Valutronic freeware and links. Uppdated march 15^th 2007.
Real freeware. (No demo´s, no shareware). If you use an ordinary modem or ISDN and pay by the minute, you naturally pay for your uptime, but otherwise the programs are free. Some of them are really good and keep a high professional level (as for example OpenOffice.org, Gimp and a few others), and could have been sold commercially, but now they are free.

All programs were OK, free, without viruses and spyware when we tested them. We download and test them now and them.

However, there is no guarantee. A program might shift from freeware to shareware or even commercial, and from spyware free to include spyware. Whenever you download a program on the Internet, RUN A VIRUS TEST and a spyware test.

Antivirus and firewall software as well as spyware ”seek and kill” utilities are the most important programs, so if you don´t already have trustworthy high-quality antivirus- firewall- and spyware utilities, download these first.

What you will find below are mainly serious and useful software, not games or just-for-fun programs,
and they all work on PC´s with Windows XP. Vista should be no problem for most XP software.

Click on the red underlined text to go to the download page (or direct download).

Most programs are in english, but some also support other languages.

First of all: Security software. If you don´t have these or similar programs, you realy should consider downloading and installing these first. Without them you can quickly get in trouble downloading other software.

Smile -- it makes people wonder what you are thinking about...

Avast! 4 Home antivirus software
There are still those who think that antivirus software is unnecessary for ”home users who only use the Internet for email and occational surfing”. Nothing could be be more wrong. There are really nasty viruses out there! Some not only erases your hard disk, but also infects your Bios, making the computer totally dead! (On some motherboards this can´t be corrected, you have to buy and install a new motherboard to make the computer work again. And if the harddisk is still infected, the new motherboard might be damaged almost immediately. DONT TAKE A CHANCE LIKE THAT!)

So, if you don´t have a secure, newly updated, anti-virus scanner, download one NOW. Any site can be ”hacked” and malicious scripts included. Just watching an infected site may be enough to install a virus on your computer.

When installing Avast!4, be careful to read the help file carefully. And follow all instructions regarding the email protection. And set security levels high.
Correctly installed, this program automatically updates itself, checks every file entering the computer, including all email. Once in a while you will see a blue sign and hear a voice telling you that your virus software has been successfully updated.

N.B. If you have installed ZoneAlarm, make sure that ZoneAlarm´s email protection is NOT activated at the same time. (It will change the suffix of certain files, and then Avast!4 and other antivirus scanners might not recognize them!)

If you don´t usually succeed in what you are doing the first time -- forget about sky diving.

Firewalls, just as important as antivirus software:

Zone Alarm.
If you are on the Internet right now (and you probably are) and you don´t have any firewall, download one, go offline and install immediately.
If you have a broadband connection you probably are probed at least once a minute, sometimes there are only a second or so between attempts to break into your computer, so this is no joke. If you don´t believe this, just leave the intrution alert activated and wait. It won´t take long until the list starts to build up. (You can inactivate the intrution alert -- it is annoying to be intrerrupted every time someone tries to access your computer.) Be careful to download and install the free version only, it is very easy to make a misstake and install the full version, which stops working after a while unless you cash up some money!

Every time any program tries to make a connection between your computer and the Internet and alert window is shown, asking you if the program might make this connection. Of course, you must allow your browser, email program, antivirus scanner et.c. to do so. (also, check the ”remember this” box when you recognize the program as one that should be allowed to connect to the Internet.)
Note: ”Generic Host Process for Win32 services” needs access to the Internet to find name servers needed for Internet communications unless you have a router between the computer and the Internet.

Sunbelt Kerio Personal Firewall.

This one works in about the same manner as Zone Alarm. Since late 2005 this is the one we use, because Zone Alarm changed its behaviour and ”disappeared from sight”. If the software doesn´t show itself, how do you know if it works all right? Well, this one does. During a short test period after installing the program it has some added functions, like stopping pop-ups and ads. However, we recommend that you disable this, as it stops you from watching quite a few webpages which should normally be visible. However the firewall itself works really good. We have had zero intrusions since it was installed, and it gives us perfect control over what can connect, and what can´t.

If an experiment goes well, something is wrong.

AdAware and SpyBot Erase and Destroy. Two important programs to fight SPYWARE!
Do you have spyware in your computer? If you have downloaded ”Ad supported” programs you probably have. All so called adware programs are not as innocent as you might think. Some of them contain spyware, programs that log what sites you visit, and send this information to servers, who in turn send you targeted ads. OK, you might think, but spyware can be programmed to do more than that. It may search your harddisk for information you don´t want to give away: passwords, email addresses, lists of Internet sites you visit etc. You don´t need much imagination to understand how this can be misused.

You need both AdAware and SpyBot! What one of them doesn´t detect, the other one will. If AdAware is set to search compressed archives, it might detect spyware you have removed using SpyBot, but it is a false alarm. SpyBot keeps archived copies of spyware it has removed, to make it possible for you to reinstall it if a software stops working after the spyware is deleted. If it is a software you can´t do without, you have the option to re-install the spyware, and the program starts working again. (Try to find a spyware free program instead if you care about your privacy.)
However, many programs that use spyware will also function without it. Along with Internet Explorer you also installed Alexa (spyware). Erase it, and IE will work perfectly without it. And with Windows Media Player you installed some more. Erasing them will not stop the program from functioning. The same thing applies to a lot of programs you may have on your computer – most free programs that contain advertising have spyware. Erase it, and some programs will stop working, others will keep on just as before, but without ads or ad rotation.
READ the Privacy statements on download pages, or while installing programs. If there are ”extra” programs that are installed along with the main program, (for example download managers) they might be spyware.
To be on the safe side:
EVERY TIME you have installed any software – run both these programs before connecting to the Internet.

Murphys lag doesn´t apply when you try to proove it

Cookie Muncher – Clears cookies in a more intelligent way than most anti-cookie utilities. Others usually don´t allow cookies at all, but then you can´t see sites that demand that you accept cookies. Cookie Muncher receives the cookie, your program ”shakes hands with the site” and the cookie is shown. The connection is then established. Then Cookie Muncher destroys the cookie!
A sound effect (easily shut off) makes you hear when a cookie is munched. After five cookies it burps...
The program seems to have disappeared from its original sites, but we have permission to distribute it (for free), so our link is OK. If you want to link to this program from your site, you are allowed to link to this page (www.valutronic.se/freew.html) but NOT directly to the program file itself. (Our ISP doesn´t allow it.)
IMPORTANT: If you use Firefox, this is not needed. Just setup the browser to accept cookies and keep them until Firefox is closed. This way, cookie-demanding sites are opened, but all cookies are erased as soon as the browser is closed.

When everything else fails, follow the instructions.

Firefox och Thunderbird är helt fristående applikationer. De är alltså inte baserade på IE- eller OE-komponenter.

Firefox web browser and Thunderbird email client
Simply the best! Higher security than Internet Explorer and Outlook Express. And much more usable features. The search features themselves are enough to do the switch, but there is much more. Imports the settings you have in your present software, making it ultra-simple to change from "the big ones" to the safer ones...

Here our Security software section ends.

OpenOffice.org
– Yes, the website has the same name as this...
...complete professional Office suite.

A complete, MS compatible office suite, costing nothing! Available in quite a few languages, and constantly evolving.
The software can also be bought as StarOffice. Then you get a printed manual and more wizards.
OpenOffice.org has a huge help file and a smaller selection of wizards, but is completely free.

One nice feature is its capability to open partially damaged MS Word and MS Excell files, something MS Office can´t.
A friend who works in a hospital had made a summer vacation schedule for his personel in Microsoft Excell. It took over a week. On friday, the work was saved on the hospital server. When returning to work on monday, the file couldn´t be opened at all using Microsoft Office, it was corrupt. He called me, not knowing what to do. I asked him to send me the file via email, and he did. It opened nicely in OpenOffice, and I found that almost all of the file was intact, just a small part of the last page was lost. So I saved the file in the excell format, and returned it to him. He was very happy, instead of re-doing over a week of work, he just needed a few minutes to complete the list.

With OpenOffice.org you can do almost all office work (except book-keeping and pencil sharpening):

Text documents, spreadsheets, presentations, drawings (also 3D), HTML documents (all our web pages are made using OpenOffice.org), presentations, formula editing et.c. Autopilots helps you create good looking documents the first time you try.

If you are used to MS office, for example at work, you will have no problems adjusting to OpenOffice.org. A few odd commands may be under different menues, but most things are just where you expect them to be. If you already have for example MS Word, and want to try Open Office, just install it. Both office suites work perfectly side-by-side on the same computer.

OpenOffice.org can be used on both PC:s (Windows, Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD...) and modern MacIntosh computers.

For those who have illegal MS Office components installed: This is a golden opportunity to uninstall the M$ software. The letters, spreadsheets et.c. you have produced using illegal software can still be read, edited and saved using the original MS format. There is no reason to use illegal piracy software when freeware is this good.

It is not a mirage -- it just looks that way.

A king´s castle is his home

People who think they know everything are annoying to us who really do.

Download client Star Downloader Free.
When you download a file that many others are downloading at the same time, and the server is overloaded, it usually starts time-sharing. If, for example, a servers has 10Mbit/s capability and there are 100 computers trying to download a file at 1MBit/s, each one gets a 10% ”share” of the time. 10ms on, 90ms off, 10ms on, 90ms off...
Now, let´s say you had ten different computers, each asking for 1/10 of the file... Then you would get full speed. Ten simultaneous downloads each using 1/10 of your download capacity. That´s 100 %. That is how this software works. It ”pretends” to be several different computers, each one asking for a different part of the file you want. After all the parts are downloaded (which is made in parallell), the parts are ”glued together” and... voila! This way you can speed up downloading many times. We almost always use this program downloading files, resulting in our maximum download speed (18000 kbit/s) even if we download files from overloaded servers at the oppisite side of the earth.

If you use Firefox, also install the FlashGot add-on, after installing Star Downloader Free. Then, disable browser integration in Star Downloader Free, and let FlashGot take care of starting it. This way you can use it when you want to, and simply disable it when using a download link that doesn´t accept download managers.

So, how many parts should you divide the file into? We have a 28 Mbit connection, which in real life (that is, 1.3 km from the telephone station) is 18 Mbit/s. Then, dividing into 30 parts seems just right. We most of the time get full speed.

If I ever make misstakes? Well, I have only made one misstake. I thought I was wrong, but (of course) I wasn´t.

Archiving/un-archiving (unpackning) utility IZArc
Many people use WinZip (which is shareware) without paying. That´s unnecessary. IZArc is freeware, and therefore completely free.

Unpacks archives in more formats than you will ever get in contact with: 7-ZIP, A, ACE, ARC, ARJ, B64, BH, BZ2, BZA, CAB, CPIO, DEB, ENC, GCA, GZ, GZA, HA, JAR, LHA, LIB, LZH, MBF, MIM, PAK, PK3, RAR, RPM, TAR, TAZ, TBZ, TGZ, TZ, UUE, WAR, XXE, YZ1, Z, ZIP and ZOO... or even more.
Produces archives in at least the followint formats: 7-ZIP, BH, BZA, TAR.BZ2, CAB, JAR, LHA, TAR, TAR.GZ, YZ1, ZIP
Add, substract, extract or erase files in existing libraries. Test archived files. Convert archives between formats. Repair damaged archives. Favourites. Detailed info in..... Well, the list of features is far, far too long. If you need a really advanced archiving utility, download this one. If you only need a simple unpacker, download it anyways, because it is so easy to use.

If two wrong´s don´t make right, try three.

Screendump utility MW Snap
A very nice screendump utility. Whenever you want to copy a part of your screen, this program does it with ease, and in an intelligent way. You choose format (GIF is best for text, jpg is best for photographs), and where to save, and how to format the name (we have chosen ”SC”+date and time incl seconds, so there is never any risk of two files getting the same name).
Read the help file, and you see how easy it is to work with the program. There are shortcuts to make the program quick and easy to handle. We use it for all screendumps we make (you see lots of them on this page). The program saves pictures in a directory of your choice, and/or copies it to the windows clipboard so that you can open them directly in almost any program capable of pasting pictures using Ctrl+V.

You are only young once, but you can stay inmature all your life.

EXplorer ² or... 2xEplorer

The left pane is a usual, but then you have TWO windows. This way you can have two directories open simultaneously, easily moving or copying files from one to the other. You can also compare directories, filter and show their content, search for files containing a text string, sort by extension, create new directories using a single mouse click and do some other nice things. Built-in viewer for pictures, webpages and office documents. Many shortcuts.
As one person expressed it: ”Explorer the way it should have been from start.”
Notice: When you get to the site, there are two versions. Select the freeware version, it is enough for most people. The trial will only work for a few weeks.

Mondays are a terrible way to spend 1/7 of your life.

The world needs many more humble geniuses -- there are far to few of us.

Filezilla FTP client

All general statesments are wrong!

Nostalgia isn´t what it used to be.

Graphics manipulation

There are three kinds of people: Those who can count, and those who can´t.

GIMP for Windows 95/98/Me/XP

There are only a few top class graphics manipulation programs out there. GIMP is one of them. The others cost hundreds of dollars, but GIMP is free.

If you are interested in manipulating pictures, you just have to download this. GIMP is sometimes referred to as a PhotoShop clone. But it is not. It is a program with similar capabilities, but with a very different interface. You right-click on a picture, and get lots of menues and sub-menues (and sub-sub-menues...). And you make your own shortcuts by simply pressing a letter or number or combination (ctrl+letter/number, alt+letter/number) on your keyboard when your cursor is over the function you want to access more easily. When you get used to the program it becomes brilliantly fast to work with. You can make your own pictures, put in text, import pictures and manipulate them in hundreds of ways. You can also use your scanner or twain compatible digital camera as a source.

We won´t go into detail, just download and see for yourself. When we counted, we found over 700 different graphics manipulation possibilities, many of them adjustable in several ways, so you will probably never ”know” the program. As your skills grow, the program ”grows” with you.

The program is in english, of course, but also in many many other languages. Remember to install ”localizations” during installation if you want a local language.

Experience is something you don´t get until just after you needed it.

PIXIA – A more ”Windowsish” graphics manipulation program
Congratulations to Isao Maruoka for his very fine work. (And for him allowing me to have the program distribitutable on our server in Sweden, which makes download in northerns europe quicker.)
Pixia is both advanced and easy to use. You can do a lot of drawing and painting work, and manipulate pictures in a lot of ways: change contrast, colour balance, sharpness et.c. The software can handle layers, transparency et.c. which may be of interest for the more advanced user. If you are in northern Europe, you will probably get a fast download from our server in Sweden, but if you want to, you can always visit the original site, which you will find here.

Complicated problems often have simple answers – Unfortunately, most of them are wrong.

Finally, the graphics program I use most of all, almost every day:

IrfanView
If you need to convert from gif to jpg, from tiff to bmp, from... almost any normally used graphics format to another, this is the program you have been looking for. ”Finishing off” pictures by adjusting light, contrast, sharpness and color balance is childsplay. Making a certain colour in a gif picture transparent is also a breeze. A number of filters are included, and you also have support for Photoshop filters. This program is quick, simple to learn and very easy to use. Built-in thumbnail viewer, slideshow, and batch conversion. I used this program to convert several thousands of different sized tiff´s into fixed sized jpg´s, in just a few minutes, fully automatically.
So, it is a brilliant graphics utility, wether you just want to fix your digital camera´s pictures or your scanned pictures (the program also has built-in scanner support), or wether you want to use it for batch conversion of thousands of pictures at the time. But it is also more. You can play videos, listen to mp3´s and other sound files in the same program. (There are quite a few plug-in´s you can download from the same site.)
And finally: It is a very, very stable program. You can open quite a few IrfanView windows with different pictures, change colour depth and colour balance, apply filters, cut-copy-insert between windows and do this for hours without risking any blue screen even if you use earlier windows versions.
You might think that this must be a huge program. Quite the opposite. It is less than 1MB, and even works on an old 486. Highly recommended.

The two secrets behind success: 1) Dont tell others all you know.

Money can´t buy you everything. That´s why there are credit cards.

A graphics program one has the tendency to forget is ”Drawing” in OpenOffice.org. With it you can do great 3D text. If you started reading this page from the top, you have already passed our info about OpenOffice.org. This 3D text was made in version 1.0.1. (Swedish words, but you can still see how well the program does the job.) You can use any TrueType font you have on your system, choose the colour of the letters, background light, ”camera” distance, colour and positioning of up to eight lights, and... Well, quite a lot, actually. Fun to play around with, great for serious work.

The expression ”fool proof” applies only to a limited number of fools.

Via Michelin ”road tracker”: Going for a car jorney holiday in Europe? Fill in where you will start and where you want to drive. The program will give you a description how to drive (Cities to pass, distances between places, where you can eat and sleep et.c.)
You can also have maps showing you how to drive... and street maps are usually very detailed.
If you plan any driving in Europe, this is a goldmine. (However, it is not just you and I who know this, so the site might be a bit slow sometimes.)

Last night I dreamed I ate a huge mashmallow. When I woke up this morning I couldn´t find the pillow.

HTML course

"So, you want to make a webpage!" – A very well written course teaching basic HTML. If you want to learn how to make web pages by hand, try this one. It´s not often learning means enjoying, but this time it does. HTML is an easy-to-learn programming language. You really don´t have to know any HTML to make a webpage (you can use OpenOffice.org), but it can be interesting to see how it all works ”below the surface”.