to enter your chat IDs and passwords into Trillian once and it opens all the different (Yahoo, MSN, etc.) accounts as part of one window. The colour code help you differentiate between friends from, say your Yahoo account and those from MSN. In addition to the standard features of the original chat clients Trillian provides several other features.
Download Link: http://www.download.com/Trillian/3000-2150_4-10047473.html?tag=mncol&cdlPid=10891444

6 Orbit Downloader: This has to be the one software which no music or movie lover would want to miss. Orbit Downloader, as the name suggests, manages all your downloads and can even download music and video from social websites such as YouTube. Orbit speeds up the normal downloading process by several hundred times. It works best with Internet Explorer.
Download Link: http://www.download.com/Orbit-Downloader/3000-2071_4-10600926.html?tag=mncol&cdlPid=10901792

— The writer is a guru of tech who runs a trading
company in Dubai