PureText and Other Free Goodies

We do it every day. We copy text from a document or a web page and paste it to another document for whatever reason. It's immediately apparent that the copied and the original text's fonts, their size, the line spacing and all the other goodies that determine how text appears on a page are all different. If we wish to incorporate the copied text to our present document form we must correct it. This is not a difficult process but if you do it a number of times you will become exasperated. Years ago you would have ripped the page off your typewriter, crumbled it and threw it into the trashcan. But in this age of computers crumbling laptops could prove awfully expensive. So what do you do?

"PuretText" is a tiny (28 kB!) computer program you may run in your Windows computer. It sits on your task bar. You copy anything you wish from anywhere and click the PT symbol on your task bar. This changes whatever is on your clipboard to pure text. When you now proceed to paste it to where you want it, presto! It immediately matches the form of the rest of your document. Life is good again. And like most good things in life, PureText is free (without any small print, advertising or what have you). Just visit the PureText home page above to learn to use it and download.

Incidentally, if you are in the habit of paying for programs—kick it! And I don't mean get the broken-down versions. You have to pay for those as well, and worse, your money will support people who have stolen someone else's work. I mean get free and open source programs. These are mostly written by people who believe that all software should be free. And although every one believes everything should be free, these guys are no free-riders or parasites. They back their belief by honest work. They are this century's Florence Nightingales.

Here are two websites that will help you find what you need:

"Gizmos Freeware Reviews" is a community-based site staffed by volunteers with no commercial affiliations. Free to download programs are divided into different categories depending on what you wish to do. For example edit images or play games. Each pertinent program is then examined in detail, pros and cons are listed, it is ranked and you are linked to its download point. Good, honest advice and guidance. What more do you need?

Well, you might want to replace a program you already have with something similar or better. Then visit "Alternative to". These people claim that they have one mission: help you to find the right software for your computer, mobile phone or tablet. Their main focus is to give you alternatives to software you already know and want to replace. Based on the recommendations of their users they list alternatives to the applications you want to replace.

What did I tell you? The best things in life are free.