People always ask me, where do you find the
shareware you review? And while I'm tempted to keep my sources a secret,
this column will focus on the hot spots on the Web where you can find
and download the latest and greatest pieces of shareware.
Where
else?One of the first places I go to look for the latest and
greatest shareware is, not coincidently, Shareware.com . The
site, one of the oldest on the Net, is light on graphics but heavy on
files. Sponsored by C|Net, you can search the site's Windows section or
broaden your quest to include the whole of the Web. But one caveat: the
sponsored links are pretty heavy on this site, often overwhelming the
files that you're looking for.
Much like shareware.com,
files32.com is low on the bells and whistles, but more than makes up for
it by sheer volume of downloading goodness. The categories are separated
into logical branches (Puzzles and Mind Teasers, Arcade Games,
Role-Playing Games, and Casino, among others, all reside beneath Games,
while the Business category holds Training Tools, Calculators, and
Training Modules) and the Software Spotlight section highlights packages
that otherwise might escape your attention.
Titles are also
listed by Most Popular and Newest, so if you just know you're looking
for, say, an address book, it's pretty safe to assume that the ones near
the top of the most popular list are the picks you should check out
first. You can also access reviews and screen shots of most of the
titles on the site, giving you at least some indication of what you're
getting before you even click the download button.
I'll take a
jumbo, please, with everythingJumbo.com , in contrast
to the two afore-mentioned sites, is more eye candy than content. As
much clearing house for other download providers as anything else, the
site boasts enough banners and paid placements to choke a monkey. That
said, the content here is laid out in a clean, efficient manner, and
whatever you can't find through Jumbo's own archives you can probably
find by perusing the provided outside links.
One drawback: Unless
you pay attention, you can't always tell when you're accessing Jumbo's
own shareware listings and outside links. Click on the Font category,
for example, and you're whisked away to Flashkit.com , while
the Drivers category takes you to Windrivers.com . Not
that there's anything wrong with those sites; it's just a little
disconcerting to think you're about to enter a sub-category on one site
and be shuttled off entirely to another.
How about this
heat?One of my favorites has always been ZD Net's Hotfiles.com . The
categories are easy to browse, banner ads and other eyesores are kept to
a minimum, and the featured download is almost always something cool
that, at least for the moment, I'm usually convinced I can't live
without. Best of all, the user reviews give you at least some idea of
what the other visitors to the site think of any particular program in
question.
On this particular visit, I searched for MP3 organizer
software. I was immediately greeted with a list of thirty-four different
programs, along with user reviews, the date the utilities were posted to
the site, and how many times each had been downloaded. Related sponsored
links were included along with my search, of course, but were thankfully
kept to a minimum and didn't interfere with my hunt for the perfect
suite to organize my music files. Within a few minutes I had downloaded
MP3 CD Organizer 5.2 and was happily browsing my hard drive for errant
bits of music.
Stating the obviousAnother obvious one, Download.com , is also
one of the best. Like shareware.com, download.com is sponsored by C|Net,
and includes its fair share of banner advertisements and product
placements. But once you get past the clutter, the site is fast, easy to
use, and has a plethora of information available on music, utilities,
reviews, technology news, and a little bit of everything else, along
with the expected shareware downloads.
Searching for MP3
organizer software here pretty much got me the same results as
hotfiles.com, so I turned my attention to my other great need: fonts.
(Don't ask.) Searching for the word font brought up (yikes!) 693
entries. There really wasn't a choice to delve into different categories
to narrow my search, so instead I decided to search for "font
organizer." That brought up nine programs, none of which actually
organized fonts.
I was left with the sense that Download.com is
great if you know exactly what you're looking for, but the facility to
help you narrow your search that is inherent on some of the other sites
just isn't there. Still, I didn't really need to organize my fonts
anyway, so I left the site none the worse for wear. Besides, with a
gazillion MP3's scattered all over my hard drives, who has the time for
playing around with fonts anyway?
Better safe than
sorryRemember to check out and verify every piece of freeware and
shareware that you download before installing it on your computer. If
you download it from one of the sites mentioned above, and if the
software in question is from a reputable company, you'll probably be
fine--but some downloads may contain adware, spyware, or even viruses.
Make sure to create a restore point in your Windows system before
installing shareware you're unfamiliar with. After all, it's better to
spend ten minutes creating a safety net than it is to spend days and
weeks trying to remove pesky spyware from your
system.
Contributing Editor Joe DeRouen writes Windows Advisor
monthly for ComputerUser.
