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Freeware for Windows -- Where Did It Go?
Talahamut asks: "The other day, I was planning on recording a radio show by running my stereo's output into my PC. Oooh, that sucks - WinXP's Sound Recorder limits you to 60 sec. recordings. Oh well, I'll just go online and grab a little WAV recorder. 30 minutes later, I'm frustrated because all I find is crippleware (time-limited, of course...) that records every format under the sun from any sound stream imaginable. What happened to the small home-brewed Windows utilities that used to be so easy to find online years ago? All the freeware sites I checked had nothing but commercial crippleware. Is there no place to find simple programs like that anymore?"
Try going to www.download.com and searching under programs with freeware licenses.
All the freelance programers have gone to linux. Maybe if more programmers spent time creating things for windows, they might find that they like it better than linux.
I guess most hobbists have moved to GNU/* and *BSD.
When making free-as-in-cost, they may as well be doing free-as-in-freedom. And working with other developers that share code is nice.
Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
www.nonags.com
A vast majority of the stuff that was once released as freeware is now open source. There are a number of reasons behind this; the ubiquity of the internet and its usefulness in collaboration, the increased availability of high quality development tools and the fact that if you're not making money off some code, you might as well release the source.
With that in mind, Audacity, while being a bit more full featured than a simple sound recorder, will take care of what you need.
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
I use http://www.versiontracker.com to find all my software... I found these gems all freeware for you. Pocket voice recorder Sound recorder And the total search with "shareware" is Hope this helps
---In a time of Chimpanzees I was a Monkey.
http://www.pricelessware.org/
Ever heard of TUCOWS? You can search for software there, and order by license.
AudioGrabber 1.83 is freeware, and is rated 5 stars. I used to use it to rip CDs, but the description claims it can do exactly what you need.
It may be a little bit overkill for recording a radio program (although I've used the software for that before), but why not try the (open source) Audacity?
is that I can d/l a program for *Nix that is free (both beer and speech) and find that the exact same prog is shareware or commerical for Win32. VCDEasy and WinAirSnort come to mind.
It doesn't kill me to pay for software, but I remember the CD's of free games and tools that anyone running DOS could use.
Vertical
72 CD D7 52 D0 7E D8 47 44 91 D5 84 D1 59 F1 A9-This is my 128bit integer. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Try searching SourceForge.
Kids today are tyrants. They contradict their parent, gobble their food, and tyrannize their teachers. - Socrates 400 BC
I'll never forget the mess AOL's icq client and Kazaa's browser stuff made of my PC. For most utilities, sourceforge tends to have it. Better still, software from sourceforge doesn't install a ton of spyware, hijack your web browser or do any of the crap that freeware/shareware people are forced to do to pay for hosting.
This is one area where open source works. To see the benefit, compare DC++ or eMule with their proprietary equivalents. Better quality because no annoying attempt to install stuff other than what is needed.
Spyware has killed the freeware/shareware world. The degree to which Miranda and eMule are better than their 'free as in beer' equivalents still amazes me.
1000s Warcraft Gold while you sleep
There is no disappearing of the true Dhamma until a fals Dhamma arises in the world.
When the false Dhamma arises, he makes the true Dhamma to disappear.
Samyutta-Nikaya II, 224
Wait a minute. Didn't I say that on the other side of the record? I'd better check
And now, my friend, you understand one of the reasons behind the GPL. Once it has been given, it cannot be taken back, and it's your to keep and use forever, without cost.
Most of those involved in the creation of freeware -- those who see the benefits in cooperation -- have moved their efforts to the open source world, where their value is seen and their work highly respected. You'll find a plenthora of such applications and utilities on the Linux/BSD side of things.
I don't mean to be a Free software zealot, but in this particular case, Free and Closed software are polar opposites. Welcome to the Light Side, young Skywalker.
He who laughs last is stuck in a time dilation bubble.
http://freshmeat.net/projects/audacity/
Freshmeat.net lists MANY software applications as they are released, and as good search capabilities if you login.
Audacity is one of the best non-complex sound recorders and mixers going, using wxWidgets works and looks right under linux, windows and probably more (you look).
Sam
blog.sam.liddicott.com
Years ago my friend who made a freeware called 'GameHack'(sort of, I forgot) was approached by a company for acquiring its source code with good offers. Then the company offers to commercialize his product and pay him royalty after he rejected the first offer. They didn't make the deal in the end.
:)
:)
I think that's how the things go: you make good freeware and someone will support you to commercialize it if you don't do it yourself. We've seen a couple of such cases in OSS community. Developers are simply human who need to feed their kids and pay their mortage.
P.S. Oh btw, the reason my friend declined their offers is that he lost the source code in a harddrive failure and he's too embarrass to admit it.
here I am! ? Works for me...
--
U can find it on http://theopencd.sunsite.dk/
Bahahaha! Cygwin nullifies any benefit of using Linux. Most of those apps can compile on Windows. Don't forget, XFree86 has been running quite nicely through Cygwin for awhile now.
I remember there being lots of shareware that relied on your good will to send money to the creators.
:)
Perhaps the attitude of the article author that this was all "freeware" is why it has slowly changed to cripple-ware
What about using the old, 16-bit Windows software, even under Windows XP? You can go to places like Simtel and browse their old archives... I used to search there all the time, years ago, and they may still have freeware titles from the era stashed in their archive.
Bleakness... Desolation... Plastic Forks...
So become part of the growing Linux community, install linux today, because this is where the cool windows programmers have gone!
This commercial in a thread is brought to you by Anonymous Coward productions, located in Sausalito California copyright 2004 All rights reserved.
We now return you to your regular slashdot reading.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
It just looks that way because of a bad, bad, bad UI.
Record 60 seconds of silence. Now save them as a file, and import it into the current sample. Voila! a 2-minute sample, which you can record over. Repeat as necessary.
who here hasn't written something like this 3x already?! :-)
Petzold's book is a good starting point...
Are you feeling up to writing the utility you need? No? Hmmmm, maybe that's where all the freeware went?
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
This one is classified as: "Error between keyboard and chair". It's resolved by yelling: "Learn to use the internet, dumbass".
See the selection of freeware audiorecorders on Snapfiles.
Lack of Windows freeware, my ass.
or perhaps you should search better : http://www.totalrecorder.com/
____
nico
Nico-Live
Cygwin nullifies any benefit of using Linux;
(aside from the superior kernel and other general linux goodness that is)
Real men don't keep backups, they upload to the ftp server and the rest of the world copies it.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
foobar2000 and foo_record. Can play and record pretty much every audio format imaginable (although you probably want to find the 0.7 diskwriters until they're all ported to the new 0.8 API.. ask me if you need a hand, but you should be able to find stuff on the very useful forum) in 64 bit float precision. It can apply software DSP's, perform tagging operations at a level which puts the likes of Tag & Rename to shame, and is more configurable than any other audio player out there (because it's more than just an audio player ;)
:)
Most of the components are BSD licensed too. And don't let the default look put you off; it's skinnable and you can go a *long* way with nice formatting strings.
I could go on, but I should really stop gushing. I've successfully converted quite a few peeps by doing this though, so there must be some truth in it
ms bought them all out or hired the developper/s
if you can't beat'em, buy'em!
This is a test!
GnuWin is a nice burnable collection of free software for Windows.
I personally always include a "GPL" when I search for Windows software; helps filter out the cripppleware.
http://www.freewarehome.com/
http://www.nonags.com
http://www.tucows.com
and then:
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
http://www.dago.pmp.com.pl/messer/
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I experianced the same thing a while ago. Since at this time I was in high school and could not afford to buy every piece of shareware that I need, my only option was to look for cracks/warez. I finally got sick of the moral/legal/painintheass aspects of this method and switched to Linux.
Now every computer I own runs Debian (I switched my server from Gentoo yesterday), my software is 100% legal and it cost me $0. I believe I have given back to the open source community in the form of the amount of bug reports/patches that I have submitted to various projects.
Although switching to a free (not RMSs' fucked up definition, I mean Linux, BSD, or any OS where the majority of programs are no charge) OS was the right choice for me, for you that may be different. I am not one of the pimply faced Linux zealots who believes that Linux is the best OS on the face of the planet etc.
If you can't switch to an OS where the majority of programs are free, I can only suggest paying for a program when you are sure that you will use it more than once, and that it is decent. Otherwise get some good cracks sites and try to remain calm when the 24329th patch you download fails just like the other ones.
History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it - Sir Winston Churchill
AnalogX.com has some pretty good software. http://www.analogx.com/contents/download.htm
http://www.cracks.am Works almost every time.
As a reminder of how to develop under MFC a couple of days ago I wrote a toy program for monitoring machines.
Kinda like Nagios does (formerly netsaint) but in a single application instead of a webbased system.
I sent a copy to a colleague who appreciated it, and one of his first comments was sell it for 29$!
I am a Debian guy, I write free software for Linux/Unix and I could do for Windows - but to be honest I have no qualms about charging for Windows.
Why? None of the software I've produced has been by any means essential, its just handy stuff for the sysadmin type who has to look after a lot of Windows desktops.
If people use it fine, if they sent me money fine, if not I really don't mind.
Under Linux or Unix I'd honestly not consider it. I might get paid to update some software, or write something specifically for you (that happens every few months, usually for peanuts; but sometimes for suprisingly large amounts of cast) - but I'll not write something random then expect people to pay for it. It's a completely different market and mindset.
People under Windows may hate it, but they have been conditioned to expect to pay for software which is any good. Winamp is even going back to a premium paid product, after previously being shareware then going free!
now known as snapfiles.com
Having just experienced the same need, I googled for "windows open source wav record" and instantly had pages of free and/or open source offerings for windows.
The top of the list was http://www.vorbis.com/software.psp, which pointed me towards Audacity, which I had already used under Debian (its nice to see open source projects going cross-platform).
This was less than 5 minutes. Google gives you exactly what you ask for, after all....
If I had a DeLorean... I would probably only drive it from time to time.
In this case I think we have to put some of the blame on the search engines. They accept kickbacks from sites to be listed earlier in the list of results.
Perhaps not being able to find freeware is a similar phenonmenon.
What we need is an altruistic, non-commercial search engine -- with powerful features and a wide pipe. We need a search engine that is on our side, not on the side of those who are trying to sell us things.
If you have debian installed, use "apt-cache search keyword" instead.
"apt-cache stats" and "apt-cache show packagename" are also entertaining... try "man apt-cache" first.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
The folks who wrote DOS and Windows freeware in the 80's and 90's have just gotten tired of it. It was fun, but the community of techie early adopters has been inundated with everybody and his mother-in-law, and it's just not the same anymore. If they're still doing it, they've decided to make a job of it: hence crippleware requiring payment. Some have moved on to Linux and such, but the rest are just middle-aged parents who don't have time or enthusiasm for it anymore.
Meanwhile, the new generation of techie types (who could have been early adopters of PCs, but now it's too late for that) have either gone directly into open-source, or they've grown up in that "mature market" of Windows, where it seems that most of the neat toys and applets they'd want are already bundled with the OS, and the bubbling stewpot of innovation has cooled to a simmer.
Another related factor is that the nature of the computer you take out of the box has changed dramatically over that timeframe. If you bought a computer 25 years ago, it was expected that you would do some programming with it. Turn on that Apple II or C64 or that IBM PC without an OS installed, and you're in a BASIC interpretter. The more recent computer purchaser is never really given that nudge.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
To write such rubish just to be proven wrong by several other posts almost immediately.
Unadulterated anty OSS zealotry at its worst.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Do a sourceforge search and look for high activity rates, you can qualify search to Win32 apps rather easily. Its not "freeware" but Open Source, which is where all the freeware coders went.
--- cut here ---
If you're using Windows, you should probably be using all of these programs (if you need them). Most of them are pretty stable and mature.
Audacity - Sound editing (so this post is on-topic!)
Mozilla FireFox - Web browsing.
The Gimp - graphics/photo editing
Sodipodi - Vector graphics (SVG) editing. It's no Illustrator, but the basics are there, and they're pretty nice.
OpenOffice - Not quite ready to replace Word/Excel/PPT, but it's great if you (or your employer/university) haven't already shelled out for Office.
FileZilla - FTP client
Gaim - AOL Instant Messenger client
PuTTY - ssh client
There's a bit more elaboration and links on my blog.
I was in a similar situation myself recently. I wanted a program to rip the audio from a stand-up DVD so I could listen to it on the PC without needing to play the DVD.
After a looong search I eventually found one free program that could do the job. Downloaded it, installed it, started ripping. Five minutes later it stopped. Time-limited, you see. But good news! Apparently there was a commercial version which could record for longer than five minutes! So after being tricked like that, obviously I rushed to order the commercial version... NOT.
Obviously that was a dirty bait-and-switch trick but I can think of one legitimate reason why more ethical coders may be moving away from free releases...
A few years ago I wrote a video capture program. It was for my own personal use because I wasn't happy with any of the commercial options available. I decided to release the software for free, and included in the zip file a brief text file explaining how to use it and stating the one very limited, specific job that it was designed to perform.
The software was listed on one download site and the reviewers there ripped it to shreds.
Why?
Because they claimed that a certain feature didn't work.
Never mind the fact that the info file made no mention of that feature. Never mind the fact that the feature was way outside the scope of this particular program. These reviewers wanted a free video capture program with a certain feature, so when a free video capture program came out *without* that feature, they reviewed the program as defective.
Would I release a program for free in future?
Very unlikely.
If someone considers buying a program then they'll probably read the instructions to make sure it can do what they want. If they go ahead and buy it then they'll almost certainly have read the instructions. But if it's free, as with most free stuff online, people have unrealistic expectations and they react nastily when those expectations aren't met.
They make great tools available . source code too.
Sound Recorder with Scheduling -> MP3/Wav.
Just set up the schedule, leave the radio on and your radio show will be recorded.
It's sort of a VCR for your soundcard.
It records to Wav or MP3.
Good for recording radio shows.
Description:
http://www.dago.pmp.com.pl/messer/index-old.html
Download:
http://www.dago.pmp.com.pl/messer/
Tod
Try this
Stepvoice recorder
http://www.stepvoice.com
It records almost any sound source directly into MP3. You can also define quality of the recording.
Best of all, it's only 230k!
Excellent Freeware Site
http://www.snapfiles.com/freeeware/ (used to be webattack.com)
I used to be addicted to freeware and this was one of my favorite places to get a fix.
All the software is well categorized.
I can often find what I'm looking for here.
http://www.nonags.com is good too.
Tod
If you are still looking for an audio recording app check out the windows port of Audacity. It has reat sound quality, mp3 and ogg output, Multi track, 32-bit floating point sound files, etc.
I Don't Work Here
Uh, you might want to do a mozilla / firebird / firefox / whatever-it-is-called-today on your "Creatures" software. There's been a commercial artificial life program by this name for years now. "Norns"?
ScanRec is one I've found rather useful. It isn't an end-all/be-all recorder, but it does have a rather useful feature. It was created with a VOX control originally to be used for recording ham sessions. So, it would not record constantly, but only when anybody brodcast. It will create a log file detailing what times it did the recordings. Anyway, I've used it for radio/TV stuff in the past, and I've had few problems with it (other than recording in a format that Media Player didn't really like.
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
I'm so sick of uninformed people bashing Microsoft with inaccurate information!
I mean, really, there are TONS of ways to CORRECTLY bash them! Check your facts!
---- It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told.
Why not get something free that is real quality?
http://www.digidesign.com/ptfree/
"The problem is there wasn't enough good will to buy groceries with. "
Maybe that's one of the reasons for OSS popularity? You can keep the software and not put out the "good will", and it will not have an impact on others.
use WinAmp, with it's bundled Disk-Writer plugin.
Maybe MS programmers will start participating with the community and answering questions on the developers newsgroups.
Hold up...did the parent just imply that Linux users were helpful and would answer questions?!?
Hah, it's a joke! I'm kidding!
Sorta!
Hey 1997, this is 2004. Just hold on a little longer, there's a great new search engine just around the corner. It's called Google and it beats the pants off of the ad-crippled AltaVista!
Probably over half of the programs that I run on my Windows machines are GNU or open source programs (Perl, Python, PHP, MySQL, GIMP, grep, awk, sed, and even things like Bash). There are very few major GNU/Linux programs that don't run fine under windows these days either because they were written to be portable in the first place or because CYGWIN does a pretty decent job of emulating the unix libraries.
I see someone already mentioned Audacity, but I also wanted to mention that Exact Audio Copy will do exactly what you want, despite primarily being a cd ripping tool.
I used to bulls-eye womp-rats in my pants
I'm all in favor of people working hard, writing good software, and giving it to me for nothing. But if I can't find what I want for free, I don't whine about paying a reasonable fee. I've paid the munificent sum of $12 for Total Recorder, and I haven't regretted it yet.
Being
Mac OS X has that property Windows had in its youth - university people and enthusiastic young programmers are starting to discover it, making it their domain for personal programming needs. You can find opensource ports, scientific visualisation software and small freeware utilities.
Alternatively - Linux, same reason, more software, possible hardware support problems.
record a blank file, about 2 seconds,
using 'effects' increase the length by 'decreasing speed' as needed to length required for project.
start at beginning of file, and hit 'record' this causes your new sound to mix with the file
using windows sound recorder, it's ability to convert, and the lame codec, I actually have a friend I setup converting his old LAME punk rock from casettes to mp3's using just soundrec.. I actually created blank wav's for him in 180, 240, and 900 second versions, and have used it successfully to record an entire side of a 45 minute casette onto one file, 2800 second blank wav, pared down as needed after the casette was in.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Whats sad is that most people use GUI Form editors as a litmus test for a "good, complete" enviroment for "power developers". I think Form editors should be a crutch for beginners (to GUI programming altogether), until they learn how to visual a layout in their minds.
Forms are just that - Forms, for simple Dialog boxes. The trend in UI design has been moving away from "Dialog Controls" and OK buttons for years now. Forms are almost becoming irrelevant and are being replaced with floating tool palettes and web-page like UIs surrounding very powerful "Views" designed to interact with specific kinds of data.
The only GUI package I know of that is intended for this sort of design is WTL (Windows Template Library), which happens to be free from Microsoft.
I find Total Recorder very useful too. Just paying $12 for it is easier than trying to find free programs to do the same thing. What's your time worth? I searched for weeks to find something that would record streaming radio broadcasts on Windows (Linux can do this all by itself, with a few command line untilities piped together). Anyway, Total Recorder was the only thing I could find, free or not.
A problem with developing this kind of software is needing proprietary libraries, etc. So virtually all software of this type is non-free. Total Recorder gets around this by recording the output of the sound card. Methinks Java could be used for this and it could be cross-platform, but so far no one's bothered.
http://www.snapfiles.com/freeware/
"Granted, this is a single example and may not be representative of all situations, but it's the best study I'm aware of so far. It puts the "people who will buy it will pay for it anyway, don't piss people off by crippling the product" position in serious doubt, at least in my mind."
So what does that say about crippled CD's? Or any other "crippled" product to begin with.
It seems the problem is much older than that. When VB became popular, everyone who could make a dialog box pop up figured he or she could slap together some (usually) crappy piece of semi-functional-ware, charge $29.99 and become rich. It didn't help that shareware had been successful for a lot of products (mostly because the successful products were _good_). Shareware _is_ a great idea, but there is so much stuff out there which is complete crap, and you'll see 10 wastes of disk space for every app that is actually worth the 30 seconds to download.
My frustration is not so much finding free tools but finding _any_ tools that don't suck for small simple needs like the one described. I'll gladly pay a small fee for a small utility that does something really well, but the freeware actually tends to be better than the shareware in so many cases, probably because the creator is motivated to make a useful app rather than just become the next WinZip (which I happily paid for years ago, but now I use WinRAR, also paid for). Big commercial apps have their place, but most of the time, what I'm looking for is a simple tool to fill a simple need, not something that tries to be everything to everyone.
Between sourceforge.net and freshmeat.org and maybe a little learning curve with cygwin, there is plenty of good Windows open source software out there to be had, but it should be a lot better.
Recently I wanted a good font manager for Windows, something that would let me browse through hundreds of fonts and install or uninstall them quickly and easily. I found the same thing... a bunch of crappy shareware (or at best, decent shareware that lacked features I required), so in frustration I started writing my own using old Ziff-Davis free utility source code as a starting point. I haven't gotten far because of work demands, but if I ever get something good, I will release it Open Source.
And please, Windows programmers, if you are going to release freeware, give us the source. Many marginal piece of software could be very valuable if the source were available.
I have nothing against shareware or commercial software, but if you are going to go that route, your app better be worth the download, and from what I've seen, most aren't.
At the end of the day, any good software is hard to find.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
In addition to the sites listed above, don't forget the site even older than TUCOWS, the site that was arguably the first real download site on the net: Simtel. (http://www.simtel.com
Simtel is still pretty good, and has always been a good place to find free or cheap software. AFAIK, it was the first large-scale public repository for free and open source software. Before sunsite.unc.edu, before ftp.uu.net, there was Simtel - in the old days, the first place to look for programs or source was ftp.wsmr(for White Sands Missile Range).army.mil. Simtel had *gigabytes* of stuff availabe even before AUPs allowed commercial use of the Internet.
OK, while I'm dating myself - How many people here remember what TUCOWS is an acronym for? (Hint - think Windows 95...) Not many, even here on Slashdot, I'll bet...
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
www.OnlyTheBestFreeware.com
alt.binaries.*
end of story.
Maybe they noticed that there wasn't much "honor" out there. Maybe they noticed thier software being used everywhere and how few people were willing to pay the usually dirt cheap registration fee.
Any-way, what you're looking for is called OSS, and it does exist for windows too.Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
www.analogx.com
It's free (as in money) and this guy has lots of cool little apps for win32.
:wq
I don't know if its any good anymore. I havn't used it in ages, but back in the day I could find quite a few useful programs on it.
www.simtel.net
--me
Did you try Jet Audio Basic?
See download.com
The facts have a liberal bias. --The Daily Show
So become part of the growing Linux community, install linux today, because this is where the cool windows programmers have gone!
[snip]
We now return you to your regular slashdot reading.
Honestly, that sounds _exactly_ like my regular SlashDot reading...
Get the free sound editor called Audacity, it will record from any source and works on Windows / Mac OS X / Linux. http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
Part of the problem is that the cost to develop for windows has increased.
Another issue is the mentality of 'profit' that is associated with windows.
And... a lot of the better developers just moved on to different horizons.. ( they grew up and now have a family to support.. only so much time in the day between work and life...)
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Authors smarted to use Linux.
When I want a program for a given purpose, I usually do a web search, find at least 5-10 candidate programs (by checking website quality, list of program features). I download about 5 of them and test them. At least one of them suits my needs.
I once searched for a sound recording program and I was really dissapointed by what I found as well but usually I find what I search for.
For music programs I find everything I need here
I had the same problem, I wanted to record a radio show through the sound cards every weekend.
Eventually I came across this Audiotime which is free for personal use.
It sounds like it might fit the specific task you have.
...merged.
BHS.com - gone
tucows - gone commercial (ads, domain reg, etc)
winfiles - merged
cdrom.com - sucks
I'm leaving a bunch out (I can't remember them right now - old age and all).
I've been using a program called Goldwave for the longest time to record audio. Technically, it's shareware, but if you're a bad person you can use it for free.
http://www.goldwave.com/
Here's where you can offset the upfront cost of getting a Mac! There is tons of freeware available for OS X. As well as projects like Gnu-Darwin and Fink which are porting Unix programs to X.
If you don't like it, why don't you be an entrepeneur and code it yourself or take advantage of consumer choice in a free market and switch operating systems?
[o]_O
You can still only record 60 seconds in XP?
I wholeheartedly second that.
I recognize people by their sigs. Is that a bad thing?
There's plenty of open source out there.
The problem with looking for freeware on freeware/shareware sites is that those sites are desperate for some sort of revenue, so they prefer to host shareware and demos that they can earn revenue from through affiliate links. Having worked for such a site, I ought to know.
Most of the best freeware is open source nowadays. Whenever it's not it's usually to promote a commercial product. CDEX is one of the best cd rippers, sound recorders, and sound converters all in one.
I subsubscribe to Rhapsody and jet audio can record the downstreaming music to a file of your choice in several formats
Search for lcc-win32. I used this on my Windows days...
If the software you want is so trivial to create that it would be given away as freeware then why not write it yourself (and give it away as freeware)?
I use Bloodsheds Dev-C++ for C\C++ windows development.
I think the amount of windows freeware is almost as abundant as there was in 1999/2000; it's just that bandwidth is no longer handed out like candy on Halloween in America.
That forces places like download.com to charge for their listings; and programmers then need to recoup their increased costs.
Plus, employees have less time to work on their programs; since they can't do it @ work anymore
(legal issues; having less leisure time there, etc.)
Just grab a serial number list and regester thoes stupid progs. (the moderators will love this one)
411 Y0UR 8453 4R3 8310NG 70 U5!! -NSA
When I need some software for Windows, I usually find what I want on Framasoft. It lists only Free software but it's in French. The English translation doesn't seem very complete but you can try the Google translation.
No GNU has been Hurd during the making of this comment.
Freeware for Windows have arguably more bugs than Windows itself. i tried the Pocket Voice Recorder a couple of days ago and the thing doesn't even install correctly. Most others are either 'lameware' or 'buyware'. :o)
.. uh, give them a drawing board!
This may be yet another sign for switching to the Mac OS X. If Apple's iLife app's don't floor you, Apple's X11 (XDarwin implementation) should open you up to the world of freeware (yes, that means Linux apps will run on the mac too!).
and if Audio, Video, Music app's are what you particularly need then i'd say no alternative looks better than the mac right now. and i'll bet not for a while at least!
The Macintosh is the cleanest looking UNIX ever. Give Linux another 10 years (?) and Microsoft
This is why it is often better to go to a site which serves as a portal to links to your subject of interest, rather than a general search engine.
Err there's Windows software on Sourceforge as well as *nix you know.
I love the fact that the aMSN team have released a Win32 version which seems to be more secure than Microsofts and doesn't have the adware crap either.
Conor "You're not married,you haven't got a girlfriend and you've never seen Star Trek? Good Lord!" - Patrick Stewart
TotalRecorder is AWESOME! And CHEAP!
And you get FREE upgrades! I've found
it worth the small fee I paid ($10 or
so, several years ago). You can record
from any source, even things that are
"blocked", because of the way it works.
Check it out! I found it when I was in
your position, actually...
As for Freeware, you can check PC World,
and Tucows. They still have some Freeware.
I was looking for a similar program, and afert finding nothing but the same, I turned to sourceforge, and found Audacity. Perfect solution, thank you sourceforge.
I searched for weeks to find something that would record streaming radio broadcasts on Windows
You know you can do that in Winamp just by setting the output plugin to write to disk.
Mike
Download.Com + Astalavista.Box.Sk
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
I came accross this SF project a few weeks back I thought I'd post it for the benefit of the slashdot readers. OSS for Windows
http://www.cdlibre.org
Perhaps this was implicit in your analysis, but still worth pointing out to completely answer the question.
The tool u are looking for is Audacity at: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ it is a very good free open source audio recorder/editor ... i love it and it sounds like the perfect solution to your problem.
Ever heard of Audacity!
P.S. Oh btw, the reason my friend declined their offers is that he lost the source code in a harddrive failure and he's too embarrass to admit it :)
;)" - Linus
"Only wimps use tape backup; *real* men just upload their important stuff on FTP, and let the rest of the world mirror it
Perhaps the kind of person who develops free software also prefers a free platform. This is not a flame or a troll - just a thought that occurs to me.
If you don't want to install another OS, download knoppix. I'd expect there to be a record tool on knoppix.
You make the mistake of thinking you can educate the fundamental stupidity out of people. You can't.
Try "RadioRecord" on sourceforge.net
http://sourceforge.net/projects/radiorecord/
RadioRecord is a simple utility that records, encodes, buffers, and dumps MP3 audio on-the-fly.
nt
www.mozilla.orgc omk .greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puttyn gn 3.netm . com
www.openoffice.org
www.realvnc.
www.lavasoftusa.com
www.adobe.com
www.chiar
winscp.vse.cz/e
www.apache.org
quicktime.apple.com
www.cdex.
isorecorder.alexfeinman.com/isorecorder.ht
www.foundstone.com
www.shavlik.com
www.cygwin
www.xemacs.org
www.borland.com/jbuilder
Microsoft does have free programs and updates too:
www.microsoft.com
And some not so free but certainly worth it:
www.winzip.com
www.executive.com
OK I'll stop writing now cause this could seriously go on forever
Funny thing, I've been dealing with the same crap trying to find a simple CD player which actually puts the sound to the CD audio channel, as opposed to the wav channel. WMP, for example, besides being so bloated, routes the audio through the wav channel, so you can't control the volume of a CD and your full-screen game independently.
Winamp won't play 'enhanced'/mixed-mode CDs because it sees the data first.
I want something simple - play the audio CD tracks in random order through the CD sound channel. I don't care about MP3s, or any other format. I'm probably going to end up writing my own app in Tcl/Tk.
There is very little future in being right when your boss is wrong.
Hear is an easier one.
record any thing
Press Ctrl+C
Press and Hold Ctrl+V until it's as long as you like.
It used to be that if you wanted the latest greatest freeware and shareware for Windows and DOS, you'd hit the public FTP archives of places like my personal favorite, wuarchive.wustl.edu or you'd telnet or dialup your favorite BBS.
Or even better, you'd take three floppies and knock on the door of some hip techie to get the latest Apogee computer game (remember, Commander Keen?).
And when you couldn't do that, you'd flirt with some geek in the lab so that he'd teach you how to use rz or kermit to download freeware on your own. Ah, those were the days. I think I'll go fire up Telix.
Today, if you can't Google it, you can always try Simtel, a great place to find classic freeware as well.
scientists who use windows buy expensive programming environments and sophisticated scientific software, scientists who use macs have compilers for several languages within the system
Mac OS X comes with GCC. You can get GCC for Windows, or you can get GCC plus a UNIX source compatibility layer for Windows.
Try HitSquad's Software Music Machine. Plenty of free/shareware there.
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Search for audacity 1.1 or 1.2. It is really comprehensive and works well.
Freeware for Windows -- Where Did It Go?
Oh, it's still there. It just costs money now.
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
Winamp comes with a Disk Writer (WAV writer)plugin. There is also a Line-In Plugin available on the winamp site that will allow you to run the Line-In input through the winamp equilizer and DSP Effects. As a consequence, if you set the output plugin to the Disk Writer and play the Line-In input, It will record what you want.
Additionally, if you install the out_mp3 plugin, you could record the Line-In input directly to MP3 Format.
Calling atheism and agnosticism a religion is like calling bald a hair color.