Recommended Free Software

All the software listed below is freeware i.e. free for personal use. I believe all of it is also suitable for business use with the exception of AVG Anti-virus and Ad-Aware. People who I introduce to this software almost invariably ask WHY or HOW it is free and sometimes doubt it's quality. The truth is that there is free software available to do almost any task you can think of. The reason many people haven't heard about it is that the big software companies like Microsoft and Norton spend millions each year advertising their (IMHO pretty average) products where as free software doesn't have the same kind of cash to splash. Obviously, some commercial software (such as Adobe Photoshop) is worth every penny but a lot of it isn't!

Several of the companies that offer this free software use it as a way of advertising the commercial 'full' versions which offer more features. If you like the free version and want to show your support for the product you might want to consider 'upgrading' to the full version.

Others are 'open source projects' and are made and maintained by volunteers, if you like the program you may want to support it's continued development by making a donation to it's development team. Most projects have a page with a donations link / button that, more often than not, you can get to via sourceforge.net - home of the majority of free open source projects

Firefox - A web browser that is so good Microsoft incorporated several of it's features in the most recent version of Internet Explorer! Growing in popularity daily it's considered by many to be a better and safer browser than Internet Explorer.

Thunderbird - From the people who brought you Firefox this is an e-mail program that's a perfect replacement for Microsoft's Outlook Express and Windows Mail. It is very fully featured and it can even import your Outlook and Outlook Express messages and contacts. For calendering I recommend the Lightning plugin

Open Office 2.4 - Microsoft Office replacement. Does pretty much everything MS Office does, incuding opening and saving compatible Word, Excel & Powerpoint files but costs about 360 pounds less (i.e. nothing at all!) It can even save files as PDF!

CCleaner - As you surf your computer accumulates hundred of 'temporary' files, of course it turns out many of them are not as temporary as they should be. Likewise your registry (the area where microsoft hides all of it's dirty laundry) can get clogged up with fragments of programs that you thought you had uninstalled and other rubbish you don't want or need, slowing your PC down and making it less stable. Welcome then CCleaner, an excellent free program that can quickly rid your computer of all this bumf.

Google Picassa - Every man and his dog have tried making a photo management program over the years - HP, Jessops, Apple, Tesco, Adobe - the list goes on and sadly every last one of them has been a turkey, and an ugly one at that! However all that changed with the advent of Google picassa. It's very easy on the eye and it's so easy to use you wont need to rope the kids into explaining it to you!

Foxit PDF Reader - Adobe Reader is getting big and slow in it's old age, by default it also installs a bunch of stuff you really don't need or want. Replace it with Foxit and prepare to be impressed by how fast your PDF files open!

AVG Antivirus Free - Bulky internet security suites such as Symantec's Norton and McAffee are at the root of the majority of PC problems I end up fixing. Do your wallet and your PC a favour and replace them with AVG Anti-virus Free ASAP!

IrfanView - Replace windows rubbishy 'Picture & Fax' viewer software with this small, fast and fully featured picture viewer and editor. This program has acquired legendary status over the years, for the simple fact that it's brilliant!

VLC Media Player - A media player that will play almost ANYTHING. Very small, very fast and completely free VLC sports playlisting, skinning, DVD ripping, visualisations and MUCH more without taking up your whole screen or bombarding you with adverts. Also worthy of a mention is GOM player It's not open source or extensible in the way that VLC is but it plays nearly every format and maintains a very attractive clear interface.

Real-Alternative - Most people end up installing the annoying and resource hogging Real Player from Real Networks just to get BBC TV & radio online. Try replacing it with the far lighter Real-Alternative

QuickTime-Alternative - Nobody likes Apple's Quicktime player, sadly many people are compelled to install it to watch the videos on some websites. Keep the videos but ditch the Quicktime player by installing 'Quicktime Alternative'

K-Lite Codec Pack - If you want your computer applications to be able to read and write all the different audio and video formats out there you're going to need lots of CODECs. This pack contains pretty much all of them!

Spacemonger - If you're like me you're continually running low on disk space. Using Windows alone it can be a real pain trying to identify what's using up all your space. Tell at a glance with this invaluable program. (note: look on the free downloads tab to find the free old version)

SandboxIE - I probably shouldn't tell you all about this one as I'd get far fewer callouts if everyone used it! It works like this - You launch any normal program (such as Internet Explorer) from within SandboxIE, that program thinks it has full access to your system, in fact it only has 'read' access, any changes ('writes') to your system are intercepted and thrown in the 'sandbox', when you're done just close the program, empty the sandbox and it's like it never happened! Running your browser from SandboxIE whenever you're surfing off-piste, trying out new software, opening attachments, or just whenever your kids are using the computer! can really help improve your PC security.

Truecrypt - Need encryption? Then, as far as I'm concerned there's only one choice and it's Free and Open Source :-) Truecrypt allows you to either create encrypted folders OR encrypt your entire hard disk with a cipher so strong even GCHQ couldn't break it! Of course, with such power comes some responsibility so DO NOT LOSE YOUR PASSWORD! otherwise no force on earth will be able to get your data back, not even me! ;-)

7zip - Although Windows can open and extract .zip files many people still feel the need for a 3rd party .zip file manager. 7zip is a great free program that can create and open .zip files and many other types of compressed file.