Best Free* Stuff Online (*Get 'em While You Can!)

Free Stuff@Home

Surfer Sam

SurfSaver 2.2 Your browser has a File/Save option, but it's not ideal for trying to save online content to your hard drive to read offline--formats disappear, and text gets jumbled. That's where AskSam's SurfSaver 2.2 comes in. This 5.5MB download lets you save entire Web pages--including any linked pages connected to the page you're saving--in a single step. It retains the page formatting even when frames are involved so that you see the data exactly as it appeared online. It also creates a searchable offline archive of all the Web pages that you save, and lets you organize these pages by dragging them into separate subject folders. You can even annotate the saved pages with comments to highlight information that you want to stand out.

On Call

Net2Phone In the past year, countless freewheeling Net companies have turned coat and started charging for their one-time gratis services. Net2Phone, however, has gone the opposite route, turning its fee-based service into a free one. After installing the company's 860KB download, you can make free PC-to-phone and PC-to-PC domestic calls to anywhere in the United States. For PC-to-PC calls, the recipient must first download the Net2Phone program. Net2Phone also lets you send free voice-mail messages to anyone in the world via e-mail. The recipient receives brief instructions about downloading the software to hear your message. In addition, the site offers a free answering service in the United States and Canada that lets you hear incoming phone messages through your PC's speakers, and while you're still online. However, the feature uses your existing telephone line and your phone company's "forward on busy" answering service, so you'll have to pay your phone company for that extra service.

Personal Shopper

Copernic Shopper Want to save money when you shop? Copernic adapts its well-established search engine to its new program, Copernic Shopper (a 2.87MB download), to poll shopping-comparison sites in 13 categories. Enter the name of a product you want to buy, and Copernic Shopper searches dozens of different sources, serves up the best prices from various e-vendors, and lists the shipping costs and product availability. Click one of the results, and you'll arrive at the corresponding vendor's site where you can order the product online (Copernic accepts a commission from sites that offer a referral fee, but the company says this doesn't determine which vendors it includes in its service). Copernic Shopper also throws in a currency converter as well as a search-history function to save you from doing search replays, and it updates itself automatically to keep your results current.

Kill Bugs Dead

PC Pitstop; HouseCall; Security Check When it comes to virus protection, there is no better solution than installing a solid scanning program on your system and updating it regularly. But in the absence of such a program, these companies offer you a Web-based virus scanning tool for free. PC Pitstop, in addition to its virus scanner, offers a disk analyzer, an Internet connection monitor, a tool for analyzing your PC's configuration and making recommendations for better performance, and a diagnostic tool that tells you if unwanted ActiveX controls are lurking in your PC. HouseCall, Trend Micro's free online scanner, is easy to use and effective, and it will not only find viruses but also remove most of them. Symantec's Security Check finds viruses (but won't eliminate them), analyzes whether your PC is vulnerable to hacking, and tells you if your browser is feeding your personal information to Web sites.

Hands-Off Browsing

HandsFree Browser The problem with browsing the Net is the carpal contorting that clicking on hyperlinks demands. Edumedia's HandsFree Browser (a 2.47MB download) takes care of tedious click-work by using plug-in and voice-recognition technology (but it works only with Internet Explorer, not with Netscape). When you run the browser, it automatically checks all the links and forms on the current Web page, and jumps to a link when you say its name--just remember to enunciate. You can also fill in Web forms with such information as your name, address, and phone number using a single command.

Free ISPs

NetZero; BlueLight; Freedomlist Free Internet service providers are an endangered species, but they're great to use as a backup in case your paid provider goes down. While two other free ISPs keeled over as we were writing this, NetZero and BlueLight seem to be holding strong. And they can save you over $200 a year in access fees if you forgo a paid service altogether. Sure, you pay indirectly for these services by having to endure large ad frames placed on your screen while you're online. The companies also record your surfing history to serve you targeted ads, and they limit the amount of time you can be online (BlueLight locks you out after 25 hours a month, NetZero begins charging you after 40 hours). What's more, there's no guarantee these services won't go the way of other free ISPs. But if they do, you can always search for alternative free ISPs (and access a list comparing their features) at Freedomlist, which also keeps track of the latest ones to bite the dust.

Reference Guru

Atomica Ever find yourself without a dictionary when you need the definition of a word quickly? Atomica for Windows can deliver the meaning of a word appearing in any Windows program (e-mail, browser, word processor, or whatever). You simply hold the Alt key while clicking on a mystery word, and a definition pops up. The slight 945KB download is a subset of a larger knowledge bank from a company formerly known as GuruNet. The program draws on definitive Web sources, dictionaries, and encyclopedias from its server; the only drawback is that you have to be online to use it.