So you picked up a new Windows 7 laptop (or desktop) or you're planning on buying one in the very near future?

If you took a look at display models in stores like Best Buy or Frye's, you no doubt noticed that new systems come with a lot of programs pre-installed. Lots of software is a good thing, right? Not always.

Trouble is, what you get is often a) not really useful software or b) a time-limited trial. Office 2007 and the antivirus protection the salesperson told you about? They're 60 day trials. After that, they're going to ask you to pay up...But you don't have to.

No, you can tell those apps to keep their hands off your credit card! With all the great, free software Download Squad has covered over the years, there's really no need to burden your new system with that kind of software timebomb.
With just two simple apps you can quickly strip away all the bloatware (that's what us techy types call the excess crud preinstalled on your new system) and get yourself a nice selection of totally free software that will never expire!

If you're going to be buying a new computer soon, or if you regularly work on a number of different computers, you're probably going to spend a fair bit of time installing the latest version of a bunch of applications that you use most frequently. And that means downloading a bunch of apps, and then clicking next a few dozen times to until everything is configured properly.

Or you can use Volery. This service lets you create a single installer for dozens of popular freeware applications. You can pick and choose from a long list of web browsers, multimedia applications, and other utilities. Honestly, almost every application I use on a daily basis was on the list. And if you wish a program that wasn't on the list was included, you can fill out the suggest an app box at the bottom of the page.

Once you choose your applications, you just click the Get Installer button and Volery will download all of the programs and create a single installer. Click it to run, and the installer will load all of the selected applications onto your PC. The apps will all be installed to their default directories and shortcuts will be added to your desktop and Start Menu. You don't get all the advanced installation options you might be used to, but the fact that you can leave the installer running unattended kind of makes up for that.

Volery is in private beta at the moment, but the first 500 people to sign up using the following link should be able to get in on the action:


The program is free while in beta, but eventually the company plans to charge for access to the service. In other words, there will never be any offers to install the Google Toolbar or other applications that you didn't ask for during the installation process.

Final pricing hasn't been set yet, and while the company will begin charging for service, any installers you create with a beta account will continue to work even after Volery goes pro. Of course, if you want to create installers with the most up-to-date versions of each application, you'll need to pay up.

[via How-To Geek]

We've covered applications that attempt to download and install the latest versions of your Windows software in the past. But Ketarin takes a different approach. You can enter a list of applications you want to track, and it will automatically check the download locations to see if there are new versions available. If there are, it will download the installer files to the directory of your choice. You can designate a single directory for all your downloads, or a different directory for each file.

The easiest way to use Ketarin is to grab the download URLs from FileHippo, a popular software download site. Ketarin will automatically detect and download the latest vesion of any app available on the site. But if you want to track an application that's not available on FileHippo you can enter the URL for the download page and establish a list of variables Ketarin should look for to determine whether there's a new version of the application available.

You can find more instructions for using Ketarin at the CDBurnerXP help site. The application updater was designed by the maker of the free CD burning application for Windows.

via Lifehacker

As I've mentioned before, I'm a fan of apt-get. It's an extremely easy way to get tons of new applications installed on a new Linux installation. Plenty of similar options exist for Windows, but one stands out.

GetIt combines the power of three Windows implementations of the system - AppSnap, AppUpdater, and Win-Get. Once you've got all your engines installed, use Get-it's GUI to set them up (just click the buton) and you're ready to install.

More than four hundred apps are currently supported, including Avast, AVG, CDBurnerXP, Firefox, AutoHotKey, uTorrent, VLC, OpenOffice, and Handbrake.

Applications can be installed a number of ways. When GetIt checks your repositories for updates, it creates installer files in its Install folder. After that, you can:

• Browse to the folder and double-click an installer
• Use the GetIt Gui or command line
• Index the folder and launch installers from Find and Run Robot (or your favorite launcher)

Installs run without user input, and GetIt also supports checking for updates to your apps. I'd like to see the GUI support multiple selections and would prefer not having to "press any key to continue" following an install, but those are minor gripes. For the average user, category listings would be a helpful addition.

GetIt is a simple, powerful way to download and install tons of great software and keep it up to date on your Windows PC.

Because no space in this world is immune from advertising, you're about to see ads start popping up in software installers. OpenCandy, the company providing the technology says software developers can use their software in one of two ways. During the installation process, users will either see:

1. An option to install a similar application
2. An ad

But if you ask me, both options are an ad. Not that there's anything wrong with that. In one case, you may see a paid advertisement, while in another case you may see a recommendation to download an application. Whether the developer of that application paid to get the software title in front of you or not, there's clearly an exchange of value taking place here.

Anyway, the offers to install additional software are always opt-in. So you won't accidentally install unwanted software just by clicking Next over and over. And the way OpenCandy handles additional software installations is actually pretty nifty. Near the end of the install process, you're asked if you want to add an extra application. If you choose yes, the first installer will finish up, and then you'll automatically download the new program and its installer will launch.

OpenSUSE has always been an odd sort of Linux distribution. It's always been reasonably user friendly, very stable, and quite nicely pulled off the not-so-easy task of being good for new users while offering advanced and power users the flexibility and freedom they require.

Yet OpenSUSE often gets a bad wrap. There's that whole Novell/Microsoft/the world is ending conspiracy thing going on, for one thing. Certainly when Novell bought SuSE, it was disturbing. What were Novell's intentions? Where were things going to go from this point? Was openSUSE going to suffer for it?

Suffer? We probably wouldn't go as far as to say that. Were the changes and improvements to the distribution immediately after Novell took the helm earth-shaking? No, not particularly. They were modest, and worked well enough, but nothing that seemed leaps and bounds beyond the previous versions.

Nothing seemed leaps and bounds beyond -- until now. Today, OpenSUSE officially rolled out the 11.0 release. OpenSUSE seems to have scrutinized itself, from the kernel to the community. The developers pushed away from what seemed like an "adapt to survive" mode, and rolled out a release with changes so dramatic and beautiful that the distribution's chameleon ("geeko") mascot seems less cute and instead genuinely fitting.

If we had one word, and only one word to use to describe OpenSUSE 11.0, it would be this:

Fast.

Yes, dear readers. We just used the word "fast" (boldface, even) in relation to an OpenSUSE release. It starts and runs applications quickly, and we can say completely honestly, it installs quickly. We aren't just talking system updates and "here and there" YaST additions. No... You can boot the liveCD and have a complete OpenSUSE 11.0 system on your hard drive in what seems even slightly less time than an Ubuntu install.

We love executable Windows apps that don't need to be installed. They don't muck up you registry and other settings, and when you want to delete them, you just delete the file or folder, no add/remove programs dialog required. Best of all, most of these applications can be run from a USB flash drive which means you can carry them with you and run them on any computer.

But there are a few advantages to having an installer. First, if an application isn't listed in the add/remove program dialog and you don't use it very often, you might forget it's there at all and never get around to deleting it. Second, you have to create folders for all of your executable applications and add shortcuts to the Windows start menu manually. Or you could use ZipInstaller.

This little executable will automatically move any executable file to the folder of your choice, add an entry to add/remove, create an uninstaller application, and add a shortcut to your start menu. Best of all? ZipInstaller comes as an executable file, so we were able to test it out by installing ZipInstaller. Not only did a shortcut pop up in the Windows start menu, but now we can also launch ZipInstaller using keyboard application launcher Launchy.

[via Freeware Genius]

UNetbootin is a tool that makes installing Linux about as easy as it can be. Like Wubi, you can install UNetbootin on a Windows partition to get started. Unlike Wubi, the end result with UNetbootin is a dual-boot machine that can boot either into a Windows partition or a Linux one.

So why use UNetbootin instead of downloading and burning a liveCD? Well, if you don't have a spare CD-R writing around, of if your computer doesn't have a CD burner, UNetbootin uses a network-based installation technique. Just select the flavor of UNetbootin you want to install, reboot your machine, and follow the on-screen instructions. This would be an awesome tool for anyone who has one of those super-portable laptops that don't come with optical disc drives.

You can use UNetbootin to install Debian, Arch Linux, Fedora, Mandriva, OpenSuse 10.2, and Ubuntu 6.06 - 7.10. There are Linux and Windows-based installers available which means you can use UNetbootin to add Ubuntu to your Windows PC or to ad Mandriva to your OpenSuse machine. Windows Vista isn't currently supported, but an update should be coming in a few weeks that will allow you to use UNetbootin with Vista.

[via Howtoforge]

As regular computer user, I don't have much interest in migrating to Vista in the immediate future. I don't think it offers any great leap in usability or functionality over XP. UAC (User Access Control) is definitely much needed and will improve security overall but it can be annoying as hell for average users. Aero Glass UI is nice to look at but does nothing to actually let you work more efficiently. Added to which, there are still doubts on how well Vista performs as a home media center or gaming platform.

On the other hand as a .Net software developer, Vista is both a blessing and a curse. I want every single Windows user migrated to Vista as soon as possible because having the .Net framework included as part of Vista's standard installation is a very big deal. This means that application installers will no longer need to check for the presence of the .Net framework or provide a method to automatically download and install it if absent. This is a huge time and effort savings for the user as the framework is a large download. Also some users are turned off by the mere idea of downloading yet another component in order to run an application in XP. With the framework part of the OS, users will have one less thing to worry about.

Normally I like to showcase freeware for Windows Mobile devices. But Teksoft's AirWizard is well worth paying for if you have to constantly set up Windows Mobile devices after a hard reset.

AirWizard lets you take a group of installer files and pack them together into one nice big installer. When would this come in handy? Say for example that you write about PDA software for a technology blog and so you're constantly installing and uninstalling programs on your beloved handheld device. And then say you install a program that makes the whole thing lock up and your only option is to perform a hard reset.

Now, in this hypothetical and tragic situation, your only recourse is to spend hours tracking down the installer files for all of your favorite software and reconfiguring your device. And as much as this is a fun project for a Saturday afternoon/evening/late night, AirWizard can save you a lot of time. It'd also be handy if you want to install the same software on a number of devices in a corporate setting.

I'd be happy to pay for the program -- if it didn't cost close to $60. Luckily, there's an "unlimited trial" available. Users who register the software get free technical support and free upgrades.

[via SolSie]

InstallPad is a brilliant open source app for Windows that lets you automate the download and installation of entire suites of programs. InstallPad relies on "application lists," which are XML files that tell it where to download the programs and how to install them. It has a built-in GUI for building and editing an application list (or you can edit XML by hand if you like), and you can select which applications from the list to install. The really cool part is that it does all of this silently. You don't have to play "Next, Next, Next, Next, Next, Next, Finish" game with the installers, because InstallPad does it for you. It also lets you pass arguments to the installers and invoke scripts when installation is complete. It can download from HTTP and FTP sources as well as run local installers or network resources. The obvious audience here is the network administrator who frequently has to bootstrap machines with the same bunch of apps, but it also has benefits for when you're doing a reformat-and-reinstall, or setting up a virtual machine with a bunch of apps.

Over at Lifehacker, Gina Trapani has put together a few application lists for InstallPad, including a "PC Rescue Pack," "Media Pack," and a general-purpose "Lifehacker Pack." Don't miss 'em.

I have a large project for work that I have been developing for over three years now. A while back I needed a way to quickly and easily install the application on a user's PC's from a remote location. I have users in six states, and while I wouldn't mind visiting Hawaii, the company doesn't think I need to do so to get my app installed. The Install Creator program from Clickteam offers a free alternative. Unfortunately for me, this means I won't be going to Hawaii anytime soon, at least not on the company's dime. Clickteam's light-weight but fully featured solution does a great job. Everything is modifiable, including the image placement, icon settings, and even the installer's text prompts. This installer is much easier to use than Nullsoft's Installer, which requires a bit of scripting knowledge. The only catch is that the free version displays a text ad promoting the installer maker on the install creator at the end of each install, so your unsuspecting users know how you did it. A small price to pay for being able to save the company some money. Too bad my boss already bought a ticket to Hawaii and didn't tell me...yeah right.