Best Free Software

Adobe Reader
www.adobe.com
Windows | MacOS | Linux | Mobile This simplest of Adobe's PDF programs lets you do just about anything PDF-related (besides create new ones), including online collaboration. It includes a host of features to aid users with disabilities.

AIM
www.aim.com
Windows | MacOS | Linux | Web One of the most widely used pieces of free software ever, AOL Instant Messenger offers a ton of capabilities.
Read our full review of AIM 6.5.

Audacity
audacity.sourceforge.net
Windows | MacOS | Linux Whether you're recording or editing, Audacity is all about audio in practically any format.

Firefox
www.mozilla.com
Windows | MacOS | Linux This PC Mag Editors' Choice Web browser has been on top of the heap since version 1.5 came out in late 2005. Read our full review of Firefox 2.0.

GIMP
www.gimp.org
Windows | MacOS | Linux The GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) does most of what Photoshop does; the Gimpshop project (plasticbugs.com) even makes it look like Photoshop. Read our full review of The GIMP 2.0.

iTunes
www.apple.com/itunes
Windows | MacOSWhen you're attached to the top media player in the land (iPod), success is a given. iTunes continues to build sales and refine its organization of songs, video, games, podcasts, and more. Read our full review of Apple iTunes 7.6.

OpenOffice.org
www.openoffice.org
Windows | MacOS | Linux You can spend a lot for Microsoft Office or nothing for this suite with full-function word processor, spreadsheet, database, presentations, even an equations editor. Read our full review of OpenOffice.org 2.3.

Skype
www.skype.com
Windows | MacOS | Linux You'll pay to call regular phones, but if you sign up all your friends, Skype provides easy (and even international) calls and video-conferencing for nothing. Read our full review of Skype 3.0.

Thunderbird
www.mozilla.com/thunderbird
Windows | MacOS | Linux Mozilla's no-cost e-mail alternative is extensible, fast, and easy to master. And a wealth of free add-ons means there's not much this program won't do, from calendars to encryption. Read our full review of Thunderbird 2.

Ubuntu
www.ubuntu.com
Linux This Linux-based OS comes with many of these Hall of Fame products (Firefox, OpenOffice.org) preinstalled.

WinAmp
www.winamp.com
Windows After a decade of playing music, the "skinnable" WinAmp has several versions, including one with full CD ripping and burning.

Free Software Programs for Windows

Audio Editing: Audacity - it can record, remove noise from audio and also mix multiple sound track. With little effort, you can use Audacity to record live streaming music from Internet radio stations.

Video Editing: Windows Movie Maker from Microsoft is a good choice. It has all the basic video editing tools plus a good collection of transitions and video effects. For advanced usage, get the powerful VirtualDub - it has a number of filters (like video rotation), can create videos from image sequences, split videos or even extract sound from video tracks.

Instant Messenger: If your friends are spread across different services like Google Talk, Yahoo! Messenger, MSN and others, get Pidgin and connect to all popular IM services using a single software. Pidgin provides a tabbed interface so the desktop won’t look cluttered even if you are simultaneously chatting with multiple buddies.

Computer Security: Your computer needs a firewall program like ZoneAlarm or Comodo Pro to stop spyware programs from connecting to websites secretly and for blocking any Internet intruders. For removing viruses from infected systems, AVG Antivirus and Avast are very reliable and unlike other commercial software, they are not heavy on system resources.

Multimedia Players: You may already have Windows Media Player and iTunes on your computer but they are not capable of playing all audio and video formats. For this reason, use VLC Media Player that is light-weight and supports almost everything including DVDs and Flash Videos that you have downloaded from YouTube. Another option is GOM player.

Digital Photography: Taking photos with your digital camera is just half the job . For organizing your vast picture collection, get Google Picasa or Windows Live Photo Gallery. With Picasa, you can create Screensavers and Picture Collages while Live Gallery has a wonderful photo stitching feature for making panoramas. Both let you transfer pictures from the desktop to Flickr. For advanced photo editing, use Paint.NET or GIMP.

Windows Enhancements: If you like using keyboard more than the mouse, get Launchy - it helps you start your favorite programs (and documents) without touching the Windows Start Menu. TweakUI is another desktop enhancement to help you control the appearance of Windows, change the location of default folders and so much more.

Spring Cleaning: WinDirStat gives you a visual overview of files and folders that are consuming the bulk of space on your hard drive so you know where to hit the delete key when the drive is full. CCleaner with automatically find and remove all the unnecessary temp files from your computer reclaiming valuable hard drive space. It also clears all the junk from Windows registry so your system runs faster. MyUninstaller will help you remove software that do show up in Windows Add Remove control panel.

Desktop Email: If you like checking and replying to your web email from the desktop, Windows Live Mail and ThunderBird are worth considering. They let you check multiple e-mail accounts in one place, apply filters to incoming email, add another layer of protection from junk email, built-in RSS reader and best of all, you can work offline.

DVD Tools: For creating backup copies of your DVD video disks onto the hard drive, use DVD Shrink. For extracting movie scenes and MP3 music from DVDs, HandBrake is a good choice. It can also be used to export your DVDs into portable players like the iPod.

Other Worthy Mentions: HTTrack helps you create a mirror copy of any website on the hard drive for offline reading. Orbit Downloader lets you save streaming music and videos from almost every website. Copernic Desktop is an excellent software for finding emails, documents, photos and other multimedia files on your computer. Microsoft SyncToy provides a visual interface for synchronizing file folders between computers and external drives.

Source: http://www.labnol.org/software/download/essential-free-software-programs-for-windows/1994/