Best free pc programs

chuckycheese

i was just wondering what free software alternatives ppl know,

example linux is free OS that beats farking out a wad for Windows and i also use Open office a free alternative for Ms Office that read all office native files.

i8change

Some recommendations here:-

http://www.techsupportalert.com/

Henry261

Orange hrm is a open source for hr management solution

timmmers

Irfanview for viewing and basic editing of images

Gimp for anything more than basic (photoshop for free basically)

Avira and Avast for excellent free anti virus software

http://portableapps.com/ has a load of stuff that is free AFAIK and runs off a data stick so doesn't need to be installed .

Same type of thing here too http://www.pendriveapps.com/

google portable apps and what you need and you'll find something free.

t

GeoffX

For image viewing I used to use Irfanview, but switched to Xnview a few years ago. It has a more modern feel, but is functionally quite similar. For image editing, I'd agree that the GIMP is good, but make sure you save regularly, especially if you use Script-Fu.
http://www.xnview.com/

For music, Foobar2000 has a highly configurable user interface, but more importantly has excellent sound quality.
http://www.foobar2000.org/

For computer security I use Avira with the Comodo firewall. Avira's update severs can be stressed at times, but they are both excellent.

Download management:
FreeDownloadManager - for day-to-day downloading.
JDownloader - For Rapidshare and co. It handle time-outs, captchas, etc.
Orbit - For video and audio stream recording.

Browser: Maxthon 2 - a far better user experience than than the mess that is Firefox.

Instant messaging: Miranda - I don't love it, but can't find anything better.

Email: Thunderbird - It does the job, but it's nothing special.

Virtual computing: VirtualBox does most things well.

Windows updating: AutoPatcher allows you to keep virtual and real PCs up to date without downloading the same updates multiple times. And it never requires more than one reboot, no matter how many updates you install.

isofa

A search would have given you this comprehensive thread on the Best/Useful Free Software to review and add to:

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=552619

And this much older thread: http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=345806

Stompa

http://www.osalt.com/

esuhl

Some of my favourite free (Windows) software is:

Racing game: Trackmania Nations Forever
Retro adventure game: Emily Enough
Automatic folder synchronisation tool: Dropbox (works with Linux & Mac OS too)
Manual folder synchronisation tool: FreeFileSync
Bootable partition manager: GPartEd
Quick BMP to JPEG converter: 'Peg-It (great for pasting screenshots)
Simple text editor: Metapad Lite
CD/DVD burner: Deepburner
Clipboard text-formatting remover: PureText (paste plain text into Word, etc.)
System Information: System Information for Windows
Lightweight portable email client: Popcorn
Page file defragmenter: PageDefrag
Colour identifier: Instant Eyedropper (point to a colour to get its hex colour code)
DVD region decrypter: DVD43

Hmmm.... that's all I can think of for now!

esuhl

GeoffX wrote: »

Instant messaging: Miranda - I don't love it, but can't find anything better.

Have you tried Pidgin? It's a pretty clean layout and easy to use...

JasX

if you google "Top 10 open source" or "Top 10 freeware" or similar you'll get a fair few opinions, generally throws up browsers, Linux OSs and a selection of utilities and tools

A fair few of of which are VERY powerful and useful but not necessarily what your average user would need very often

eg
Wireshark- free program for looking at a very low level whats travelling accross your network to look for anything suspicious
MySQL - powerful database query/management
Apache - free webserver software, allowed the world to start building websites without expensive software and played a historic role in early growth of the net.

So really there is alot out there, perhaps tag an extra word or two to googling as above if you're looking for something in a specific area (eg top freeware for home use etc)

celler

http://www.techsupportalert.com

This site is good for all types of stuff wouldnt touch the shareware though.

Agree with Gimp,Foobar,Ifranview and Xnview have used all these for ages.