Free Opener: opens and views any type of file

Have you ever encountered files on your computer that you couldn’t open, that you were curious to explore? Or maybe you downloaded a file that you thought would play or open on your computer only to find that it would not open within the program that you thought it would. Or, more likely, a colleague sent you a file that was created using a newer version of the software you have installed on your machine, etc.
In all of these cases, Free Opener might offer a solution. This free program is designed to open just about any kind of file you might find on your computer or that you are likely to encounter on the internet. And although it will not open everything under the sun, it supports more than 70+ file formats including all sorts of media files, Office files, PDFs, etc.


This is the kind of tool that is a must have on any machine, because no matter how technically savvy you are you will invariably run into a file that won’t open that you are curious about, and which Free Opener will open for you on the spot without going out there and hunting for software and getting it installed on your machine. On the flip side, for those who are not technically savvy at all, this can be even more of a life-saver.

Here are some PROS and CONS.

PROS:

• Supports a great many number of filetypes
• Media files open without installing system codecs; played any media file I threw at it including MKV, SWF, and FLV on a clean Windows install (although MKV was choppy and somewhat slow).
• Many Office files supported (DOC/DOCX, XLS/XLSX, CSV, PPTX, PPT, PPS, etc), making it a great option for those who don’t have or want to install a big office suite yet would like the ability to view the occasional document or presentation. Does a great job displaying spreadsheets (without the option to edit, of course).
• Can actually extract (as opposed to just view) compressed archives (7z, ZIP, RAR, GZ, TAR, TGZ, and JAR).

CONS:

• No drag and drop; which is really strange. Dragging a file you want to open and and dropping it on the program interface seems to be such an obvious feature for this kind of app.
• Ebook formats (MOBI, EPUB, CBZ/CBR, DJVU), are woefully under-represented (excepting PDF). Which is too bad because these files are becoming increasingly more common. Some other filetypes are also strangely missing such as various subtitle files (excepting .SRT).
• MKV playback can be glitchy, in my experience (stuttering/slow).

The verdict: a great little tool that can come in very handy. The best use of this tool is to Keep it installed in case you need to open a certain file type; I would not recommend it as your primary viewing tool for frequently used file types though.

It can be improved by (a) adding more formats as mentioned in the cons section and (b) allowing for drag and drop to view files. Having said that, an excellent effort overall!

[Thanks to reader Carbonize for letting me know about this one]

Version Tested: 1.0

Compatibility: Windows All.

Go to the program home page to download the latest version (approx 20.3 megs).