Freeware

Free CD/DVD burner applications like JetBee and BurnAware have been my choice as small and fast Nero alternatives, UsefulUtils Discs Studio is another utility boasting full-featured professional multi-format CD/DVD burning capabilities bundled into an application sizing just 297 KB with setup size of 586 KB.

The free utility supports SCSI, ATAPI, Parallel port, USB and FireWire devices with features like On-The-Fly burning, PerformOPC, Over-burning, Test burning, Buffer Underrun Protection, various burning modes, bootable discs, Multi-session disc burning with choice of session import, multiple disc copies and audio track ripping with conversion to WMA, MP3, OGG and FLAC with FreeDB support.

As the name implies one of its kind utility "PikyBasket" lets you cut,copy and paste files and folders the smarter and easier way by allowing you to collect your choice of files/folders from multiple locations in a basket and then performing the desired action, you simply right-click the file/folder and use PikyBasket Drop into the basket option to keep filling the basket with your selection and then perform the cut/copy at the target.

If you think Microsoft's under-development motion sensing technology Project Natal is cool and would like to do something similar right now, here is some outright geeky stuff for you - a free Windows utility which lets you control any game using any object of your choice tracked via your webcam, not convinced check out the video.

Windows Desktop icon clutter is one of the most annoying experience every computer user has to face everyday if things are not properly organized, Stardock Fences is an Windows utility to put tabs on this and make desktop icon organization fast and easy, the free utility allows you to create named Fences on your desktop with icons organized according to your choice.

These labeled shaded containers for your desktop icons are movable & resizable, In addition to its organizing capabilities Fences offers another cool quick-hide feature which lets you fade-out (hide) and fade-in (show) desktop icons with a simple double-click, moreover your can choose Fences you want to exclude from quick-hide displaying only icon-group of your choice.

If your work involves lots of open windows and you want something which can sort the mess out here is some good news for you, one of its kind handy little utility WindowTabs let you group application windows as Google Chrome styled tabs.

WindowTabs attaches a small tab on top of each application window which you can use to drag-and-drop and group windows together, you are allowed to configure which applications you want tabs on and one's you want excluded.

There are quite a few free instant folder hiding and locking utilities for Windows, but WinMend Folder Hidden would be the most easiest and feature-rich free file and folder locking utility of them all, the software allows users to hide and protect multiple files and folders using password on local partitions and removable devices, the best part is that the data once hidden remains invisible even when accessed from another operating system on the same computer or another machine.

The hiding/unhiding process is instant and can also be used to hide/lock files and folders on removable data storage devices like USB pendrives and memory cards.

There are two well-known OCR software available for free namely - SimpleOCR and JOCR but both utilities require user to download and use them from desktop, however there is a better way to get images/documents converted in editable formats using free web-based OCR services, these free services allows users to upload documents in various formats and download editable version in format of their choice.

I tested some of these free online OCR services and here is a list of best ones which will get the job done easily and accurately.

At times we need to print listing of all file contained inside a directory, and if you are looking for a simple to use handy utility for this here are few good free options.

JR Directory Printer is an portable directory printer for Windows featuring recursive directory scanning with options to provide output in lowercase and DOS filenames with selectable file details.

JR Directory Printer is the most easy to use directory printer but if you are looking for something more advanced with advanced formatting options and filtering conditions Karen's Directory Printer and LS - File List Generator would be the perfect choice.

Hawkscope is an free multi-platform productivity utility providing easy access to disk-drive contents via system tray icon, the dynamically populated pop-up menu provides fast access to the file-system without the need to open file-explorer and manual navigation, the best part is that Hawkscope is extensible via plugins and there are handy plugins available to check Gmail messages, tweeting, executing commands, and searching Google.

The utility is hosted as an open-source project at Google Code and works on Windows, Mac OS X and Gnome Linux.

At times we need to download a single file from a huge archive but had to download the full-archive because there is no option to download a part of a file or archive, luckily free Microsoft Windows utility LoadScout solves this problem allowing users to get information from any remote media or archive file without downloading it, once the information is retrieved you can download files selectively from archive's or grab a part of a video or an audio file for preview before downloading.

LoadScout features an in-built FTP client and HTTP download engine, support for proxy servers and Internet Explorer integration makes it an ideal solution as a download manager.