Antivirus
AVG Free – (download)
This antivirus program offers rock-solid protection. AVG Free provides the bare necessities, including a real-time shield to prevent infections, anti-virus and anti-malware wrapped up in one engine, and a link scanner for Web surfing with care.
Avast Home – (download)
This impressive software provides the same steadfast protection of well-known antivirus programs, yet it’s surprisingly free.
Avast Home Edition guards your PC and the network with multiple shields that scan executables and files. You can select parameters for scanning, and even choose wildcards to exclude specific file types.
Backup
Syncback – (download)
This straightforward backup utility makes it a snap to safeguard and synchronize your files, and its freeware price just sweetens the deal. Surprisingly flexible for a free program, SyncBack can save your files anywhere: on external hard drives, in ZIP archives, on network drives, on CDs (using UDF), or transfer them via FTP. Recovering from a drive loss is also cinch, with a convenient restore tool that replicates folder trees along with the files in them
Disk Partitioner
Easeus Partition Manager – (download)
A plucky little piece of freeware that packs a subtle punch, Easeus Partition Manager partitions hard drives like a reigning champ. Loaded with features, EPM runs smoothly and lacks only a glitzy interface.
Office App
OpenOffice – (download)
A credible rival to MS Office, OpenOffice.org includes powerful applications for making text documents, spreadsheets, presentations, diagrams, and databases, as well as HTML and XML documents. Not only does it let you edit basic documents, such as letters and faxes, it also handles equations and complex and multipart documents with bibliographies, reference tables, and indexes.
Google Apps – (download)
Keep in touch and share with friends and family. Free, intuitive tools you can access anywhere with a single account.
Utilities
CCleaner – (download)
Although it lacks a few of the bells and whistles found in other PC-cleaning applications, this free program offers more than enough features to make it a worthy download. CCleaner’s interface is logically designed and makes it easy to wipe away your tracks from Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, and Google Chrome from various Windows system areas, and from some third-party applications.
7-zip – (download)
The free 7-Zip unpacks a host of archive formats, including ZIP, TAR, GZ, and its own 7z format. Unlike WinZip, though, it can create TAR and GZ archives, which are commonly used on Unix and Linux systems.
Foxit PDF Reader – (download)
Foxit PDF Reader 3.0 kills the bloat and throws in some useful features, such as multimedia support and content-sharing options, while still allowing you to quickly access your PDFs.
CutePDF writer – (download)
The freeware PDF writer opts for ease over customization with a one-step conversion app that works its will over any printable document. Once installed, pressing Print and selecting CutePDF Writer as a printer choice allows you to save the newly-made PDF anywhere in your file system.
Browser
Mozilla Firefox – (download)
For safer browsing and the ability to add plugins.
Opera – (download)
Opera covers the basics with tabbed browsing, mouse-over previews, a customizable search bar, advanced bookmarking tools, and simple integration with e-mail and chat clients. Mouse-gesture support, keyboard shortcuts, and drag-and-drop functionality round out the essentials.
FTP
Filezilla – (download)
This free, open-source FTP application is handy if you’re looking for a solid tool to handle FTP transfers.
Images
Irfan View – (download)
The program lets you open and edit images, as well as multiple media formats. You can cut and crop images, apply batch conversions, add, sharpen, or blur effects, create panoramas, and change color modes easily.
Gimp – (download)
One of the most powerful general-purpose image editors around, the upgrades make the GNU Image Manipulation Program eminently comparable to Photoshop
Picasa – (download)
Picasa is free photo editing software from Google that makes your pictures look great.
Sharing your best photos with friends and family is as easy as pressing a button!
Torrents
uTorrent – (download)
The uTorrent executable adds a directory and some option information to your PC, but it is still small enough to run off an old USB key. The memory footprint for uTorrent is very small, and system resources are barely touched.
Media
Vlc – (download)
VLC (initially VideoLAN Client) is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats, including MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, MP3, and OGG, as well as for DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It also can be used as a server for unicast or multicast streams in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network
Itunes – (download)
The best way to organize, browse, and play your digital media
Deep Burner – (download)
DeepBurner offers the easiest and the fastest way to burn any kind of CD/DVD disk you might possibly think of. There are many useful features available in DeepBurner.