All About Freeware

Here are some freeware Windows and Linux computer programs to use before and after the New Year. All three can be downloaded quickly, as they are under 1 MB each…

New Year’s theme: Windows theme for Windows 9x and ME, featuring a special background and icons to celebrate the New Year. Download here (581 K)

Plan 1.8.7: Freeware calendar/planner application software which can be used in X11 Linux. Get better organized in 2009. Download (427 K)

Free New Year Screensaver 1.3: Forest, snow, animals, full moon, and Santa Claus. Should work in Windows 95 and later. Download now (473 K)

You can also find free New Year clip art and fonts on the Internet.

Here is some free Christmas oriented software for Windows and Macintosh computers…

Backcountry Christmas: Windows 95/98/ME theme featuring a snow-covered mountain and holiday oriented icons. Download here (776 K)

TreetopLights 2.2: Customize and place an animated tree with lights on your Mac OS X desktop. Download (1.24 MB)

Christmas Gifts 1.1: A game for Windows 2000/Vista/XP that offers a familiar theme and downloads quickly on any connection. Download (337 K)

Christmas Counter 1.1: Simple program that counts down the days until the 25th. Can be set to a different date. For Mac OS. Download (29 K)

You can also find free Xmas oriented clip art, fonts, music, and screensavers online.

Most mini golf games that are available for download are either shareware or demonstration versions. However, there are a few freeware games of this type that are completely free to use:

Sharpshooter’s Miniature Golf 4.285: A three dimensional game which supports a maximum of four players, for Windows 95 and later. Download here (3.26mb)

Mini Golf 1.1: A freeware game for Windows XP, 2000, and Vista that downloads more quickly and features nine different courses. Download (342k)

Golfer Deluxe: Golfer Deluxe includes mini golf and various other golfing games, and it runs in Win. 98 or later. Also requires Flash Player. Download (4.9mb)

Various web-based golfing games are also available for free.

If you want more fonts to use or are looking for a specific type of font, consider downloading some freeware fonts available on the web…

Font Bonanza: A collection of 4,700+ fonts in TrueType format, for Windows. Downloading this file will take a long time, however. Download (109 MB).

EasyTone Fonts 1.0: A set of Courier and Times Roman freeware text styles for older Macintosh computers. Download (50 K); also see SF Scribbled Sans.

Celtic Font #1: A single Irish TrueType font for Windows which downloads quickly. See the description for installation instructions. Download (23 K)

Some specialized freeware desktop themes, like “Halloween” also include their own free font faces, although this isn’t a very efficient way to obtain them.

If you don’t mind waiting for it to download, clipart freeware offers a good way to save money as compared to buying a CD-ROM of clipart. Free images of this type are available in GIF, PCX, and other formats. Here are a few options…

World Maps Clip Art: This compact freeware download (81k) from PC World features 10 world maps in the BMP format.

101 PCX Cars: PC World also offers a larger download (425k) of 101 color car images, ranging from a Ford Aerostar van to a Dodge Viper and VW Beetle.

Web-based: Some websites supply downloads of individual images, such as this page that provides B/W clip art of cows in TIFF, PCX, and GIF formats: Link

If you intend to paste the clipart in Windows 95’s paintbrush application, you will want BMP files. BMP or GIF is fine for Windows XP Paint, while some other Windows programs and DOS applications can use PCX.