There are millions of free and open source projects available, many
of them better than any commercially available product. Below is a
short listing of what we think is the best out there, broken down into
ten categories.
Anti-virus and malware protection Most
PC users realize that they need some type of protection on their
computer or may have an installed anti-virus program from their
computer manufacturer. What most don't realize is that there are free
programs that are just as good and in some cases better than the
commercial products. Below are our recommendations
Anti-virus program: Avast! or
AVG Malware / Spyware protection: Malwarebytes Backup solutions There
are dozens of free and commercially available backup programs for
computers. Unfortunately many of those backups are stored locally,
meaning if your house were to catch fire, get robbed, or if you simply
lost your backup discs all your data would be lost. This is why when
dealing with important data we suggest users use online backup services.
Online backup solution: Mozy *
or
Dropbox* Free 2GB of online backup for personal use
Browsers Although
Microsoft Internet Explorer comes pre-installed on Windows computers.
There are several excellent free alternatives that everyone should try.
These free alternatives can often be faster, have more options, and in
many cases be more secure than Internet Explorer.
Internet Browser: Mozilla Firefox or
Google Chrome Compression utility When
downloading files on the Internet you'll eventually encounter a .zip,
.rar, or other compressed file. Dealing with these files can be easy
with our below free file compression utility.
File compression utility: 7-zip Disc ripper and creation utility Creating
an audio or data CD/DVD, ripping the data from an audio CD, or creating
a CD from a .ISO file can also be done freely using our below free
recommendation.
CD burner / ripper utility: CDBurnerXP E-mail E-mail
is yet another service that can be done freely. Most users today use
online e-mail solutions like the one listed below. However, for those
still using an e-mail client such as Microsoft Outlook we strongly
suggest one or both of the below suggestions.
E-mail client: Mozilla Thunderbird Online e-mail: Gmail FTP, SFTP, and SSH Utility Users
who maintain their own web page or need to upload / download files to
or from a server will have to use an FTP utility and/or a SSH client.
There are many commercial programs capable of doing this but our below
free recommendations beats them all.
FTP client: Filezilla SSH client: Putty Image editor, paint program, and picture organizer There
are many great free solutions for editing, creating, and organizing
your images on your computer. Many of the alternative programs capable
of doing these types of tasks can be several hundred dollars, but all
of the below programs are completely free.
Image editor: GIMP Paint program: Paint.net Picture organizer: Google Picasa Multimedia There
are dozens of different multimedia programs with different capabilities
and limitations. Below are our top free multimedia programs for
watching video files and recording audio.
Audio editing and creating tool: Audacity Video and DVD Player: VLC Office Suite An
Office suite such as Microsoft Office is often one of the most
expensive programs that a user can install on their computer. Why
install these expensive programs when there are free solutions that are
just as good.
Office suite: OpenOffice Notepad / Source code editor: Notepad++
Allows you to record audio into MP3, WMA or WAV format directly. 
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