Saved by some good free software

For simple utilities, I try to find free software.  I look for stuff that is free free, not free to try, or free but there is a PRO version that you can buy.  The good free stuff doesn't have a financial agenda--often distributed under the GPL GNU public licensing, so they don't pack a bunch of glitz and bloat.  Small programs that just do what they are supposed to do are gems.  I like XNView for image work (where Paint just isn't good enough), CutePDF for generating PDF files, PDFTK Builder for assembling and disassembling PDF files, Crimson Editor for text editing, Launchy which I use for a super fast folder finder at work, Gimp for a high-end hard to use image manipulations (I used this for collages, NOT user friendly but very powerful). 

Recently I ran into a problem where I had to download a upgrade file for work that was about 150MB, then had to download another set of update files that totaled an additional 600MB.  Even with a fast connection, this is asking a lot.  I downloaded the 150MB file twice, and each time had an error at the end of the download, a big time consuming failure.  Frustrated, I tried to find a good free download manager and found Free Download Manager.  Certainly a good download manager, maybe not the best I've used, but more than up to the task.  One of the things you lose if you don't use a download manager is the ability to tolerate a network interruption, and for long downloads this is a real risk.  Also, a download manager like this will let you pause (or prioritize, or schedule) the download so that you can do other things with your internet connection and not suffer excruciatingly slow page uploads.



Another little program I found that was worth the download is Folder Size.  This does nothing but add the size of the folders to Windows Explorer.   Doesn't seem like a big deal, until that's exactly what you need!  I was running out of disk space and couldn't figure out why--this program helped me find the offending culprits.  The offending culprits were indeed junk, and I safely deleted the lot of them, recovering LOADS of space.