Free Software Central – Free Software Downloads

Do you feel like brightening up your desktop? Changing the icons is an easy way of giving it a new look.

This icon set, Must Have Icons is a pretty comprehensive collection of 50 icons, each in four different sizes. They can be used in Windows or OSX, and instructions available from the developer’s site. There are XP and Vista only instructions included.

The icons are all high quality, and have a clean, modern style to them. They are not radically different, and are more utilitarian than stylish, but attractive none the less. We would have liked to see more unique folder icons, as the included folder icon is pretty dry.

For a free collection, Must Have Icons is impressive. It features pretty much every icon you might want for your desktop environment.

Download Must Have Icons in Softonic

If you need to regularly convert between various formats and need a little editing power as well, then iFunia Video Converter Pro for Mac is a very solid solution.

iFunia Video Converter Pro for Mac allows you to convert video of all popular formats including AVI, WMV, AVCHD, MKV, FLV, H.264/AVC, MP4, RM, MOV and 3GP. It features preset profiles for iPod, iPhone, PSP, Apple TV, and other portable devices. It also includes all the standard features you’d expect in such a converter, including batch conversion options, controls over brightness, contrast and saturation, and video cropping.

The most useful feature however, is the ability to perform some minor editing of footage before it is converted. Convert video. Edit video. Do it all with this powerful Mac video converter. This basically allows for cropping and adding watermarks but it’s very easy to use. A two-pane window shows you the original footage and the edited footage in progress so you can see what you’re doing properly.

The only minor problem with iFunia Video Converter Pro for Mac is that the conversion profiles are a little ‘hidden’. You have to click on the ‘Profile’ category label to reveal them in a drop-down menu, but this should be made much more obvious and easy to find.

iFunia Video Converter Pro for Mac converts in multiple formats quickly and easily, making an excellent solution for beginners to video conversion and editing.

Download iFunia Video Converter Pro for Mac 2.1.0.0820 in Softonic

If you think Process Monitor is just a more complete alternative to the standard Windows task manager, you’re wrong. This is a exhaustive control tool, mainly intended for system administrators, which tracks all the activity in Windows file system and Registry in real time.

So when you run it (no installation required, but it does ask for administrator rights) you’ll get a constantly increasing list with all the processes taken place in your computer in real time. In fact, there’s so much information to absorb that it makes you feel a bit lost.

Process Monitor includes many tools to manage this list: filters, a nice search tool, extended information about each process and many more. As I said, it’s definitely a tool for advanced users.

Download Process Monitor 2.7 in Softonic

PeaZip is a handy compressing and decompressing tool with a plain interface and support for more than 25 different formats.

PeaZip is a bit confusing. It seems to be quite easy to use at first sight, but its simple interface doesn’t look like any other compressor you’ve ever seen before. The toolbar and menus are not very intuitive, but nothing you can’t get over with just a little practice.

The best thing about PeaZip is that it’s perfectly embedded in Windows File Explorer. You can even select which program commands show up in context menus and therefore create a perfect toolbox to suit your needs.

PeaZip supports all major formats, performs checksum integrity tests and is thoroughly documented. On the downside, there’s one feature you’ll miss: the ability to create RAR files.

With PeaZip you can compress and uncompress files in a variety of formats, though its interface may take you a while to master.

Download PeaZip 2.7.0 in Softonic

XYplorer is a simple to use file manager which replaces Windows Explorer with several enhanced functions and interface improvements.

Whatsmore, it’s completely portable so you can put it on a USB stick and use it wherever you want and whenever you need it. The biggest advantage this program has over Windows Explorer is undoubtabley the Move and Copy dialogues. XYplorer allows you to configure hotkeys to carry out the most common copying and moving operations that you require meaning less mouse movements and faster management of your files and folders. XYplorer also removes the need for multiple folder windows along your taskbar because it employs the use of tabbed file management much in the same way as Firefox does with internet browsing. These tabs are fully customizable too – you can drag them around, rename them, hide them, lock them and much much more. This tabbed feature does give XYplorer a distinct browser style feel especially the featuring of an address bar which accepts not just folders, but also files, URLs, and search terms. This latter function can save hours of time searching through files by allowing you to search directly in XYplorer – without any need to use Windows search tool – simply by placing a “?” between the location and search pattern.

A truly impressive replacement for Windows Explorer – once you’ve used it you may never go back.

Download XYplorer 8.40.0000 in Softonic

There are lots of people who have problems typing, whether they have some sort of disability or injury or perhaps literacy problems. In circumstances such as these, speaking, rather than writing, a message is the perfect solution. Speak-A-Message allows you to do just that – record a message and send it as an email.

Although Speak-A-Message’s interface is a little old-fashioned, it does the job well and has plenty of configuration options, allowing you to change the appearance of the tool, choose from web or POP-based email, send photos with voice commentary and even add a small range of special effects to your messages. It also comes with comprehensive online and offline help.

The messages we tried were received perfectly, even by people who don’t have Speak-A-Message installed (they are sent as .WAV files and can be read with any type of .WAV-enabled music player, which is most of them). You can modify the text sent in the email, but there doesn’t seem to be a way of changing the default message. You don’t even have to send the message, and can save it to your computer or as an .MP3 file and use it for presentations or reports, for example. Similarly, you can send photos or slideshows by email, or upload them to a private server where they can be accessed by friends and family with a special code.

Speak-A-Message – a sweet tool for sending basic voice messages by email.

Download Speak A Message 4.0.5 in Softonic