Chapter 5: Best Free Windows Add-Ons

In This Chapter

Finding out which Windows add-ons you must have

Getting the lowdown on the best of the (free) rest

Figuring out what software you don’t need

Much as I love — and hate, and love to hate — Windows 8.1, it has a few glaring holes that can be fixed only by non-Microsoft software.

In this chapter, I step you through two different kinds of software. First come the (few) programs that you need to fix holes in Windows. Second is a much larger group of programs that just make Windows work better. Both of the collections have two things in common: They’re absolutely free for personal use, with one exception (which costs $5), and they all run on the desktop side of Windows 8.1.

As of this writing, Windows 8.1 Metro tiled apps are in their infancy. A year or two from now, I hope to include many of them in this Hall of Cheap Charlie Honor.

At the end of this chapter, I turn to one of my favorite topics: Software that you don’t need and should never pay one cent to acquire. There are a lot of snake oil salesmen out there. This chapter tells you why they’re just blowing smoke.

Windows Apps You Absolutely Must Have

Depending on what kind of Windows machine you have, there’s a short and sweet list of free software that you definitely need.

File History

It isn’t an add-on. There, I fooled you to get your attention.

I don’t know how Windows users miss this one, but File History (see Figure 5-1) is a fantastic backup application; it works very easily, and it’s part of Windows. You already own it.

Microsoft’s telemetry says that more than 80 percent of all Windows 7 users missed the analogous feature in the older version of Windows. Now you have no excuse. All it takes is a USB drive or a hard drive.

Figure 5-1: File History, the Windows version of Time Machine.

Think of File History as the Windows version of Apple’s long-admired Time Machine. You get full backups, automatically, and it’s easy to retrieve all the earlier copies of a file.

If you haven’t yet turned on File History, drop everything, head over to Book VIII, Chapter 1, and turn it on.

I apologize for the deception. From this point on, I turn to add-ons.

Start8

There are lots and lots and lots and lots of Windows 7 Start Menu replacements designed to run in Windows 8 and Windows 8.1. To put it plainly, Microsoft was crazy (or dangerously deluded) to yank the Start menu out of Windows 8. It’s up to you to reach out and put the Start menu back in again.

Fortunately, the great programmers at Stardock have figured out a way to do exactly that. Start8 costs $5, and I hear that Stardock is making a fortune off the program. Good news for us Windows users. See Figure 5-2.

Figure 5-2: Stardock’s Start8 puts the Start menu back where it belongs.

To get Start8, crank up any browser and go to www.stardock.com. You may have to look around a bit, but probably on the left side you'll find a link that says Start8. Click the link and follow the instructions.

When I signed up, Hotmail (er, Outlook.com) tagged the Stardock registration message as spam, so be sure to check your Junk folder. Meh. Microsoft knows Junk, eh?

Start8 has lots of options but, frankly, I don’t use them. Just being able to get my Start menu back on the old-fashioned Windows 8.1 desktop is joy enough.

VLC Media Player

Unless you paid to get Windows Pro Media Center Edition, Windows itself can’t play DVD movies.

If your computer doesn’t have a DVD drive, you can yawn right now and skip to the next topic. But if you have a DVD drive, you need to check something.

Find a DVD movie somewhere — if you don’t have one, rent one . . . if you can find a place to rent them any more — and stick the DVD in your PC. A Windows notification appears, and you can tap or click that notification and play the DVD. It ought to be like falling off a log.

Unfortunately, many Windows 8.1 PCs — brand-spanking new machines — won't play DVD movies. Why? Microsoft decided that, even though it shipped the DVD-playing capability in previous versions of Windows, putting that capability in Windows 8.1 just cost too much. You can read the details on my blog at www.infoworld.com/t/microsoft-windows/windows-8-wont-be-able-play-dvds-192567.

Some PC makers step in and provide the DVD movie-playing software with their new machines, but they’re under no obligation to do so. That’s why I suggest you get a DVD movie and see whether it’ll play.

If it won’t play, a simple solution is the free VLC Media Player program. In fact, VLC is so good that I use it and recommend it for all media playing — music and movies. VLC includes the small translation programs (called codecs) that let you play just about any kind of music or video on your Windows 8.1 PC.

Another poster child for open source, VLC Media Player plays just about anything — including YouTube Flash FLV files — with no additional software, downloads, or headaches.

Unlike other media players, VLC sports simple, Spartan controls; built-in codecs for almost every file type imaginable; and a large, vocal online support community. VLC plays Internet streaming media with a click, records played media, converts between file types, and even supports individual-frame screenshots. VLC is well-known for tolerating incomplete or damaged media files. It will even start to play downloaded media before the download’s finished.

Hop over to VLC (www.videolan.org) and install it (see Figure 5-3). Yeah, it's ugly. But it works very well indeed.

Figure 5-3: VLC Media Player plays every song and video type imaginable, even your video DVDs.

PSI Inspector

Every system — absolutely every Windows system — should run Secunia's Personal Software Inspector (www.secunia.com/vulnerability_scanning/personal). It keeps track of all the software on your PC and alerts you when updates are needed. It'll even install those updates for you, if you let it.

The security intelligence company Secunia makes PSI available free to advertise its other services, just make sure you tell the PSI installer that it’s for personal use.

Secunia PSI knows about thousands of programs (see Figure 5-4). It scans your computer and advises you on which ones need security patches, and then installs most of the updates automatically. Details in Book IX, Chapter 4.

Figure 5-4: Every Windows PC needs to run Secunia PSI.

Recuva

File undelete has been a mainstay PC utility since DOS. But there’s never been an undeleter better than Recuva (pronounced “recover”), which is fast, thorough, and free. See Figure 5-5.

Figure 5-5: Recuva undeletes files — even on your phone or camera.

When you throw out the Windows Recycle Bin trash, the files aren’t destroyed; rather, the space they occupy is earmarked for new data. Undelete routines scan the flotsam and jetsam and put the pieces back together.

As long as you haven’t added new data to a drive, undelete (almost) always works; if you’ve added some data, there’s still a good chance you can get most of the deleted stuff back.

Recuva can also be used to undelete data on a USB drive, an SD card, and many phones that can be attached to your PC.

Powerful stuff.

The Best of the Rest — All Free

Here are my recommendations for useful software that you may or may not want, depending on your circumstances.

Hey, the price is right.

Revo Uninstaller

Revo Uninstaller (www.revouninstaller.com) well and truly uninstalls programs, and it does so in an unexpected way.

When you use Revo, it runs the program’s uninstaller and watches while the uninstaller works, looking for the location of program files and for Registry keys that the uninstaller zaps. It then goes in and removes leftover pieces, based on the locations and keys that the program’s uninstaller took out. Revo also consults its own internal database for commonly left-behind bits and roots those out as well.

Revo gives you a great deal of flexibility in deciding just how much you want to clean and what you want to save. For most programs, the recommended Moderate setting strikes a good balance between defenestrating problematic pieces and deleting things that really shouldn’t be deleted.

The not-free Pro version monitors your system when you install a program, making removal easier and more complete. Pro will also uninstall remnants of programs that have already been uninstalled.

If you uninstall programs — whether to tidy up your system or to get rid of something that’s bothering you — it’s worth its weight in gold.

Paint.net

In Book VII, Chapter 6, I talk about the Microsoft Paint program, which can help you put together graphics in a pinch.

For powerful, easy-to-use photo editing, with layers, plugins, and all sorts of special effects, along with a compact and easily understood interface, I stick with Paint.net.

The program puts all the editing tools a non-professional may reasonably expect into a remarkably intuitive package.

Download it at www.getpaint.net and give it a try.

7-Zip

Another venerable Windows utility, 7-Zip (www.7-zip.org) still rates as a must-have, even though Windows supports the Zip format natively.

Why? Because some people of the Apple persuasion will send you RAR files from time to time, and 7-Zip is the fast, easy, completely free way to handle them.

7-Zip also creates self-extracting EXE files, which can come in handy (although heaven help you if you ever try to e-mail one — most e-mail scanners won’t let an EXE file through). And it supports AES-256 bit encryption. The interface rates as clunky by modern standards (see Figure 5-6), but it gets the job done with Zip, RAR, CAB, ARJ, TAR, 7z, and many lesser-known formats. It even lets you extract files from ISO CD images.

Figure 5-6: 7-Zip may not have the greatest interface, but it’s a workhorse.

Another poster boy for the open-source community, 7-Zip goes in easily, never nags, and wouldn’t dream of dropping an unwanted toolbar on your system. Enlightened.

Dropbox, Google Drive, SkyDrive, or . . .

Even if the thought of putting your data on the Internet drives you nuts, sooner or later you’re going to want a way to store data away from your main machine, and you’re going to want an easy way to share data either with other people, or with other computers (desktops, laptops, tablets, and phones).

I give you an overview of the options available in Book IV, Chapter 4. There’s no obvious winner — no cloud storage that’s inherently better than any of the others. Just pick one and get it set up. Some day it’ll save your tail.

You may not need to buy Microsoft Office

Maybe.

If your needs are simple and you don’t have to edit fancy documents created in Word, Excel, or PowerPoint, you may be able to get by with Google Apps (which I discuss in Book X, Chapter 3) or LibreOffice. If you’re moonlighting with a Mac, the iWork apps might do, too.

Do the math: LibreOffice, free. Google Apps, free for personal use. iWork apps, $10 each. Office 365 (which includes five licenses) $100/year, forever. Office 2013 Home & Student (for personal use only, no Outlook), $150. Home & Business, $220.

Whenever somebody asks me, “Why do you recommend Office when OpenOffice/LibreOffice does everything for free?”, I have to cringe. It’s true that Microsoft Office is enormously expensive. It’s also true that good, but not great, alternatives exist — including Google Drive or Google Apps (which I discuss in Chapter 3 of this minibook), among many others.

Here are two substantial problems:

As much as I would love to recommend a free replacement for Word, Excel, or PowerPoint, the simple fact is that the free alternatives aren’t 100-percent compatible. In fact, for anything except the simplest formatting and most basic features, they aren’t compatible at all. Even Microsoft’s free Office Web Apps doesn’t come close to the real Word, Excel, or PowerPoint. If your needs are modest, by all means, explore the alternatives. But if you have to edit a document that somebody else is going to use and it has any unusual formatting, you may end up with an unusable mess.

Many people don't realize it, but OpenOffice.org isn't the same organization it used to be. In fact, there's an ongoing debate about the superiority of the new OpenOffice.org (which now belongs to Apache) and the renegade offshoot LibreOffice (www.libreoffice.org). Basically, some feel that OpenOffice.org moved away from its open-source roots when Oracle owned it, and so a new organization, LibreOffice, forked the code and has released several new versions that are not associated with OpenOffice.org or Oracle. So you're left with two organizations, slightly different products, and no clear indication of which version (if either) will be around for the long-term.

Don’t Pay for Software You Don’t Need!

If you’ve moved to Windows 8.1, there’s a raft of software — entire categories of software — that you simply don’t need.

Why pay for it?

Many people write to ask me for recommendations about antivirus software, utility programs, Registry cleaners, or backup programs. They cite comparative reviews — even articles that I wrote a few years ago — debating the merits and flaws of various packages.

Time and again, I have to tell them that all the information they know is wrong. On second thought, I guess the accumulated knowledge isn’t so much wrong as obsolete.

The simple fact is, if you moved up to Windows 8.1, you wouldn’t need a lot of that stuff — and the old reviews are just that. Old reviews.

In this, the last section of the last chapter of this book, I’m going to lay it on the line — point out what you don’t need, in my considered opinion — and try to save you a bunch of money. With any luck at all, this handful of tips will save you the price of the book.

Windows 8.1 has all the antivirus software you need

Windows Defender works great. And it doesn’t cost a cent.

I’ve railed against the big antivirus companies for years. And I’ll rail once again. You don’t need to pay a penny for antivirus, antispyware, anti-anything software, and you don’t need a fancy outbound firewall, either.

I talk about Windows Defender and the Windows Firewall in Book IX, Chapter 3.

There are other security programs you need, however. I list those in Book IX, Chapter 4. They’re free.

Windows 8.1 doesn’t need a disk defragger

Because of the way Windows stores data on a hard drive and reclaims the areas left behind when deleting data, your drives can start to look like a patchwork quilt, with data scattered all over the place. Defragmentation reorganizes the data, plucking data off the drive and putting files back together again, ostensibly to speed up hard drive access.

Although it’s true that horribly fragmented hard drives — many of them handcrafted by defrag software companies trying to prove their worth — run slower than defragged drives, in practice the differences aren’t that remarkable, particularly if you defrag your hard drives every month or two or six. (Note that you should never defrag a Solid State Drive.) In practice, even moderately bad fragmentation doesn’t make a noticeable difference in performance, although running a defrag every now and again helps.

With Windows 8.1, you don’t need to run a defrag. Ever. Windows runs one for you, by default, one day every week at 1:00 a.m. You can check that your defrags are running properly by looking at the Task Scheduler, as I describe in Book VI, Chapter 4.

Windows 8.1 doesn’t need a disk partitioner

I personally hate disk partitioning, but rather than get into a technical argument (yes, I know that dual-boot systems with a single hard drive need multiple partitions), I limit myself to extolling the virtues of Windows 8.1’s partition manager.

No, Windows 8.1 doesn’t have a full-fledged, disk partition manager. But it does everything with partitions that most people need — and it gets the job done without messing up your hard drive. Which is more than I can say for some third-party, disk partition managers.

For details, see Book VIII, Chapter 5.

Windows 8.1 doesn’t need a Registry cleaner

I’ve never seen a real-world example of a Windows 8.1 machine that improved in any significant way after running a Registry cleaner. As with defraggers, Registry cleaners may have served a useful purpose for Windows XP, but nowadays, I think they’re useless (correction: worse than useless). I’ve never found a single run of a single Registry cleaner that caused anything but grief.

There’s a great quote that (as best I can tell) originated on the DSLReports forum in March 2005. A poster who goes by the handle Jabarnut states, “The Registry is an enormous database, and all this cleaning really doesn’t amount to much . . . I’ve said this before, but I liken it to sweeping out one parking space in a parking lot the size of Montana.” And that’s the long and short of it.

Jabarnut is correct: The Registry is a giant database — a particularly simple one. As with all big databases, sooner or later some of the entries get stale; they refer to programs that have been deleted from the system or to settings for obsolete versions of programs. Sure, you can go in and clean up the pointers that lead nowhere, but why bother? Registry cleaners are notorious for messing up systems by cleaning things that shouldn’t be touched.

Windows 8.1 doesn’t need a backup program

The built-in backup options, which I discuss at length in Book VIII, Chapter 1, work very well.

The only possible exception is if you’re paranoid enough to want a full “ghost” backup of your hard drive. In that case, yes, you have to acquire (possibly buy) a backup program. But why bother? Windows 8.1’s Restore works very well indeed.

Don’t turn off services or hack your Registry

I just love it when someone writes to me, all excited because he’s found a Windows service that he can turn off, with no apparent ill effect. Other people tell me about this really neat Windows pre-fetch hack they’ve found, in which a couple of flipped bits in the Registry can significantly speed up your computer. Before they changed, Windows boot times were sooooo slow. Now, with the hack, it’s like having a new PC all over again!

Meh.

I call it the Registry Placebo Effect. If you find an article or a book or a YouTube video that shows you how to reach into the bowels of Windows to change something, and the article (book or video) says that this change makes your machine run faster, well — by golly — when you try it, your machine runs faster! I mean, just try it for yourself: Your machine will run so much better.

Yeah. Sure. Once upon a time, when dinosaurs walked the earth, it’s possible that turning off a few Windows services (little Windows subprograms that run automatically every time you boot) may have added a minuscule performance boost to your daily Windows ME routine. Bob may have jumped up faster, or Clippy could have offered his helpful admonitions a fraction of a millisecond more quickly. But these days, turning off Windows services is just plain stupid. Why? The service you turn off may be needed, oh, once every year. If the service isn’t there, your PC may crash or lock up or behave in some strange way. Services are tiny, low-overhead critters. Let them be.

That covers the high points. I hope this chapter alone paid for the book — and the rest is just gravy!