SOFTWARE

OFFICE SUITE - OpenOffice from Sun Microsystems

OpenOffice.org is the open source project through which Sun Microsystems is releasing the technology for the popular StarOffice productivity suite. It is an international office suite that will run on all major platforms and provide access to all functionality and data through open-component based APIs and an XML-based file format. It includes the key desktop applications, such as a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation manager, and drawing program, with a user interface and feature set similar to other office suites. Sophisticated and flexible, OpenOffice.org also works transparently with a variety of file formats, including those of Microsoft Office. Available in over 45 supported languages with more being constantly added by the community, OpenOffice.org runs stably and natively on Solaris, Linux (including PPC Linux), Windows, Mac OS X (X11), and numerous other platforms.

http://www.openoffice.org/

WEB BROWSER - Mozilla Firefox
Internet Explorer is a good browser but it has become such a target for malicious exploits that it is now a major security risk. Quite separately, the browser itself is now looking dated with most alternative products offering tabbed browsing and other productivity enhancements. There are several excellent alternatives but Mozilla FireFox is the stand-out pick. It's much safer than Internet Explorer, so safe in fact that many users have reported no spyware infections since they started using the product. It's also browses faster than Internet Explorer and since the release of version 1.0, it's stable and reliable as well. It loads a little slower than IE but once running, it zips along at lightning speed. With tabbed browsing and more free extensions than you could ever want, it offers a major upgrade in your browsing experience.  Unlike IE, it's also standards compliant.  FireFox is now my everyday browser though occasionally I have to fire up IE to browse a site designed around IE's non standard features.
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/ie.html

EMAIL CLIENT - Mozilla Thunderbird
Thunderbird, the free open source POP and IMAP email client, developed by Mozilla.org, the same folks who brought you FireFox.  This product includes built- in spam filtering, built-in RSS reader, better security, message color coding, fast email search and the ability to view your mail in conversational threads. On top of that, the product is more secure than Outlook Express and, unlike the latter, is still being actively developed. The transition is made easier by the fact that Thunderbird looks and works similar to Outlook Express. Tools within Thunderbird also allow you to easily import OE account settings and stored email. Outlook users who are reliant on calendaring, can easily install the Lightning add-on. If you switch to Thunderbird, you should also consider using the free Copernic Desktop Search program, the latest version of which now indexes Thunderbird email files.
http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/

Suggested Add-Ins:

• Lightning brings the Sunbird calendar to the popular Thunderbird email client. Since it's an extension, Lightning is tightly integrated with Thunderbird, allowing it to easily perform email-related calendaring tasks.

• LookOut is a plug-in which allows Thunderbird to interface with Microsoft's mail tools by decoding metadata and attachments encapsulated/embedded in a TNEF encoded attachment (aka winmail.dat).

• Enigmail adds OpenPGP message encryption and authentication to your email client. It features automatic encryption, decryption and integrated key management functionality. Enigmail requires GnuPG (www.gnupg.org) for the cryptographic functions. Note: GnuPG is not part of the installation.

HTML EDITOR - KompoZer

Finally, a top-notch WYSIWYG web page program for the rest of us! Now there's no need to pay a little fortune for a program to create and edit great-looking web pages, including powerful and easy to use CSS capabilities. KompoZer is a complete Web Authoring System that combines web file management and easy-to-use WYSIWYG web page editing capabilities found in Microsoft FrontPage, Adobe DreamWeaver and other high end programs. KompoZer is designed to be extremely easy to use, making it ideal for non-technical computer users who want to create an attractive professional-looking web site without needing to know HTML or web coding.

http://kompozer.net

SPELL CHECKER

GNU Aspell is a Free and Open Source spell checker, its goal to help out all the bad spellers on the net by doing a really good job of coming up with suggestions for misspelled words. Its main feature is that it does a superior job of suggesting possible replacements for a misspelled word than just about any other spell checker out there for the English language.

http://aspell.net/

DESKTOP PUBLISHING - PAGE LAYOUT

Scribus is an open-source program that brings award-winning professional page layout to Linux/UNIX, Mac OS X, OS/2 and Windows desktops with a combination of "press-ready" output and new approaches to page layout. Underneath the modern and user friendly interface, Scribus supports professional publishing features, such as CMYK color, separations, Spot Colors, ICC color management and versatile PDF creation.  A great alternative to Microsoft Publisher.

http://www.scribus.net/

DESKTOP SEARCH - COPERNIC

Desktop search software indexes and searches your hard drive and documents, just as internet search engines search the web. It's very useful for finding old documents, sifting through emails and images etc very quickly. I used Google Desktop for a while. It serves up the contents of your drive in the same way that the Google search engine serves up the contents of the Internet, in your browser. It’s an elegant solution, but wasn’t a natural fit for me. Copernic Desktop Search is clearly the very best desktop search application available.
http://www.copernic.com/en/products/desktop-search/index.html

VISTA START MENU - A Replacement for the default Start Menu

Vista Start Menu is the convenient alternative to the plain Start menu you find in Windows XP and Windows Vista. The program uses your cognitive abilities (visual memory, reflexes, etc.); however, while it is easily understandable for beginners, it is also highly efficient for experienced users.

http://www.vistastartmenu.com/

PASSWORD MANAGER

RoboForm is an award-winning automated password manager and web form filler with some serious Artificial Intelligence. Roboform will remember, encrypt, and automate all of your logins across the Web as well as hold “safenotes” where you can keep sensitive information such as ATM PINs, social security numbers, and the like. You can protect all your Identities and Pass cards with the Master Password thus making them inaccessible to unauthorized users and unreadable by hackers even if they are stolen. Roboform uses AES encryption for increased protection. When RoboForm enters the saved password into form fields, it is not typing them through keyboard, so if a keylogger is installed on your computer and it is monitoring keyboard events for passwords, it will get no keyboard clicks when you use RoboForm to enter passwords. 

http://www/roboform.com

CD-DVD-BluRay Burning Tool

ImgBurn is a free CD and DVD Swiss Army knife for Windows (it also runs on Linux under Wine). ImgBurn can write data from a variety of formats, burns audio CDs, ISOs, and video DVDs, including regular DVD, HD DVD, and Blu-ray DVD. As an added bonus, ImgBurn can read a disc to an image on your hard drive and build a disc image from files on your computer.

http://www.imgburn.com/

EverNote gives users a single place for all types of notes and information and makes them instantly accessible at anytime, in any place. EverNote makes it easy to store and quickly access typed and handwritten memos, webpage excerpts, emails, phone messages, addresses, passwords, brainstorms, sketches, documents and more. With EverNote, you can create notes in multiple formats, including text, web, email, handwriting, camera phone snapshots, image clips and custom templates. You don't need to save your notes manually - EverNote saves them for you automatically.

http://www.evernote.com/en/products/evernote/features.php

Desktop Clock for Windows XP

ClocX is analog clock application for Microsoft Windows including:

256 levels of transparency with special mouse-over transparency function

Changeable and configurable styles

Advanced window options (unmovable, always on top, pin to desktop, click through, ...)

Configurable alarms with ability to show alarm window, play sound, execute application and shutdown computer.

http://www.clocx.net/

PDFCreator

PDFCreator is a free tool to create PDF files from nearly any Windows application.

Key Features: Create PDFs from any program that is able to print

Security: Encrypt PDFs and protect them from being opened, printed etc.

Send generated files via eMail. Create more than just PDFs: PNG, JPG, TIFF, BMP, PCX, PS, EPS AutoSave files to folders and filenames based on Tags like Username, Computername, Date, Time etc.

Merge multiple files into one PDF.

http://www.pdfforge.org/products/pdfcreator

 Foxit PDF Reader

Foxit Reader is a free PDF document viewer, with incredible small size, breezing-fast launch speed and rich feature set. Foxit Reader supports Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista. Its core function is compatible with PDF Standard 1.7. In the past, you've had to download a huge PDF reader from another software company, go through a lengthy installation process and wait for an annoying splash window to disappear just to open a PDF document. Moreover, if you want to annotate a PDF document, you have to pay US$299 to buy certain software. Now with Foxit Reader, you don't have to endure such pain any more

http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/reader/

AVG Antivirus Free Edition.

This product has been continuously refined since it was first released in 1991 and now offers very impressive protection capabilities. Additionally, it's relatively small, light on resources, has regular automatic updates and handles email scanning. There is a free and a pro version, the only difference being that the free version has a few non-critical features disabled and has no direct technical support. Even so, it's an impressive package and offers the financially challenged a real alternative to the major anti-virus suites.

http://free.avg.com/
 

FTP Client

I used WS_FTP Pro as my FTP client for years. What started out as simple and effective product gradually with each new version became more feature bloated and less effective for routine tasks. With the release of Version 9 it was clear to me that the product had totally lost its way so I started looking for an alternative. After trying seven different FTP clients I decided that the best for me was the Open Source utility FileZilla. It uses a simple layout based on a two pane interface that looks a bit like the early versions of WS_FTP. But this simplicity is deceptive, it is actually a quite powerful product There's a full featured site manager, firewall and proxy support, SSL and Kerberos GSS security, restart, drop and drag and a lot more. The only significant feature that's missing is site to site transfer but that's of no importance to me. What is of importance is that FileZilla is fast, totally reliable, secure and and very easy to use. There's also a free FileZilla FTP server which I haven't used but I hear that it's just as good as the client.
http://filezilla-project.org/

BIT TORRENT Client

uTorrent is a powerful and efficient BitTorrent client for Windows. Most of the features present in other BitTorrent clients are present in uTorrent, including bandwidth prioritization, scheduling, RSS auto-downloading, and Mainline DHT. Additionally, uTorrent supports the protocol encryption joint specification and peer exchange. Unlike many torrent clients, it does not hog valuable system resources--typically using less than 6MB of memory.

http://www.utorrent.com/

INSTANT MESSAGING

PIDGIN is a multi-protocol instant messaging (IM) client for Linux, BSD, MacOS X, and Windows. It is compatible with AIM and ICQ (Oscar protocol), MSN Messenger, Yahoo!, IRC, Jabber, Gadu-Gadu, SILC, Novell GroupWise Messenger, Lotus Sametime, and Zephyr networks. PIDGIN users can log in to multiple accounts on multiple IM networks simultaneously. This means that you can be chatting with friends on AOL Instant Messenger, talking to a friend on Yahoo Messenger, and sitting in an IRC channel all at the same time. Also check out the ten must-have Pidgin plug-ins to get even more out of the killer cross-platform app.

http://www.pidgin.im/about/

ZIP Archiving Program

7-Zip is a file archiver with a high compression ratio. I used to use WinZip and was a registered user, but with the 10.0 release, my "lifetime" subscription came to an end. I went searching for a suitable alternative and found 7-Zip. You can use 7-Zip on any computer, including a computer in a commercial organization.

http://www.7-zip.org/

Adware/Spyware/Scumware Remover
Don't let the name fool you. SUPERAntiSpyware is the most thorough scanner on the market. Their Multi-Dimensional Scanning and Process Interrogation Technology will detect spyware other products miss. Repair broken Internet Connections, Desktops, Registry Editing and more with their unique Repair System. Dedicated Threat Research Team scours the web for new threats and provides daily definition updates. Using Direct Disk Access (DDA) technology, SUPERAntiSpyware can now find and remove threats other anti-spyware products will not even know exist on your system! Light on Resources, 30-50% Faster Scanning, Vista Integration and will not interfere with your existing anti-virus or anti-spyware applications!!

http://www.superantispyware.com/

Windows System Optimization and Cleaning

CCleaner is a system optimization, privacy and cleaning tool. It removes unused files from your system - allowing Windows to run faster and freeing up valuable hard disk space. It also cleans traces of your online activities such as your Internet history. Additionally it contains a fully featured registry cleaner. But the best part is that it's fast.

http://www.ccleaner.com/

Firewall
Two things need to be said about firewalls. First, the number and quality of free products is remarkable. Second, no other single product category seems to cause as much angst to average users in their installation and day-day-use. Comodo Firewall, rated by PC Magazine Online as an Editor's Choice, constantly monitors and defends your PC from internet attacks. It's easy to install and use and passes the industry's most stringent firewall "leak" tests. Unlike some other 'free' firewalls, this is not a stripped down version but is the full, completely functional product. This free solution comes complete with continual updates that are free forever!

http://www.comodo.com/products/free_products.html

Hard Disk Encryption

TrueCrypt is a software system for establishing and maintaining an on-the-fly-encrypted volume (data storage device). On-the-fly encryption means that data is automatically encrypted or decrypted right before it is loaded or saved, without any user intervention. No data stored on an encrypted volume can be read (decrypted) without using the correct password/keyfile(s) or correct encryption keys. Entire file system is encrypted (e.g., file names, folder names, contents of every file, free space, meta data, etc).

http://www.truecrypt.org/

Backup

Losing your valuable files through accidental deletion, hard drive crashes or virus attacks can be devastating. Whether it's the priceless collection of family photographs; the college thesis you've been saving over or the entire accounts database - data loss always carries a disastrously high cost in time, money and stress. Of course, making regular backup copies of your files is a good idea - you'd do it if you knew where to begin, right? What if we told you there's a free, simple to use program that allows you to create, schedule and run your own backups 5 minutes after you've downloaded it? Just pick your source and destination folders, pick the times you want it to run and you're set. From now on, if your data gets lost, damaged or deleted you can quickly recover it at the touch of a button. Comodo BackUp is suitable for both beginners and experienced users alike and is completely free of charge.

http://backup.comodo.com

Audio, Recording & Editing

Audacity is free, open source software for recording and editing sounds. It is available for Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux, and other operating systems.

You can use Audacity to:

• Record live audio.

• Convert tapes and records into digital recordings or CDs.

• Edit Ogg Vorbis, MP3, and WAV sound files.

• Cut, copy, splice, and mix sounds together.

• Change the speed or pitch of a recording.

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

MEDIA PLAYER & SERVER

VLC media player is a highly portable cross-platform open-source multimedia player and server supporting most audio and video formats (H.264, Ogg, DivX, MKV, TS, MPEG-2, mp3, MPEG-4, aac, ...) from files, physical media (DVDs, VCD, Audio-CD), TV capture cards and many network streaming protocols.
It can also convert media files, transcode and act as a streaming server over unicast or multicast and IPv4 or IPv6. It doesn't need any external codec, program or codec pack to work.

 A FREE MEDIA PLAYER FOR EVERYONE!

Windows Only. ALShow is the easiest free media player on the Internet. If you've ever searched for some obscure video codec before, you'll appreciate ALShow. With everything already included, it's the last download you'll need to watch your movies and videos. Play FLV Files - SRT Subtitle Support - MP4 Filter - H.264/H.263 Upgrades - VobSub Caption Support - CVID & TP Support... And lots more!

MP3 PLAYER.

ALSong is a Live Song Lyrics MP3 player with everything you expect in a modern MP3 player, as well as some extras that make ALSong more than just "yet another mp3 player". One of its "cool" features is the capability to dock into the Windows Taskbar. Light on system resources unlike so many other players.

The GIMP - Digital Image Editor
The Gimp is a graphics processing program similar in function to Photoshop and PaintShop PRO. The big difference is that it's free, the others cost big bucks. But don't think free means limited. On the contrary this product can read multiple formats, has filters, textures and color effects to burn and can even handle layers.

http://www.gimp.org/

On-SCREEN GRAPHICS CAPTURE

I've been using Faststone Capture for ages to handle my screenshot tasks, but PicPick is a very capable alternative. PicPick provides the usual capture functionality and Windows hot key replacements (print screen and the control + and alt + variations), but it doesn't stop there. The integrated editor is packed with features, and can easily handle any quick edits I need for creating documentation or blog posts. The editor's tabbed interface makes working with multiple images easy, especially when working with the repeat function to re-capture the same region for, say, a step-by-step installer tutorial.   It's free, and packs a ton of useful features in a half-megabyte portable package.

http://picpick.wiziple.net/features

Paint.NET is image and photo manipulation software designed to be used on computers that run Windows 2000, XP, Vista, or Server 2003. It supports layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools.
It started development at Washington State University as an undergraduate senior design project mentored by Microsoft, and is currently being maintained by some of the alumni that originally worked on it. Originally intended as a free replacement for the MS Paint software that comes with Windows, it has grown into a powerful yet simple tool for photo and image editing.
http://www.eecs.wsu.edu/paint.net/

Digital Photo Organizer and Editor - FastStone Image Viewer is a fast, stable, user-friendly image browser, converter and editor. It has a nice array of features that include image viewing, management, comparison, red-eye removal, emailing, resizing, cropping and color adjustments. Its innovative but intuitive full-screen mode provides quick access to EXIF information, thumbnail browser and major functionalities via hidden toolbars that pop up when your mouse touches the four edges of the screen. Other features include a high quality magnifier and a musical slideshow with 150+ transitional effects, as well as lossless JPEG transitions, drop shadow effects, image annotation, scanner support, histogram and much more. It supports all major graphic formats (BMP, JPEG, JPEG 2000, animated GIF, PNG, PCX, TIFF, WMF, ICO and TGA) and popular digital camera RAW formats (CRW, CR2, NEF, PEF, RAF, MRW, ORF, SRF and DNG).

Dia - Drawing Program

Dia is inspired by the commercial Windows program 'Visio', though more geared towards informal diagrams for casual use. It can be used to draw many different kinds of diagrams. It currently has special objects to help draw entity relationship diagrams, UML diagrams, flowcharts, network diagrams, and many other diagrams. It is also possible to add support for new shapes by writing simple XML files, using a subset of SVG to draw the shape.

http://live.gnome.org/Dia

Remote Control Software
Ultr@VNC is a client/server package that allows remote control of another PC using a TCP/IP connection. It works with Windows W9x/NT/2K/XP and offers all the features you need including auto-configuration, easy user interface, extensive hotkeys and embedded file transfer. Apart from the fact that it's free, its strong suite is its speed. Ultr@VNC must be the fastest remote control package I've ever used.  Just the thing for accessing your home PC while traveling, off-site troubleshooting or general network administration.
http://ultravnc.sourceforge.net/

VistaStartMenu

Start working with pleasure using Vista Start Menu. It's interface takes into account how the brain processes visual information and turns the start menu into a simple and effective tool. An attractive and efficient alternative to the Start Menu in Microsoft Windows XP and Vista. Vista Start Menu was designed specifically to make it possible to quickly access any information using the keyboard or the mouse.

http://www.vistastartmenu.com/index.html

Windows Disk Deframentation

MyDefrag is a disk defragmenter and optimizer (a maintenance utility to make your harddisk faster) for Windows 2000, 2003, XP, Vista, 2008, and for X64. It is freeware, no time limit, fully functional, no advertisements. Fast, low overhead, with many optimization strategies, can handle floppies, USB disks, memory sticks, and anything else that looks like a disk to Windows. Included are a set of easy to use scripts for endusers, a scripting engine for demanding users, a screensaver, and a combined Windows plus commandline version that can be scheduled by the Windows task scheduler or for use from administrator scripts.

http://www.mydefrag.com/

CAD SOFTWARE

Many of my construction and design clients have at one time asked me if I knew of any free CAD software that was compatible with AutoCAD. The Answer is A9CAD from A9TECH Software. A9CAD will allow you to:

Draw, view and edit two-dimensional CAD drawings.

Read and write industry standard DWG and DXF formats.

Issue command or enter input data from Command Line window.

Edit line weight, line type, layer, dimension style and text style.

Modify drawing object via Properties window.

http://www.a9tech.com/products/a9cad/

FREE OPERATING SYSTEMS - LINUX

UBUNTU Linux

Ubuntu is a LINUX hit in the open-source community and is free to anyone and based on the open-source GNOME desktop environment.. Canonical, the organization that oversees development of Ubuntu, releases a new version of Ubuntu every six months.

It's important to note that the ecosystem around Ubuntu has grown significantly over the past couple of years. Canonical continues to bundle key application software with Ubuntu, including OpenOffice.org, Rhythmbox (music management software that can integrate with MP3 players including iPods), Firefox 3.0, GIMP photo editing software and more.

Ubuntu developers have also integrated a simple, intuitive console for managing wireless connectivity, including for WiFi and broadband wireless. After installation, it took two clicks of the wireless console to hook the PC up to a wireless router. No line commands were needed, no installation of drivers were needed. It just worked.

The bottom line: Ubuntu easily ranks higher than any other Linux desktop OS I've looked at. Based on performance numbers, its Ethernet and wireless management and zero licensing cost, this is an operating system we can recommend not just as an alternative to Windows but as a strong OS in its own right. If you are looking for a stable version of Linux to run on your personal computer or home server, this is the best choice and easiest migration from Microsoft.

All versions support 32- and 64-bit PCs, as well as PowerPCs.