Lately I’ve seemed to be in a neverending battle to retain enough free hard drive space on my laptop for Windows XP to run.  If free space drops below 200mb a warning message pops up.  Now, on a 160gb hard drive it should be fairly easy to keep at least 200mb free - or so I should think…   That just doesn’t seem to be the case however - I keep having to flush my cache and delete temp files and go scrounging around trying to free up a few mb here and another few there - it’s ridiculous!  Then I found a software tool that helped me free up about 17gb!!!  Hey, that’s enough to let me finally defrag my drive!  (Defrag likes to have 15% free disk space to run - that means it’s been a looooooong time since I’ve run it).

JDiskReport is a very cool free tool from JGoodies.com that will scan your computer and tell you (in a nice graphic manner) which folders are taking up the most space on your hard disk.  The ‘J’ is for Java - this software needs Java installed to run but don’t worry, that’s easy and there’s a link on the page for Java if you don’t already have it installed.

As soon as I found this program I installed it and ran it and found about half a dozen folders that I’d either forgotten were there or had no idea they were so damn huge!   Luckily, most of these folders were full of stuff I no longer needed to keep on my computer and so I promptly deleted them and reclaimed about 17gb of space!  Much better than going out and buying yet another hard drive and much better than trying to scavenge space mb by mb.

So if you want to free up some disk space on your drive go and get JDiskReport and give it a go - you won’t be disappointed.

Just yesterday I wanted to listen to an audio file I’d downloaded on my Mp3 player (an iRiver X20) - nothing unusual there so far… however, the file happened to be in m4a format and the X20 won’t play files in m4a format.

So I went on a hunt for some software (free, of course) that would do the job for me and I found a few and settled on the unimaginatively (but very practically) named ‘Free M4a to Mp3 Converter’ from the more interestingly named ManiacTools.com.

This simple software was quick to download, quick to install and, most importantly, did the trick quite nicely, thank you very much.  Another plus is that there were no annoying hoops to jump through to download the file - nice and simple and easy.

This little tool does a few other things too so if you’ve got any AAC, M4a, M4b, MP4 or 3GP audio files and your player doesn’t support them, you can convert those audio files into MP3 or WAV formats using this tool.  Check the link above to see out it’s other features since the price is definitely right.  And you can visit our main site for more recommended free audio software here.

This is a cool tool - I’m a convert - no pun intended.  Well, maybe I did intend it…

Is it possible to set up a new PC and equip it for everyday use without actually having to fork out anymore hard earned cash for software? Pirated software notwithstanding?

Definitely.

Most new PCs come with Windows pre-installed so I’m going to assume that for the purposes of this article.  If you get a PC without an operating system installed then setting it up without purchasing any software is still possible but involves Linux and that’s a whole other story… 

So, you’ve got your new computer with only windows installed but nothing else.  What software does the average home/home office/small business user need?

Here’s a suggested ’shopping list’ (don’t go out and actually buy anything, though - remember, we’re getting it all for free!):

• Anti-virus software
• Firewall software
• Anti-spyware software
• Word Processor and maybe spreadsheet software
• Photo editing software
• Web design software
• Zip software
• PDF reader software
• Video editing software
• Media playing software
• CD/DVD burning software

I could go on but that’s probably enough for a start and the good news is that there are free programs to cover each of these needs quite nicely thank you very much which means you can keep your wallet in your pocket.

Now, Windows actually comes with a few good tools that can cover a few of these already.  For example Windows Movie Maker is quite good and more than adequate for most home video makers.  It’s also very easy to use which cannot be said of many video editing programs.  Windows also now comes with a Firewall and of course there is also a basic word processor but most folks are conditioned to think they need Microsoft Office for their computer and while Office has been getting cheaper lately it is an unnecessary purchase for most when OpenOffice.org provides nearly all of what MS Office does and then some.  OpenOffice.org is also compatible with MS Office file formats.

The free software I recommend to cover everything else on the shopping list is listed and described (with download links) in the relevant sections of the main Guide to Free Software website.  Browse through the site and you’ll find a whole lot more free software you can use and enjoy as well as just these essentials.