Software, by itself, doesn’t make a great product. It sure can help, though. Outside my favorite Adobe products (InDesign, Photoshop, Lightroom, Flash, Dreamweaver - the list goes on and on - thanks Adobe for so many great tools!) there are few tools more valuable than basic screen capture.

And for Windows users, that means SnagIt, made by Tech Smith. SnagIt brings the basic screen capture (controlled by your keyboard’s Prt Scr button) to a whole new level. It allows you to capture portions of a screen, scrolling windows, set different keyboard shortcuts, save the screenshot directly to your computer and much, much more.

At $40, and as the industry standard, it’s worth a purchase - but, before January 7, 2008, Tech Smith has an offer that allows you to download and install SnagIt 7, which is only 1 version old, for free! Check out the link for the details on how to download. I ran through it myself and it worked quickly and easily; and, since the promotion is run by Tech Smith, you don’t have to worry about any of the spam-phishing-for-your-email-software-piracy stuff.

While I’m writing about great free downloads from Tech Smith, you should also check out the free download of another of their products, Camtasia. It is a tool that allows you to record in a movie-like manner what is happening on your computer. You can then output it as a video in many formats that folks can watch. It’s all the rage lately for online training and large online training companies like Lynda.com and KelbyTraining.com rely heavily on this type of a product to create their stuff.

This entry was posted on December 28th, 2007 and is filed under Technology. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.