DOWNLOAD.COM

                  Sue's Site of the Month

If you're on the Net and have the need for a bit of software,
you'd be well advised to check out www.download.com. This covers
the whole range of downloads from utilities through to
entertainment software.

SynTax reader Trevor Jones mentioned it to me as a source of
'abandonware' - software which was once commercial but is no
longer supported and can now be freely downloaded. So that's what
I was particularly looking for.

The search engine is very efficient and lets you scour the site by
operating system or type of software - free, shareware, demo or
all licenses. You can also view their most popular downloads and
new additions. Their advanced search option will let you search by
author, title, description, keyword or category. You can also
search for the number of times a program has been downloaded.

I went into the games section which has various sub-sections such
as action, adventure and RPG, arcade, cards, casino and lottery,
kids, patches and updates, puzzles, scenarios, simulations,
sports, strategy and war, and tools and editors. I had a quick
sift through most of these and was very impressed with their
contents. Scenarios would be especially useful for Quake players
as this was the game most supported.  The Adventure and RPG
section has a good range of software though the descriptions are
short and not especially informative. On the 'abandonware' side, I
found Betrayal at Krondor (I didn't know that was now 'free') and
Zork 2 available for download. Strangely Zorks 1 and 3 weren't
included. Krondor is over 10 meg so could take some time, but if
you use a program like Go!zilla the download can be done in stages
and resumed when traffic eases.  They don't generally have many
download sites but rate them according to speed which is useful.

If you like download.com, as I did even after just my quick visit,
you can subscribe to their regular emailed newsletter.
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