Freeware?

[sardog12]

I am an IT Tech working for a gov. agency doing reviews and evaluations of software and hardware as well as other networking duties. I also evaluate software as a personal hobbie. As such, I am very skeptical of "freeware" until I am able to test it out or find out more information about it. This software was recommended to me as being very useful and I am just trying to find out the "whole picture". How is this available as freeware? Are there ANY catches? It seems to be a well thought out software package with many features, but that only makes me more skeptical of it being available as "freeware". Usually that means someone is paying for it. I also did notice that it is not a restricted version and you pay for the full version type of software. It also gets good reviews so if anybody can help give me answers to how the maker is able to provide this at no charge and such, please do so. In the mean time, I will be checking it out on my secure computer set up for just this purpose.

 

Thanks.

[acooldozen]

 

I am not a IT Techie and have personally evaluated many software applications. It seems to me that if you have been a Tech for a while and have read ALL the reviews about ccleaner your post would be redundant.

[lokoike]

...I am very skeptical of "freeware" until I am able to test it out or find out more information about it...

 

...How is this available as freeware? Are there ANY catches? It seems to be a well thought out software package with many features, but that only makes me more skeptical of it being available as "freeware"...

Thanks.

 

You have seriously got to be kidding me. You don't believe it is possible that excellent freeware exists, without any catches?!

 

Okay, let us review:

 

CCleaner > Microsoft Disk Cleanup; you technically pay for MS Disk Cleanup, because it comes with Windows, which you have to pay for. So not only is CCleaner free (with NO catches I might add), it is more powerful, faster, and cleans programs and your registry as well as Windows.

 

Firefox > Internet Explorer; IE also comes with Windows, so in a sense you pay for it. Yet, Mozilla Firefox is absolutely free of charge, lets you add in useful extensions, lets you organize your Web pages in tabs, and is less susceptible to malicious Internet code, due to its lack of reliance on ActiveX.

 

OpenOffice.org > MS Office 2003; MS Office Pro is somewhere around $400; OpenOffice.org is totally free. MS Office does not let you make PDFs; OpenOffice.org does. MS Office will not let people experiment with their code; OpenOffice.org is open source, so not only can people use the program, but they can also learn from it.

 

Other fantastic freeware exists, such as Zone Alarm Free firewall, AVG Antivirus Free, Spybot Search & Destroy, SpywareBlaster, Ad Aware Personal, Foxit Reader, Google Chat, Google Desktop, AbiWord, Shareaza, and the list goes on. I don't understand how you can justify spending large amounts of money simply for the sake of avoiding "freeware".

 

Is it so hard to believe that there are actually still good people in the world who believe in giving away well-designed applications just to be nice?

[pwillener]

I agree with 'lokoike', but in this day and age we have indeed to be careful what freeware we are going to install. There are a few very good free antispyware products on the Internet, but there are also some very dangerous ones, equally free. Download them, and they will immediately infect your system with dozens of spywares. The tools will then identify them, and you will have to pay to remove them.

 

This is just one example of dangerous freeware. It pays to be careful!

 

Regarding Ccleaner; it has been around for quite a while, and it has won worldwide recognition. As 'acooldozen' suggest above, go and look for independent Ccleaner reviews all over the Internet.

 

See also this topic.

[Greenknight]

Donations. That's what pays for freeware. You write a program that people like, people send you donations.

 

A lot of people find it hard to believe that this model works, but it seems to work quite well. Since there's not much of a capital outlay involved in writing software (if you do it yourself, instead of hiring someone to do it), you can afford to give it away on the internet and wait for someone to send you money. If millions of internet users download your program, only a tiny percentage have to donate for you to make a whole lot of money.

[BopperBugger]

The catch is that annoying Yahoo! Toolbar that tries to sneak onto your computer.

[TheTOM_SK]

I am an IT Tech working for a gov. agency doing reviews and evaluations of software and hardware as well as other networking duties. I also evaluate software as a personal hobbie. As such, I am very skeptical of "freeware" until I am able to test it out or find out more information about it. This software was recommended to me as being very useful and I am just trying to find out the "whole picture". How is this available as freeware? Are there ANY catches? It seems to be a well thought out software package with many features, but that only makes me more skeptical of it being available as "freeware". Usually that means someone is paying for it. I also did notice that it is not a restricted version and you pay for the full version type of software. It also gets good reviews so if anybody can help give me answers to how the maker is able to provide this at no charge and such, please do so. In the mean time, I will be checking it out on my secure computer set up for just this purpose.

 

Thanks.

 

Do you use Google? It is freeware, is not it? Google uses ADs to earn money, so they are trying to "force" users to use their cookies and referres, like Google Earth needs cookies and referres for "kh.google.com" or Gmail needs cookies for "google.com", so once it is allowed, google knows everything about that user. When you block cookies and referres, you are not helping to eran their money, but you can still use Google for free. So it is with CCleaner, you can donate, when you are satisfied or not, when you do not want not or you can not afford it, but you can still use it for free.

 

It is good to skeptic these days, there are many fake software out there, especially claiming to be free. It is all about, who do you trust. I trust CastleCops and I trust Softpedia, so when they say, that CCleaner is "clean", I use it.

 

In fact, CCleaner does much more better job preventing infection, than AV. Eg virus gets into the PC and put startup item to activate after startup, but when I use CCleaner before restart, it gets deleted, so AV has no job to do.

 

And by the way, there are many PAID software, which sends data to its developer, without even notify the user, I have noticed that a few times, when firewall alerted me.

The catch is that annoying Yahoo! Toolbar that tries to sneak onto your computer.

 

You can allways download CCleaner without Yahoo Toolbar.

http://www.ccleaner.com/downloadbuilds.asp

 

Nero also includes Yahoo, it seems, that toolbars junk is spreading around the web.

[Eldmannen]

You can read more about freeware on Wikipedia;

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeware

 

Freeware is a computer software that is free for use, and usually free to distribute too.

Freeware products are often good, and oten better than software that costs money. Freeware products can be made by a company to attract users to their other software which is not free or to pay for "Pro" versions.

Freeware can also be made by entusiasts and people who enjoy programming and make software and wish other people to enjoy it or dont care so much about money or for some reason dont want to sell it or cant sell it.

 

You should not be so skeptic about freeware, because freeware are often good. Commercial software that are payed for are often just made to please as many people as possible in order to generate money and often are bloated with unnescesary and bad stuff.

 

However, freeware isnt the best thing because its only free for use. Freeware and "free software" is not the same thing. Free software is even better because it allows you to see the source code (open source) so you know exactly how the software works and what it does and what it dont do. With free software you are often also allowed to modify it, change it, and give out your modified versions.

 

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_software

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_and_Open_Source_Software (FOSS)

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software_movement

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Source_Definition

 

So basically freeware is good, but its nothing compared to the greatness of free and open source software.

[cde]

I'd recommend a (very ugly) page:

http://osswin.sourceforge.net/

 

Admittedly this is Open Source stuff, so CCleaner doesn't figure in the list, but there is a lot of good, free, often-updated software there!!!

 

Recommended: TrueCrypt/OpenOffice.org/KeePass/FileZilla/Inkscape/GIMP/Audacity/Blender/NVU/PUTTY/VirtualDub. Oh, and Linux.

If anything on OSSWIN is a dead link, Google should have the answer...

 

I echo the suspicion that an IT Tech wouldn't have a vast knowledge about freeware, but since schools and Universities tend to force MS tools on students I can't say I'd be surprised if network admins trained in 10 years were saying "What's Linux?".

 

In the meantime, you could do a lot worse than try out a few of these tools - check out portableapps.com for versions of some of these that you can run off a USB drive.