Best Free Essential Software For Windows
Owning a computer can be quite expensive, especially once you add up the cost of software to go with it. Fortunately, you don’t have to spend a fortune to have access to great software. In this article, I was to show you how to save money with these must have free software for windows.
Best of the best free software for Windows
Before I go to the list, I want to highlight what I think is a fantastic piece of software. Winlibre, Free Software for Windows is actually “a rigorous selection of free, legal software for Windows 98, 2000, XP. It packages this quality software in a complete and coherent product accessible as a single download.
The Winlibre package includes:
- Office
- OpenOffice.org – includes Word processor, Spreadsheet, Presentation, Drawing, Database access, HTML documents generation, and PDF documents generation
- PDFCreator – allows you to convert any file to a PDF document.
- Internet
-
Mozilla Firefox – Although web browsers are free, Mozilla Firefox is one of the best out there -
Mozilla ThunderBird – Open source cross-platform email and Usenet client based on Mozilla code, featuring intelligent spam filters and built-in RSS reader.
-
FileZilla – Open source FTP client and server software distributed free of charge under the terms of the GNU General Public License.
-
Nvu – Open source web authoring system with WYSIWYG and HTML modes and site management features derived from Netscape Composer.
-
Pidgin – Free chat client that let you connect easily to MSN, Google Talk, Yahoo, AIM and other chat networks all at once
-
- Multimedia
- Zinf – Simple, but powerful audio player for Linux and Win32. It supports MP3, Ogg/Vorbis, WAV and Audio CD playback, SHOUTcast/Icecast HTTP streaming, RTP streaming, a powerful music browser, theme support and a download manager.
CDex – Open source CD ripper for Windows with a range of features, such as, jitter correction, normalization, retrieval of song titles and more.- VLC Media Player – Highly portable multimedia player and multimedia framework capable of reading most audio and video formats as well as DVDs, Audio CDs VCDs, and various streaming protocols.
- Create
Gimp – GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It works on many operating systems, in many languages.- Inkscape – A Vector Graphics Editor, similar to Adobe Illustrator, that strives to be SVG Compliant, open source, responsive and extensible.
- Blender – Free open source 3D content creation suite, available for all major operating systems under the GNU General Public License.
- Audacity – Free, open source software for recording and editing sounds. It is available for Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux, and other operating systems.
- Tools
- TightVNC – Free remote control software package. With TightVNC, you can see the desktop of a remote machine and control it with your local mouse and keyboard, just like you would do it sitting in the front of that computer.
- 7-Zip – Open source Windows utility for manipulating archives. Formats 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2 and TAR are supported fully, other formats can be unpacked.
- NetTime – A simple time synchronization client for Windows 95/98/NT/2000. Its main claim to fame is that it is small, simple and unobtrusive.
- ClamWin – A Free Antivirus program for Microsoft Windows 98/Me/2000/XP/2003 and Vista.
- Notepad2 – A fast and light-weight Notepad-like text editor with syntax highlighting.
Note: you can use individual download links too if the Winlibre one doesn’t work or too big.
More essential free software
In addition to the list above, there are also other free software and alternatives that I think are worth mentioning:
- AVG Antivirus – A free version of this powerful anti-virus program is probably one of the best anti-virus programs available.
- Spybot Search & Destroy and CCleaner – Quickly remove junk and offensive software from your PC quickly.
- Skype- Free Internet telephony
- Picasa- Free photo management, sharing and basic editing software.
- Adobe Acrobat Reader or Foxit PDF Reader – Free PDF readers
- PrimoPDF – Free PDF creator.
AlternativeTo.net
Last but not least, I just found out about a site called AlternativeTo.net. Here’s the description from the site:
Alternatives to Windows, Mac, Linux and online applications
AlternativeTo is a new approach to finding good software. Tell us what application you want to replace and we give you suggestions on great alternatives! Instead of listing thousands of more or less crappy applications in a category, we make each application into a category. Think of it like forever evolving blog posts about good alternatives to the software that you’re not satisfied with. And the “blog posts” are generated by you through suggestions, comments and votes.
If there are particularly good free Windows software that you don’t see on this list, please leave a comment below and let us know why you like it.
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Great list! I use a ton of this software, and for a lot of it I’d probably pay. My favorites?
Picasa
Open Office
Audacity
Beyond that I still use a lot of paid for software just because a lot of the free ones – while great – do have some limitations.
WHy would you recomend that bloated piece of crap that AVG is.
AVG has turned into the Norton Products that existed before 2009.
Anyone who wants real protection should pay for Norton. I’ve used AVG and AVAST and was loyal to them for years. Buy AVG is a bloated mess and it’s sad to say that Norton outperforms it and avast in detection rates and use of system resources.
ALso you left out Windows Movie Maker from your Create list.
FireFox isn’t the best browser out there, the newest is so buggy it crashes my system all the time. Not to mention it’s been a resource hog for years.
I would rather use Chrome or IE than Firefox now a days.
Why would you recomend Adobe Acrobat Reader, shit is huge and a resource hog. Foxit PDF is much better
Nice list.
I’d also add IrfanView – Exceptionally handy and lightweight image tool. Great for those tasks where Gimp is just too much.
Jarte – great rich text editor with spell check.
Cobian Backup – A backup utility.
And KeePass – secure password database for storing all your passwords.
Incidentally, all of these are portable too, so you can run them off a USB thumb drive!
Pinyo, don’t mind but a frank opinion. I really love your blog and I read it even though I am not a US resident, hence offering this candid suggestion.
Please don’t cover such posts, its just not your area of experty. I just say it from your list. Let the experts, like lifehacker, cover it.
BTW, for a serious freeware lover, there is hardly any substitute to LiberKey.
What’s biting TJ’s butt? I think this is a good list with some of the best and most popular freeware on the web. Good compilation. Thanks Pinyo.
@Peter – Thank you. Picasa is one of my favorite on the list. One of the best free photo organizer out there. And I agree that there is no good replacement for commercial products for certain applications.
@SmartGuy – Feel free to have different opinion, but please watch your language. I use AVG, Acrobat Reader, and FireFox — I like them and I recommend them, what’s wrong with that?
@Joe – Thank you for adding to the list. I’ll check them out.
@TJ – I don’t mind and thank you for the feedback. But I am not a fan of that mindset — i.e., let the expert do their job. Whatever happened to letting people try? So what if they aren’t good at it. Imagine if we didn’t let high school drop outs like Einstein and Edison continue to fail (yes, they failed a lot more time than they succeeded).
@Eric – Thank you!
A great list, really.
I am more of a Mac user, but Firefox, OpenOffice, and Filezilla are all PC apps I’ve used.
Great list! I’ve used many of these programs, Firefox being my favorite. I used Picassa to edit my vacation photos about a year ago. It was great for basic edits.
As for this not being your expertise – I think that makes it all the better! I’d rather hear about programs that work for everybody rather than what the experts like best. Sometimes the experts forget about folks who aren’t as savvy in everything like myself. Keep up the reviews!
Hi there,
As a non-expert and a non US citizen (not sure why that is relevant, but apparently it means that I can give a better opinion than US citizens LOL) I found your list and the additions by others super useful. I passed it to my partner (who IS an expert programmer) and he said he couldn’t have done better.
Thanks for a really useful post and inspiring blog
Sarah
WRT AVG and Avast, I found that AVG was too intrusive when I need an antivirus to install in a small office. By this I mean that AVG asks users about what to do at every event, unless one gets the paid version. And when the user is clueless and panicky, it just results in ask for help.
Avast is a little better, but, like AVG, it cannot be hidden as a service away from a typical user’s tricky hands.
After evaluating these as well as three other anti-virus programs, I settled for Norton Anti-Virus. It performed best among them, taking up very little CPU and memory usage. Besides, it was easy to set up one computer and have the others use the same settings without the users noticing.
Honestly, when it comes to securing one’s computer, I think that $40/year for Norton Anti-Virus is a reasonable price to pay. It’s just a matter of avoiding those souped up versions which bring very little to table and inflate the costs, such as firewall, spyware, etc, all which come with Windows standard.
BTW, you could’ve mentioned Google Pack, a collection of free software that includes some of those you’ve mentioned, but are kept up to date by Google Updater.
HTH
Good list. Not sure why the two negative commenters had their issues, but whatever!
I want to like OpenOffice, but it is very slow to load. Plus, some of its functions just don’t make any sense to me (but in all fairness, I am a longtime Office user). I do like that it preserves hyperlinks when exporting to PDF. Nothing else that is free has this functionality (that I’ve found).
AVG is very good. Might want to take a look at Comodo: Free security products like anti-virus and firewalls. It’s pretty cool.
I do like the portable apps, too, like Revo Uninstaller. It works great from a flash drive and removes nearly any and all traces of software you no longer want. CCCleaner is great too.
Media Monkey is a great music manager too. Much better, IMHO, than iTunes.
@Augustine,
You make some great points about AVG and Avast, but remember that those are free and meant for the home user. For businesses, if you’re going to shell out money anyway (which you would have to do for both AVG and Avast as a business user) it probably makes sense to go with Norton, McAfee, Sophos, etc..
@Bill,
OpenOffice is slow to load because it requires Java, which is notoriously slow compared to native MS windows code (i.e. MS office). But remember, it’s a trade off. If you’re a windows user and have access to MS Office, you’re probably better off with that. However, if you just want a word processor, spreadsheet app, etc and don’t want to shell out hundreds of dollars for MS Office, then OpenOffice is a wonderful thing!
Joe,
It’s only that, as a geek, I have XP Pro in my family members’ computers so that I can be the administrator on them. Since I keep their computers running, restricting what regular users who are not very computer-savvy can do, saves them grievance and my time. Then again, the DSL ISP provided Norton at first and McAfee later, all for free.
WRT OpenOffice, I used it our computers when trying to bypass Office. However, my daughter was having problems with her college professors opening the Office files generated by it, which could lose important details from charts and other minor incompatibilities. In the end, I had to give in and buy Office for her, at student prices though, after she labeled OpenOffice “your bootlegged Office”.
Cheers.
Great list! I use a lot of the apps you mentioned. To add to your list – I’ve come across a website http://www.fileinspect.com, which has really helpful info about Windows processes. And there is also a free Vista/7 gadget to download. Very useful site and gadget, especially if you are concerned about computer security.