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Best Windows Freeware/Shareware Download Sites
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Outstanding Sites
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SoftPedia A large commercial site with an excellent collection organized by platform. It features site and user star ratings for products and user comments. The search engine doesn't display any ratings and this limits its use when selecting. The real selling point for this site is its "100% clean" guarantee. For many that is a winning feature.
SnapFiles / WebAttack Offers a huge collection, great organization and a refreshingly clean presentation. Products are briefly reviewed and carry site ratings, user rating and user comments. Excellent.
FileHippo A clean site with a wide product selection and fast download rates but offering almost no guidance in selection. A redeeming feature is they offer a full version history of most products.
MajorGeeks This site carries only tech tools and utilities. Guidance is limited to brief reviews and user ratings. However, if you are looking for tech tools this is THE place to go. One of my favorites.
FileForum-Betanews Not the largest download collection, but if you're looking for the very latest products you'll find them here long before other download sites.
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Recommended Sites
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ZDNet and CNet Downloads These two sites are just different faces of the same site. That site, however, offers the biggest collection of software on the web. Finding what you want is made easier by the have the best file search engine of all the download sites. There are also user star ratings for most products and site star ratings for some. The user comments are handy but beware, they are sometimes stacked with comments made by the product developers pretending to be mere users. The downside to these sites is they now require you to install their proprietry downloader. It is not only an unnecessary step it an intrusion into your privacy.
Tucows Huge collection with world-wide mirrors for fast downloading. The Classic "cow ratings" for products are not as realiable as they used to be. I can't help but feel that this once class-leading site has lost its way a little in recent times.
ServerFiles.com This is the old 32bit.com site re-launched as a site specializing in server software for network administrators and IT professionals. Quite a few products have ratings, some with full reviews. It's a unique offering and well worth visting if you fit the target market.
No-Nags This was once the best freeware-download site on the web but they haven't really kept up with the competition. There is a free service and a more helpful premium service. The shareware side is slowly being added and is not particularly impressive.
topshareware.com A good general interest download site that's competent. There are few rating or user reviews but it's nicely organized.
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Other Sites
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5 Star Shareware This popular UK site claims to feature only the best products in each category. It cerainly started out that way but over time has drifted towards more of a general purpose download site. The strong commercial orientation does not give me a lot of confidence
Shareware Junkies Every product here is independently reviewed, though many of the reviews are becoming dated. Can be helpful when you are trying to decide what you need.
Allen's WinApps List A fast and well organized site with a huge selection of software, but the search engine is woeful and there is little in the way of guidance as well.
WinPlanet The aging remnant of the once excellent Stroud's CWS Apps site, it's now part of the Internet.com mega-site. It's still a useful site with many product ratings and some reviews. Overall, though, it is but a pale shadow of its former self.
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Comments
Wow, this was great, thank you. So many sites I go to are terribly organized, this definitely helps.
Another good site that updates on a daily basis is http://www.hotlib.com
One of my favorite freeware sites (besides Gizmo's of course), is freewarehome.com
The website isn't pretty, but it is very well stocked and regularly updated. There are forums there too.
I agree that MajorGeeks is a top site for tech utilities
I use filehippo.com all the time.
What about videohelp.com? It's as site dedicated to video and audio software with many help forums and guides. Not all the software listed is free, but quite alot is.
It cannot be considered a software download site.
Well, I thought it was worth mentioning.
The suggestion is appreciated, but it just does not belong in this category :). Thanks though.
Your No-Nags link is broken
You misspelled the link as www.nonag.com
It should be www.nonags.com
Thanks. Corrected :).
WOW. I searched for something and this was the FIRST link I clicked. It is 100% relevant to my search and extremely helpful. Maybe there is hope after all! (grin) Or maybe it's just my lucky day! Thank you!!
Good Collection of shareware sites. Its really helping me. Thank you.
Regards,
Manvesh Sathe
ProjectF.org has about 800 applications and is updated almost every day. A new favourite site for me.
MajorGeeks.com is actually really good. i have used it a lot. im glad that its on the list...
Freefunfiles site has a solid list here that they update quite a bit.
Up above, under 'recommended sites', the link for nonags goes to thefreewaresite where they have VERY OLD APPS. If you are still running Win95, then it's Nirvana. Nonags.com is a cool site...and no, I'm not a member.
The 3 best sites:
1. Filehippo.com
2. Softonic.com
3. Download.com
en.softonic.com is a good site too... with reviews about almost every software that is listed on their site. It is slow with the updates though.
Anupam
download.com is nice but softpedia definitely has the largest list of downloads
Some good reviews found at http://freewareelite.wordpress.com
PESfan
Review software shareware programs arranged by categories. Includes audio, business, utilities, internet, desktop , development software, and more software. - http://www.downloadsoftfree.com
Another small freeware section is at http://tips4pc.com/best_free_programs.htm. I like it because the programs are good and there isn't so many to sort through. Half the time I do not know what I am looking for and this site has a review with each program.
Http://allfreewaredownload.com
You can download everything you want to and it's free!!!
registration required.
http://sundrytools.com may also be of interest. It has a collection of "totally free downloads", and are limited to freeware only. It has a wide product selection with short descriptions of each freeware files, and are easy to navigate.
Just ran across http://www.thefreecountry.com/
It has a "collection of free programming resources, free webmasters' resources, free security resources and free utilities"
www.freewarefiles.com and www.kaldata.net should be included in the list. Kaldata is updated very frequently, and is really good.
Anupam Shriwatri, India
Between this site and download.com I find I have little need to look elsewhere. :-)
There's a new download site you might not be familiar with: fossfor.us. It has only software released under free software licenses, for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Apparently the site hasn't officially launched, but it's active, and it lets you add software that's not already listed.
Looks very nice,good interface.
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