No-Cost Computing: The Best Free and Open Source Windows Applications

There's a huge amount of useful software available that costs nothing to download or use. Here's a list of the freeware and open source applications I wouldn't want to live without.

Tagged with Windows, Software, Open Source and Freeware
Posted on 1/1/07 by Paul Herron

Antivirus

avast!. It's functional and updates its virus definitions regularly. This software has been keeping my computers virus-free for over a year.

Browsers

Mozilla Firefox. The fast, intuitive and extensible web browser with the increasingly large following.

Email

Mozilla Thunderbird. Like Firefox, it works a treat. A worthy alternative to Outlook Express or, coupled with Mozilla Sunbird, to Microsoft Outlook.

Environments, IDEs & Frameworks

Eclipse. This Java-based editor is great for many types of programming. I use it with the PHPEclipse plugin for my CakePHP projects.
Wamp5. Makes it possible to run Apache, PHP and MySQL on a Windows PC.

File Sharing & Downloading

µTorrent. A small, fast and user-friendly BitTorrent client.

FTP

FileZilla. An FTP and SFTP client.

Graphics & Photo

The GIMP. Rivals Adobe Photoshop in many respects. Add the UFRaw plugin for RAW image editing, but note that the program currently only supports editing at 8-bits per channel.
Inkscape. A very capable vector drawing application.
FreeMind. A Java-based application for producing mind maps. Exports to XHTML as well as various vector and raster formats.
PDF Creator. Sets up a virtual PDF printer, making it possible to save to PDF in any software that can print.
SICAT. A small executable with a very specific aim. If you want your screenshots to be automatically uploaded to your webspace via FTP, and the URL copied to your clipboard, this program is for you.

Media Players & Codecs

foobar2000. The faster-loading, faster-working alternative to Winamp, with all the useful features retained. It's also compatible with the excellent music profiling service, Last.fm.
VLC Media Player. A simple media player with many useful features. It has a wide range of inbuilt codecs and is particularly good at coping with damaged or incomplete files. It can even play media that's in a disk image (.iso) file.

Messengers & VOIP

MirandaIM. A minimalist instant messaging client that gives access to protocols such as ICQ, AIM, MSN, IRC, Yahoo!, Jabber and Google Talk. Consumes considerably fewer resources than Windows Live Messenger.

Office & DTP Applications

OpenOffice.org. A suite applications to rival Microsoft Office.
HTML Slidy. Not so much a program as a useful script, but still deserves a mention as an excellent Impress or Powerpoint alternative. Produce some slides in HTML and display them fullscreen in your browser using Slidy. Many oft-used slideshow features are emulated, including keyboard navigation and incremental display of slide content. As with any web page, Flash and other media can be embedded.

Sound & Music

Audacity. A feature-packed alternative to Sony Sound Forge.
JJ MP3 Renamer. A useful freeware tool for tagging and renaming MP3 files.

Utilities & Other

WinDirStat. Displays disk usage information graphically.
Notepad++. An excellent Notepad replacement and powerful text editor. Useful features include syntax highlighting and code autocompletion.
Startup Manager. Easy customisation of which programs run when Windows boots.
LS. A useful application for generating a list of a directory's contents.
7-Zip. A file archiver that's very similar to WinRAR. Can be used to compress and decompress RAR and ZIP files.

Video

MediaCoder. For all your video transcoding needs. MediaCoder supports a variety of video and audio formats and has an excellent interface. It supports encoding plugins for a range a devices, making it ideal for encoding video for products like the Apple iPod.
MediaInfo. Drag a video, audio or subtitle file onto the this application to see comprehensive technical details, including information on the codec, file size, duration and more.
VirtualDub. A video capture and linear editing tool.

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