 | avast! Free Antivirus Expect great all-around protection against viruses and trojans. |  | AntiVir Free Version Lightweight and solid. Good ratings. Worth looking into. |  | AVG Antivirus Free Edition Not as good as Avast or Avira but with considerably less bloat. The most popular free antivirus. |
 | Microsoft Security Essentials Simple, lightweight and competent protection suite. |  | Comodo Internet Security Free security suite, includes both a firewall and anti-virus protection. |
 | Spybot S&D Detects and removes spyware. Compliments anti-virus apps. |  | Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware Easy-to-use, simple, and effective anti-malware application. |  | IObit Security 360 Free Advanced malware & spyware removal utility. |
 | PC Tools Firewall Plus 6 Powerful firewall capable of providing excellent protection. |  | Comodo Firewall (standalone) Long been considered one of the best free firewall tools available. |  | ZoneAlarm Free Firewall Provides the best overall firewall protection for advanced users. |
 | Online Armor Free All of the normal features of a firewall and more. |  | Ashampoo FireWall Free Very easy to use and navigate. For intermediate users. |
 | Auslogics Disk Defrag Simple, reliable and quite fast. A must-have free PC tool. Considered no.1 by many. |  | Defraggler Another excellent defrag tool. Portable. From the same guys behind hugely popular CCleaner. |  | IObit Smart Defrag Extremely easy to use. Works continuously in the background. |
 | Recuva Very effective in restoring deleted files. Extremely popular. |  | FreeUndelete No frills, just focused on the zen of file recovery. |  | ADRC Data Recovery Software The Renaissance Man of free data recovery. Not as popular as Recuva but still has its own fans. |
 | Revo Uninstaller Free Fast and very effective at uninstalling just about anything. Popular choice for the purpose. |  | IObit Uninstaller New kid on the block. Gaining popularity. Boasts a bunch of features not found on other uninstallers. |  | Absolute Uninstaller Less popular than the other two but probably the simplest to use one. |
 | Mozy Incredibly smart, highly secure, set-it-and-forget-it backup solution. Backups data to web. |  | FBackup Backup files and documents, personal settings and plugins. |  | Todo Backup Able to backup the entire operating system, program settings, browser data, emails and other data. |
 | Clonezilla Live CD to completely clone your hard drive. |  | SyncBack Freeware Selective synchronisation, local and remote backup to an FTP server. |
 | Glary Utilities Includes over 15 useful tools. Been recommended by MakeUseOf several times! |  | CCleaner Scores high points all around. The most popular choice at the moment. Not as many features as in others. |  | IObit Toolbox The amount of system maintenance tools included in this free app is truly staggering. |
 | Google Chrome The fastest, minimal design browser now with extension support. |  | Firefox More than 6,000 add-ons for every possible feature. The most customisable browser to date. |  | Safari Designed to emphasize browsing. Also features extensions. |
 | Opera The “fastest and most advanced” browser available today. |
 | Thunderbird Increasingly popular. One of the best email clients for Windows. |  | Postbox Express A simple, yet powerful, new email application for Windows. |  | Google Notifier Alerts you when you have new Gmail messages. |
 | Skype The most popular cross-platform VoIP application. Must-have for everyone online. |  | Pidgin Easy-to-use, cross-platform, multi-protocol chat client. Supports all major chat programs. |  | Digsby An alternative multi-protocol instant messaging app. Cross-platform. Extremely popular. |
 | Paint.NET Strong candidate as a potential substitute for Photoshop for beginner/intermediate users. |  | FastStone Image Viewer One of the best image viewer, converter & editor bundles. |  | IrfanView The Swiss Army knife of image viewers/editors. Extremely popular. |
 | Google Picasa Powerful photo manager software from Google. Includes 1-click photo retouching features. Easy online photo sharing. |  | GIMP Very capable graphic editor with Photoshop-like features. Often labeled as free Photoshop alternative. |  | PhotoScape Another good free photo editing application. |
 | foobar2000 Highly customisable advanced audio player for Windows. |  | Songbird A popular music player based on Mozilla’s code. Includes plugins. |  | Audacity Very popular open source software for recording and editing sounds. |
 | iTunes Music player and video library organiser. Hosts the iTunes Store. |  | MediaMonkey Full-featured music player and music collection organiser. |  | Winamp Well-know, lightweight, small-footprint media player. |
 | CopyTrans Manager Alternative iPod manager app. Sync and transfer music & files to iPod, iPhone, iPad. |
 | VLC Media Player Extremely popular cross-platform app that plays almost any video file. |  | Handbrake Open source, cross-platform, multithreaded video transcoder and converter. |  | VirtualDub Open-source and portable video editor. |
 | Media Player Classic Replica of WM Player. Includes only the most basic controls. Plays many formats. |  | Freemake Free video converter & DVD burner that’s easy to use. |
 | OpenOffice A popular free alternative to Microsoft Office. |  | Dropbox Must-have for everyone. Sync folder with docs to web or other PCs / Macs. Share documents. |  | Notepad++ Popular open source text editor. Favoured by many, including programmers. |
 | FoxIt Reader Really light alternative to Adobe Reader. Open PDF files. |  | doPDF Easily convert documents and pictures to PDF from any Windows program with two clicks. |
 | Fences Provides rectangular containers for your desktop to visually organize your icons. Handy! |  | Rainlender Very easy to use and lightweight calendar for your Windows desktop. |  | Evernote Save your ideas on the go and instantly take notes. Access notes from anywhere. Highly recommended! |
 | VirtuaWin Gives you multiple virtual desktops to organize your workflow. Highly customisable. |  | Launchy A powerful keystroke based program launcher. Replaces the Start button. |
 | 7-zip Takes care of most of your extracting/compression needs. |  | Universal Extractor With over 50 supported file formats, Universal Extractor is superb. |  | IZArc One archive utility to rule them all. Supports almost all formats. |
 | ImgBurn CD/DVD/HD-DVD/Blu-ray burning application. Also, lets you create image files from CDs and DVDs. |  | CDBurnerXP The most popular free alternative to Nero Burning ROM. Burn CDs, DVDs, Blu-Ray and HD-DVDs. |  | bitRipper Back-up your DVDs as AVI files or Mpeg to your hard drive. Excellent backup tool for DVDs. |
 | CDex Open-source digital audio CD extractor. Saves CD tracks as MP3′s. |  | DuBaron CD2ISO A great tool to extract ISO images from CDs or DVDs. Very simple and easy to use. |  | Virtual CloneDrive Mount a virtual drive to open and playback ISO image files (CD/DVD images). |
 | DVDShrink The easiest and one of the better free DVD ripping and backup tools. |
 | uTorrent Speedy, efficient, and free. The most popular BitTorrent client. |  | Deluge An awesome but unappreciated cross-platform BitTorrent client. |  | YouTube Downloader HD Downloads YouTube videos with just a few clicks of the mouse button. |
 | LastPass Secure plugin to store and synchronise passwords across browsers. |  | Unlocker Kills or unlocks unresponsive programs or system processes. |  | Soluto Speed up Windows boot time by removing unnecessary apps from startup. Very effective. |
 | PortableApps Suite A collection of useful portable apps. Carry the apps with you wherever you go on a thumbdrive. |  | TreeSize Free Shows you where your precious hard drive space has gone to. |  | TrueCrypt Free open-source, cross-platform disk encryption software. Encrypt and hide sensitive files. |
 | EASEUS Partition Master All-in-one partition manager. Create, resize and merge partitions. |
No comments:
Post a Comment