Don't get me wrong, I don't advocate stealing the stuff, I have nothing against shareware, and I'm not one of those people who think that all the software in the world should be free and open-sourced (although some of the open source arguments are pretty interesting). However, I just get a kick out of finding a useful little utility that some programmer, somewhere, decided to give to the world for free.

Here are some of my favorites:

Sysinternals
www.sysinternals.com
I can't recommend just one piece of software from this site, because there are so many gems. Essential if you're running Windows NT in any sort of administrative fashion. And these guys really know what they're talking about.

Treepad
www.treepad.com
A nice little program for organizing random bits of text information. There's a freeware version and a version that costs money. The free one doesn't have all the bells and whistles, but as long as you don't mind the way plain text looks, it works just fine (it looks a little better if you change the view options to use Verdana as the font...).

JCreator
www.jcreator.com
A great entry-level Java editor with a nice look and a lot of options. Doesn't have an IDE for creating graphical stuff, but great just for straight coding. It also has a really nice interface with the Java docs that allows you to search them almost like a Windows help file. Unlike a lot of similar freeware Java editors, this one isn't crippled in such a way that you have to buy the "real" version to do anything more than simple coding.

Notespad and Crimson Editor
www.newbie.net/NotesPad
www.crimsoneditor.com
Notepad replacements for editing text files. Both are small and fast, allow multiple windows (tabbed interface), and convert between UNIX and DOS text files. Notespad is more basic, and Crimson Editor adds a few nice features like optional line numbering and syntax highlighting (I even wrote a custom syntax file for LotusScript).

Diskeeper Lite
www.execsoft.com
The commercial version of this product works great, but the freeware version is just fine too. As I write this, they just released a new version of the "Lite" software that's faster than the previous "Lite" version, and supports Windows 98/NT/2000/XP. Don't forget to defrag your servers every so often!

Eraser
www.tolvanen.com/eraser
A program that can erase a file on your computer so a file recovery program can't "undelete" it. Also has the capability to wipe the free space on your drive, so that previously deleted files can't be recovered. Nice, simple interface.

UltimateZip
www.ultimatezip.com
This is essentially a free clone of WinZip. The interface is a little bulkier, but it's got all the good features, including the right-click menu options. Not that there's anything wrong with WinZip, but you never did get around to paying for it, did you...?

And if you want a fast, free command-line zip program (great for batch files), try out InfoZip.

NConvert
www.xnview.com
NConvert is a small command-line program for batch processing of image files. It can convert, resize, and manipulate images, and it supports a huge number of different file formats. Really good for converting or resizing lots of images, or doing automated image manipulation.

Prnter
Allows you to send .prn files to any attached printer, which essentially allows you to print something to a file, give it to someone else, and have them print it locally. You may think this is a ridiculous concept until you need to do it, and you don't happen to have Acrobat Distiller on your machine. Not sure if I'm allowed to post this file for download, so check your favorite shareware depot and do a search.

frhed
www.kibria.de/frhed.html
A small, fast, open-source hex editor.

gsar
gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/gsar.htm
A command-line utility that does search and replace in files really fast. Great for batch jobs. Also open-source, and available at sourceforge.net.

DiskImager (for floppies)
Local download
Okay, maybe I'm the only one who still uses floppies, but for anyone else who does, this is a neat little program. It makes an image of a floppy disk, so you can burn a new floppy image onto another disk whenever you want. Sound like a waste of time? Think about all those boot disks and emergency repair disks you have... Wouldn't it be nice if you could store the images somewhere central, so you could just burn a floppy when you need one?

I'm not sure if this software has a home, so I posted it here for a local download. The version I have even contains the source code -- in Turbo Pascal!