Many computer users have probably pondered why there are so many free programs – also called freeware – available? Why would freeware programmers spend countless hours for free at all? And for their dedication, users are happy to see so many available programs suiting their needs without having to pay a single paisa. Freeware also competes with commercial products and sometime are even better, but costs nothing.
There are several aspects to look into how these programs are created.
First, there are programmers who don’t like what have had been offered to them and therefore sit down to make something to suit their needs. When the program is made and they use it with perfection, they think maybe the program is useful to others as well.
Secondly, there are students of programming, academic and otherwise, who create programs to test their abilities. After finding that their programs actually work, they want to show the world their capabilities. They put their handiworks on the Internet as freeware.
Thirdly, there are people who just hate big multinational companies (MNCs) and so spend time to create something to challenge these giants.
“I believe small personal applications should be freeware so that people can make use of it,” so believes Sharad Bajracharya. He is the creator of Nepali Time Machine (NTM) 2002, a small utility to display and convert dates between the Nepali Bikram Sambat (BS) calendar years and the Gregorian calendar Anno Domini (AD) ones. Bajracharya believes that software should be made payable only if it is to be used for commercial purposes.
After a freeware is created, it is downloaded by people who send compliments to the creator and even suggest essential modifications. Answering these mails and doing the necessary modifications, the programmers prompt others to improving their freeware. Personal fame can give the programmers big jobs that are added advantages.
Bajracharya, for example, made a few changes in his program according to the feedbacks he received.
“I received lots of feedbacks, comments and suggestions,” he said, adding that it was a great honor to him. This, all along with the number of downloads – more than 10,000 in the case of NTM – made the programmer feel proud.
Which do you think is the world’s most famous freeware created by a person? Have you heard of IrfanView, the nifty image viewer, created by Irfan Skiljan of Bosnia?
Nifty Downloads
All freeware, which are not very popular at present but could be very useful and are dialup-friendly (small in size).
This very small freeware adds four useful options to the system menu of any Window. The options are priority (sets priority of parent Window process), transparency (changes transparency from opaque to transparent), always on top (makes the Window sit at the top although more Windows are opened) and minimize to tray (minimize the Windows to system tray, not to the taskbar).
And you don’t even need to install this freeware.
How much time do you usually spend on the Internet? Probably a few hours everyday? Have you wondered sometime to find out how much time you spent on the Internet and how much you pay for it (the telephone bills)? If yes, then here is the answer. No Frills Timer keep the track of time each time you connect to the Internet and how many times you connected. It is designed to be small (only 40KB), fast, and reasonably easy to use.
Zoom+ lets you enlarge a portion of a screen by upto 32 times. This is a handy tool to extract an icon out of a displayed screen so you can save the picture cut from the Zoom+ as an icon. The program even lets you choose to follow the mouse movement.
LogonStudio (Only for Windows XP)
Want to change the logon Window (the displayed items when you log in to the window clicking on your username)? If so, LogonStudio is the answer. The download is 1.81 MB, but it’s worth the wait as it lets you entirely control what is displayed during the logon – including pictures, colors, position of texts, welcome texts and many more.
HTTrack allows the user to download a website from the Internet to a local directory, building recursively all directories, getting HTML, images and other files from the server to your computer. HTTrack arranges the original site’s relative link structure. It is better than simply saving a webpage because when you later browse the site from local directory, the links are intact. HTTrack can also update an existing mirrored site, and resume interrupted downloads.
So, have a happy and satisfying freewaring!
(This appeared in The Kathmandu Post‘s CyberPost, published each Tuesday.)
