Free Software
Office
OpenOffice
OpenOffice is a multi-platform office productivity suite. It includes the key desktop applications, such as a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation manager and drawing program, with a user interface and feature set similar to other office suites. Sophisticated and flexible, OpenOffice.org also works transparently with a variety of file formats, including those of Microsoft Office. The suite covers pretty much everything you need with a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation software, equation editor and a drawing program. It opens most major formats such as MS Office almost flawlessly, has comprehensive help and spellchecking in 15 languages. Download now
Thunderbird
Thunderbird makes emailing safer, faster and easier than ever before with the industry's best implementations of features such as intelligent spam filters, built-in RSS reader, quick search, and much more. Thunderbird provides the most effective tools for detecting junk mail. Tools analyze your e-mail and identify those that are most likely to be junk. View your e-mail the way you want it. Access your e-mail with Thunderbird's new three-column view. Customize your toolbar, change its look with themes and use Mail Views to quickly sort through your e-mail. Thunderbird gives you IMAP/POP support, a built-in RSS reader, support for HTML mail, powerful quick search, saved search folders, advanced message filtering, message grouping, labels, return receipts, smart address book LDAP address completion, import tools and the ability to manage multiple e-mail and newsgroup accounts. Download now
Browsers
FireFox
Mozilla Firefox is a fast, full-featured browser that makes browsing more efficient than ever before. Firefox includes pop-up blocking, a tab-browsing mode that lets you open several pages in a single window, integrated Google searching, simplified privacy controls that let you cover your tracks more effectively, a streamlined browser window that shows you more of the page than any other browser and a number of additional features that work with you to help you get the most out of your time online. Download now
Google Chrome
Google Chrome is a browser that combines a minimal design with sophisticated technology to make the web faster, safer and easier. Download now
Audio & Video Players
iTunes
Features include a free download with no hidden charges for extra features, MP3 and pristine-quality AAC-encoding from audio CDs, smart playlists, more than 250 free Internet radio stations and the ability to burn custom playlists to CDs and MP3 CDs, to burn content to DVDs to back up an entire music collection, and to share music via Rendezvous over any network, cross-platform. Other features include iMix, which lets you post and e-mail songs in your playlists for everyone to see, and you can rate iMixes from other music lovers and discover new music, Party Shuffle, with which you can add, delete and rearrange songs on the fly, Apple Lossless, which lets you import music from CDs and achieve sound quality indistinguishable from the original at about half the original file size. Download now
MediaMonkey
Manage a music library from 100 to 50,000+ audio files and playlists*; whether Rock, Classical, Audiobooks or Podcasts, whether they’re located on your hard drive, CDs, or a network. Organize, browse or search music by Genre, Artist, Year, Rating, etc., and never waste your time trying to find mp3s you know you have. MediaMonkey is the music organizer for the serious collector. * Supports MP3, AAC (M4A), OGG, WMA, FLAC, MPC, WAV, CDA, M3U, PLS, etc. Download now
VLC media player
VLC media player is a highly portable multimedia player and multimedia framework capable of reading most audio and video formats (MPEG-2, MPEG-4, H.264, DivX, MPEG-1, mp3, ogg, aac ...) as well as DVDs, Audio CDs VCDs, and various streaming protocols. See the full features list. It can also be used as a media converter or a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on networks. Download now
Rip & Burn
CDBurnerXP Pro
Write CD-R, CD-RW DVD+R/RW DVD-R/RW discs (as Data and Video) Burn audio-CDs with and without gaps between tracks Burn on the fly / Burn-proof Supports most IDE, USB, Firewire and SCSI drives Rip Audio-CDs to harddrive, obtain track-information (ID3-tags) from Internet Burn and create ISO-files Customizeable with many settings Data verification after burn, create bootable discs Download now
AudioGrabber
AudioGrabber copies the audio digitally, not through the soundcard-which enables you to make perfect copies of the originals. It can even perform a test to see that the copies really are perfect. Audiograbber can also automatically normalize the music, delete silence from the start and/or end of tracks and send them to a variety or external MP3 encoders, such as Fraunhofers L3enc, or even use some MP3/WMA encoders internally for automatic creation of MP3's. Audiograbber can download and upload disc info from freedb, an Internet compact disc database. You can even record your vinyl LP's or cassette tapes with Audiograbber and make wav's or MP3's of them. Download now
Anti-virus
AVG
AVG Free Edition is the well-known anti-virus protection tool. AVG Free is available free-of-charge to home users for the life of the product! Rapid virus database updates are available for the lifetime of the product, thereby providing the high-level of detection capability that millions of users around the world trust to protect their computers. AVG Free is easy-to-use and will not slow your system down (low system resource requirements). Download now
Avast!
Full-featured antivirus package designed exclusively for home users and non-commercial use. Both of these conditions should be met!. Download now
Anti-spyware
Spybot
Spybot - Search & Destroy can detect and remove a multitude of adware files and modules from your computer. Spybot can also clean program and Web-usage tracks from your system, which is especially useful if you share your computer with other users. Modules chosen for removal can be sent directly to the included file shredder, ensuring complete elimination from your system. For advanced users, it allows you to fix registry inconsistencies related to adware and to malicious program installations. The handy online-update feature ensures that Spybot always has the most current and complete listings of adware, dialers and other uninvited system residents. Download now
Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware
Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware is an anti-malware application that can thoroughly remove even the most advanced malware. It includes a number of features, including a built in protection monitor that blocks malicious processes before they even start. Download now
Image Editing
The GIMP
GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is a freely distributed piece of software suitable for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition, and image authoring. It is a powerful piece of software with capabilities not found in any other free software product. It can be used as a simple paint program, an expert-quality photo-retouching program, an online batch-processing system, a mass production image renderer, or an image-format converter. GIMP is modular, expandable and extensible. It is designed to be augmented with plug-ins and extensions to do just about anything. The advanced scripting interface allows everything from the simplest task to the most complex image-manipulation procedures to be easily scripted. Download now