Outstanding Sites
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.
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.
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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