50 Free Windows Apps

  1. Firefox – Web browser, safer alternative to Internet Explorer.
  2. Thunderbird – Full featured email application.
  3. PuTTY or PuTTY Tray – Telnet & SSH client.
  4. WinSCP – Open source SFTP / FTP & SCP client.
  5. µtorrent – A very tiny bittorrent client.
  6. Skype – Free voice calls to anyone else on Skype. 
  7. Feedreader – RSS news reader.
  8. Pidgin – Instant messenger client (Yahoo/MSN/AIM/etc).
  9. HydraIRC – IRC Client.
  10. RealVNC – Allows you to remotely control other computers.
  11. Locknote – Encrypted notepad.
  12. Notepad2 or Notepad++ – Powerful alternatives to Windows Notepad.
  13. Recuva – Recover deleted files from hard drives and flash media.
  14. CCleaner – Clean unused and temporary files from your system.
  15. Softperfect Network Scanner – IP, Netbios and SNMP scanner.
  16. Softperfect Personal Firewall – Rules based software firewall.
  17. Winpatrol – Monitors your computer for adware, spyware, trojans & more.
  18. Xpy – Small tool which disables the default threats of Windows XP.
  19. Truecrypt – File & disk encryption toolkit.
  20. Eraser – Securely erase (and prevent recovery of) any file.
  21. VLC – Media player & streaming server.
  22. foobar2000 – Advanced music player and organiser.
  23. LAME Encoder – Codec needed to create MP3 files.
  24. XnView – View and convert over 400 graphic formats.
  25. Shareaza – P2P client (Gnutella, BitTorrent, etc).
  26. Popcorn – Portable POP3 client.
  27. Hamachi – Zero configuration VPN tool.
  28. SequoiaView – Explore hard drive usage using visual treemaps.
  29. DVD Shrink – Backup and compress DVDs.
  30. ImgBurn – Burn CD-R, CD-RW DVD+R/RW DVD-R/RW discs.
  31. IZArc – Free alternative to WinZip, for file compression & archiving.
  32. Foxit PDF Reader – Lightweight PDF reader.
  33. SyncBack Freeware – Backup, restore and synchronisation software.
  34. Virtual Subst – Map virtual drives to local folders.
  35. Diskmon – Log and display all hard disk activity.
  36. Process Monitor – Monitor file system, registry and process/thread activity.
  37. Quicktime Alternative – Play Apple Quicktime files without installing Quicktime.
  38. Real Alternative – Play Real Networks files without installing RealPlayer.
  39. K-Lite Codec Pack – Play DivX, XviD and more.
  40. WAMP – Apache + PHP + MySQL
  41. DOSBox – Emulate an Intel x86 PC, complete with sound, graphics etc.
  42. Cygwin – Linux-like environment for Windows.
  43. Royale Noir – Official Microsoft Windows XP theme.
  44. electric sheep – Open source collaborative abstract screensaver.
  45. 123 Free Solitaire – Procrastination software (aka solitaire card games).
  46. n – Flash ninja game, with physics.
  47. Wget – Download files from the web via HTTP or FTP.
  48. NcFTP – Powerful alternative to Windows FTP.
  49. Blat – Send email via SMTP or usenet posts via NNTP.
  50. GetMail – Download mail from POP3 mailboxes.
  51. NirCmd – Tool for miscellaneous & useful, command line tasks
  52. SDelete – Securely delete files.
  53. NetCat – TCP/IP swiss army knife.

All of the above programs take up about 210mb.

You may also wish to burn spare copies of dban (secure hard drive wiping), Ubuntu, Ultimate Boot CD and Ultimate Boot CD for Windows.

Update: For more useful suggestions visit winAddons.

Posted on Tuesday, May 15, 2007