Some asked for a cleaned up freeware list, so here it is:
Click on the names to go to the program's webpage!
Some users hadn't realized I was doing that, so I wanted to clarify.
I. Players
1. Media Player Classic for 2k/XP or 95/98/ME - Updated and upgraded version of Windows Media Player 6.4. Great for video playback.
2. VideoLAN - Great support for most every type of video file.
3. Winamp - Supports a good number of file types and has great skins.
4. foobar2000 - The best "hifi" audio player out there. Supports nearly every type of audio codec, highly customizable, and a low memory footprint are the best features of this awesome player.
II. Rippers, Editors, and Encoders
1. EAC - (Exact Audio Copy) - Excellent CD-ripper; very easy to use.
2. dBpowerAMP - Great little encoder, although the MP3 encoder is on a 30-day trial. (Due to the MP3 licence.)
3. Audiograbber - Another audio ripper; great for ripping anything from CDs to LPs to cassette tapes
4. DVD Shrink - One step DVD backup software; easy to use.
5. Audacity - Free, open source software for recording and editing sounds.
6. VirtualDub - VirtualDub is a video capture/processing utility for 32-bit Windows platforms. *
I. Graphics Editors and Renderers
1. GIMP - (GNU Image Manipulation Program) - Poor man's Photoshop. Features many of the same tools, but the interface is very different.
2. Blender3D - Open source software for 3D modeling, animation and rendering.
3. Paint.NET - MS paint on steroids. It also supports layers.
4. Sodipodi - It is designed specifically around the SVG standard, using the file format (with some extensions to hold metadata) as its native storage format. It will import and export plain SVG data, and can also export raster graphics in PNG format.
5. INKSCAPE - Inkscape is an Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, Freehand, CorelDraw, or Xara X using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format.
6. @icon sushi - Icon converter that supports the mask editor and the creation of Windows XP 32bit icons.
II. Image Viewers
1. Irfanview - IrfanView is a very fast, small, compact graphic viewer for Windows.
2. FastStone Image Viewer - FastStone is a user-friendly image browser, converter and editor.
3. XnView - XnView is an image viewer and converter that supports more than 400 graphics format.
4. Microsoft Image Resizer - This PowerToy enables you to resize one or many image files with a right-click. *
I. Antivirus
1. Grisoft AVG - Great little antivirus program; unlimited use and unlimited updates for non-commercial users.
2. AntiVir - One of the best free antivirus programs out there.
3. Avast! - One of the most popular full-featured free anti-virus applications for Windows.
4. ClamWin - (ClamAV) - Free and open source antivirus.
5. Stinger - Stinger is a stand-alone utility used to detect and remove specific viruses. (List in link)
II. Firewalls and Network Monitors
1. Outpost Firewall - Just another firewall. I have the Pro version and it works amazingly well.
2. Kerio Personal Firewall - Great little free firewall
3. ZoneAlarm - Award winning free firewall.
4. Sygate Firewall - Another free firewall.
5. Active Ports - Enables you to monitor all open TCP/IP and UDP ports on your computer.
III. Spyware/Adware Removers
1. Spybot - Search & Destroy - Probably the best free anti-malware program out there. Includes an "Immunize" feature which can be used to block the installation of spyware before it occurs and a file shredder for the secure deletion of files.
2. Spyware Blaster - Can prevent spyware from popping up in the first place.
3. Ad-Aware - Another anti-malware program with a good reputation.
4. A-Squared - Another malware killer.
5. HijackThis! - A general homepage hijackers detector and remover. Not for the novice user.
6. CWShredder - A program for removing the CoolWebSearch family of spyware.
7. Windows Defender - (Formerly Microsoft AntiSpyware) - Free anti-malware program for any Windows user
I. Disk Monitors
1. HD_Speed - HD_Speed measures both sustained and burst data transfer rates of your hard disk drives, CD/DVD-ROM drives and floppy drives with real-time graphical display.
2. BruteBenchmark - BruteBenchmark checks the performance of your CPU, video card and hard disk. It computes a score for each quickly, and you can use it to compare against other entries in the database.
3. HDDlife - /HDDlife constantly monitors the health of your hard drives at regular intervals and informs you about the results of these checks.
II. Optimizers
1. HDCleaner - Scans and removes junk files, duplicate files, and various other removable files.
2. CCleaner - CCleaner is a freeware system optimization and privacy tool. It removes unused files from your system - allowing Windows to run faster and freeing up valuable hard disk space.
I. Browsers
1. Opera - One of the best browsers out there. It's fast and light.
2. Mozilla Firefox - Free foxy goodness.
3. K-Meleon - Built on the same engine Firefox is, K-Meleon is aimed to provide a light-weight browser running under Windows using the operating system's native interface for the application's toolbars and menus - similar to Galeon or Epiphany on Linux and other Unix-like operating systems, and Camino on Mac OS X.
4. SeaMonkey - The continuation of the former Mozilla Application Suite.
I. Bit Torrent
1. ?Torrent - The best Bit Torrent client out there. Fast, light, and small, weighing in at only 130KB.
2. Azureus - Another Bit Torrent client. Sports many cool features.
II. Instant Message Clients
1. GAIM - Gaim 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, GroupWise Messenger, and Zephyr networks.
2. Miranda IM - Miranda IM is a multi protocol instant messenger client.Miranda IM is designed to be resource efficient and easy to use. It uses very little memory and requires no installation.
3. Skype - The basic computer-to-computer service allows users to speak, to send instant messages or to send files to one another from their computers via the Internet at no cost. Conferences of up to five users are supported.
4. Trillian - Trillian is a multiprotocol instant messaging application for Windows created by Cerulean Studios that can connect to multiple IM programs from one client, such as AIM, ICQ, MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, IRC, Novell GroupWise Messenger, Bonjour, Jabber, and Skype networks (the later four with Trillian Pro which allows for additonal plugins).
5. Google Talk - Google Talk is a service offered by Google for Voice over IP and instant messaging.
6. Xfire - AIM for Gamers basically. Allows users to send messages without minizing their game.
7. mIRC - The most popular IRC client
8. SilvereX's Build or Daemon404's Build of X-Chat? - Excellent IRC client.
III. Servers
1. XAMPP - Apache, MySQL, PHP, FileZilla, and Perl rolled into one easy to install file. Great if you need to run a web server.
2. Apache Web Server - Best web server out there.
3. PHP - PHP is a programming language used to create websites. Short for "PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor", it is an open-source, reflective programming language used mainly for developing server-side applications and dynamic web content.
4. MySQL Database - Best database software around.
5. J.A.M.E.S (Java Enterprise Mail Server)
6. PHPBB - Message boards.
7. GuildFTPd - Features plug-in and network support. It has the ability to set each login to a different port and provide log statistics. You can review graphs of past connections and control the speed of your uploads and downloads.
VI. FTP Clients
1. FileZilla - The best FTP client, imo. Very easy to use, reliable, and fast.
2. SmartFTP - SmartFTP is full-featured FTP client with a snazzy interface.
3. BlazeFTP - Very much like filezilla, but with the ability to connect to multiple servers in a tabbed interface.
V. Email Clients
3. Thunderbird - Love Firefox ?? Try Mozilla's email client, complete with built in spam filtering.
2. Pegasus Mail - Standards-based email client with spam filtering.
VI. Other Applications
1. UltraVNC - Doing any remote desktop management? This client/server is miles beyond Windows' integrated VNC client/server.
2. Foxit Reader - Foxit is a free reader for PDF documents. You can view and print PDF documents with it.
I. Office
1. OpenOffice 2 - Very stable and free office suite. Compatible with MS Office.
2. AbiWord - Another great alternate to Microsoft Office.
3. TaxAct - Free software for doing your taxes.
4. Wink - Wink is a Tutorial and Presentation creation software, primarily aimed at creating tutorials on how to use software (like a tutor for MS-Word/Excel etc). Using Wink you can capture screenshots, add explanations boxes, buttons, titles etc and generate a highly effective tutorial for your users.
II. Programming
1. Visual Studio Express - IDE for almost ever programming language.
2. HTML-Kit - HTML Kit is a free, full-featured, customizable, multi-purpose editor designed to help HTML, XHTML and XML authors to create and publish web pages.
3. NVU - WYSIWYG HTML editor
4. Eclipse - Eclipse is an open source community whose projects are focused on providing an extensible development platform and application frameworks for building software.
5. NetBeans - Supports development of all Java application types (J2SE, web, EJB and mobile applications) out of the box.
6. Dev-C++ - A free C++ IDE for Windows and Linux for MinGW compiler.
7. #develop - A free IDE for C# and VB.NET projects on Microsoft's .NET platform.
I. Compression
1. 7-zip - 7-Zip is a file archiver with high compression ratio.
2. Filzip - Filzip is a file archiver with support for many different formats.
3. IZArc - Small download, ugly icons, nice interface, support for a number of formats.
4. ZipGenius - Tons of features with a nice interface.
5. Universal Extractor - Universal Extractor allows you to extract files from many types of archive files, including ZIP, ARJ, LZH, MSI, EXE created using various installer packages such as Wise and Inno Setup etc. *
II. Others
1. TreeSize - TreeSize shows you instantly which files or folders are taking up the most space on your harddisk. *
2. freeCommander - freeCommander is an easy-to-use alternative to the standard windows file manager. *
3. SyncEXP - SyncExp enables the synchronization of files and folders within a single PC or over the LAN. *
4. tabbyFile - tabbyFile is a minimalist file explorer for windows without the bloat and obscure features of the more fancy explorer replacements. *
5. FileCommander - FileCommander is a multi-pane file manager that supports up to 4 simultaneous browser windows. *
I. Misc
1. Object Dock - An OSX-clone dock. (It replaces your Windows Taskbar and provides access to shortcuts.)
2. Belarc Advisor - Provides a detailed profile of your installed software and hardware, missing Microsoft hotfixes, anti-virus status, Internet security benchmarks, and displays the results in your Web browser.
3. Rainlendar - Rainlendar is a customizable calendar that displays the current month along with various alarms and task schedules.
4. Send To Toys - Allows editing and customization of Windows' "Send To" menu.
5. Sysmetrix - SysMetrix is a skinnable clock and metering application. Its purpose is to provide system metrics in a variety of interesting, useful, and cool ways. It can monitor and report on the hundreds of statistics.
6. WinRoll - Various handling of windows including shade mode among others.
7. NASA World Wind - World Wind lets you zoom from satellite altitude into any place on Earth.
8. Yahoo Widgets - Formerly known as Konfabulator, it has several cool desktop plugins that show you weather, system info and even Simpsons quotes!
10. WinGrep - Windows Grep is designed for searching plain-ASCII text files, such as program source, HTML, RTF and batch files, but it can also search binary files such as word processor documents, databases, spreadsheets and executables.
11. DAEMON Tools - A virtual cd/dvd-rom emulator.
12. freeCommander - freeCommander is an easy-to-use alternative to the standard windows file manager.
13. Google Earth - Google Earth puts a planet's worth of imagery and other geographic information right on your desktop.
14. Celestia - Celestia is a free space simulation that lets you explore our universe in three dimensions. Page seems to be down.
15. NoteTabs - NoteTabs is a common notepad replacement program in a tabbed environment.
? X-Chat's original coder decided to charge for Windows versions of X-Chat, but due to X-Chat being licensed under the GPL, he has to release the source code. SilvereX and Daemon404 compile that code and release the binary for Windows.
* Denotes a new entry (I'll remove the "new entry" status after a month)
If you have something you would like added to the list, Please add it here and I'll edit it into the list.
If you spot a typo, please let me know.
Note: Fraps is a great piece of software, but not freeware.
Click on the names to go to the program's webpage!
Some users hadn't realized I was doing that, so I wanted to clarify.
I. Players
1. Media Player Classic for 2k/XP or 95/98/ME - Updated and upgraded version of Windows Media Player 6.4. Great for video playback.
2. VideoLAN - Great support for most every type of video file.
3. Winamp - Supports a good number of file types and has great skins.
4. foobar2000 - The best "hifi" audio player out there. Supports nearly every type of audio codec, highly customizable, and a low memory footprint are the best features of this awesome player.
II. Rippers, Editors, and Encoders
1. EAC - (Exact Audio Copy) - Excellent CD-ripper; very easy to use.
2. dBpowerAMP - Great little encoder, although the MP3 encoder is on a 30-day trial. (Due to the MP3 licence.)
3. Audiograbber - Another audio ripper; great for ripping anything from CDs to LPs to cassette tapes
4. DVD Shrink - One step DVD backup software; easy to use.
5. Audacity - Free, open source software for recording and editing sounds.
6. VirtualDub - VirtualDub is a video capture/processing utility for 32-bit Windows platforms. *
I. Graphics Editors and Renderers
1. GIMP - (GNU Image Manipulation Program) - Poor man's Photoshop. Features many of the same tools, but the interface is very different.
2. Blender3D - Open source software for 3D modeling, animation and rendering.
3. Paint.NET - MS paint on steroids. It also supports layers.
4. Sodipodi - It is designed specifically around the SVG standard, using the file format (with some extensions to hold metadata) as its native storage format. It will import and export plain SVG data, and can also export raster graphics in PNG format.
5. INKSCAPE - Inkscape is an Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, Freehand, CorelDraw, or Xara X using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format.
6. @icon sushi - Icon converter that supports the mask editor and the creation of Windows XP 32bit icons.
II. Image Viewers
1. Irfanview - IrfanView is a very fast, small, compact graphic viewer for Windows.
2. FastStone Image Viewer - FastStone is a user-friendly image browser, converter and editor.
3. XnView - XnView is an image viewer and converter that supports more than 400 graphics format.
4. Microsoft Image Resizer - This PowerToy enables you to resize one or many image files with a right-click. *
I. Antivirus
1. Grisoft AVG - Great little antivirus program; unlimited use and unlimited updates for non-commercial users.
2. AntiVir - One of the best free antivirus programs out there.
3. Avast! - One of the most popular full-featured free anti-virus applications for Windows.
4. ClamWin - (ClamAV) - Free and open source antivirus.
5. Stinger - Stinger is a stand-alone utility used to detect and remove specific viruses. (List in link)
II. Firewalls and Network Monitors
1. Outpost Firewall - Just another firewall. I have the Pro version and it works amazingly well.
2. Kerio Personal Firewall - Great little free firewall
3. ZoneAlarm - Award winning free firewall.
4. Sygate Firewall - Another free firewall.
5. Active Ports - Enables you to monitor all open TCP/IP and UDP ports on your computer.
III. Spyware/Adware Removers
1. Spybot - Search & Destroy - Probably the best free anti-malware program out there. Includes an "Immunize" feature which can be used to block the installation of spyware before it occurs and a file shredder for the secure deletion of files.
2. Spyware Blaster - Can prevent spyware from popping up in the first place.
3. Ad-Aware - Another anti-malware program with a good reputation.
4. A-Squared - Another malware killer.
5. HijackThis! - A general homepage hijackers detector and remover. Not for the novice user.
6. CWShredder - A program for removing the CoolWebSearch family of spyware.
7. Windows Defender - (Formerly Microsoft AntiSpyware) - Free anti-malware program for any Windows user
I. Disk Monitors
1. HD_Speed - HD_Speed measures both sustained and burst data transfer rates of your hard disk drives, CD/DVD-ROM drives and floppy drives with real-time graphical display.
2. BruteBenchmark - BruteBenchmark checks the performance of your CPU, video card and hard disk. It computes a score for each quickly, and you can use it to compare against other entries in the database.
3. HDDlife - /HDDlife constantly monitors the health of your hard drives at regular intervals and informs you about the results of these checks.
II. Optimizers
1. HDCleaner - Scans and removes junk files, duplicate files, and various other removable files.
2. CCleaner - CCleaner is a freeware system optimization and privacy tool. It removes unused files from your system - allowing Windows to run faster and freeing up valuable hard disk space.
I. Browsers
1. Opera - One of the best browsers out there. It's fast and light.
2. Mozilla Firefox - Free foxy goodness.
3. K-Meleon - Built on the same engine Firefox is, K-Meleon is aimed to provide a light-weight browser running under Windows using the operating system's native interface for the application's toolbars and menus - similar to Galeon or Epiphany on Linux and other Unix-like operating systems, and Camino on Mac OS X.
4. SeaMonkey - The continuation of the former Mozilla Application Suite.
I. Bit Torrent
1. ?Torrent - The best Bit Torrent client out there. Fast, light, and small, weighing in at only 130KB.
2. Azureus - Another Bit Torrent client. Sports many cool features.
II. Instant Message Clients
1. GAIM - Gaim 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, GroupWise Messenger, and Zephyr networks.
2. Miranda IM - Miranda IM is a multi protocol instant messenger client.Miranda IM is designed to be resource efficient and easy to use. It uses very little memory and requires no installation.
3. Skype - The basic computer-to-computer service allows users to speak, to send instant messages or to send files to one another from their computers via the Internet at no cost. Conferences of up to five users are supported.
4. Trillian - Trillian is a multiprotocol instant messaging application for Windows created by Cerulean Studios that can connect to multiple IM programs from one client, such as AIM, ICQ, MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, IRC, Novell GroupWise Messenger, Bonjour, Jabber, and Skype networks (the later four with Trillian Pro which allows for additonal plugins).
5. Google Talk - Google Talk is a service offered by Google for Voice over IP and instant messaging.
6. Xfire - AIM for Gamers basically. Allows users to send messages without minizing their game.
7. mIRC - The most popular IRC client
8. SilvereX's Build or Daemon404's Build of X-Chat? - Excellent IRC client.
III. Servers
1. XAMPP - Apache, MySQL, PHP, FileZilla, and Perl rolled into one easy to install file. Great if you need to run a web server.
2. Apache Web Server - Best web server out there.
3. PHP - PHP is a programming language used to create websites. Short for "PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor", it is an open-source, reflective programming language used mainly for developing server-side applications and dynamic web content.
4. MySQL Database - Best database software around.
5. J.A.M.E.S (Java Enterprise Mail Server)
6. PHPBB - Message boards.
7. GuildFTPd - Features plug-in and network support. It has the ability to set each login to a different port and provide log statistics. You can review graphs of past connections and control the speed of your uploads and downloads.
VI. FTP Clients
1. FileZilla - The best FTP client, imo. Very easy to use, reliable, and fast.
2. SmartFTP - SmartFTP is full-featured FTP client with a snazzy interface.
3. BlazeFTP - Very much like filezilla, but with the ability to connect to multiple servers in a tabbed interface.
V. Email Clients
3. Thunderbird - Love Firefox ?? Try Mozilla's email client, complete with built in spam filtering.
2. Pegasus Mail - Standards-based email client with spam filtering.
VI. Other Applications
1. UltraVNC - Doing any remote desktop management? This client/server is miles beyond Windows' integrated VNC client/server.
2. Foxit Reader - Foxit is a free reader for PDF documents. You can view and print PDF documents with it.
I. Office
1. OpenOffice 2 - Very stable and free office suite. Compatible with MS Office.
2. AbiWord - Another great alternate to Microsoft Office.
3. TaxAct - Free software for doing your taxes.
4. Wink - Wink is a Tutorial and Presentation creation software, primarily aimed at creating tutorials on how to use software (like a tutor for MS-Word/Excel etc). Using Wink you can capture screenshots, add explanations boxes, buttons, titles etc and generate a highly effective tutorial for your users.
II. Programming
1. Visual Studio Express - IDE for almost ever programming language.
2. HTML-Kit - HTML Kit is a free, full-featured, customizable, multi-purpose editor designed to help HTML, XHTML and XML authors to create and publish web pages.
3. NVU - WYSIWYG HTML editor
4. Eclipse - Eclipse is an open source community whose projects are focused on providing an extensible development platform and application frameworks for building software.
5. NetBeans - Supports development of all Java application types (J2SE, web, EJB and mobile applications) out of the box.
6. Dev-C++ - A free C++ IDE for Windows and Linux for MinGW compiler.
7. #develop - A free IDE for C# and VB.NET projects on Microsoft's .NET platform.
I. Compression
1. 7-zip - 7-Zip is a file archiver with high compression ratio.
2. Filzip - Filzip is a file archiver with support for many different formats.
3. IZArc - Small download, ugly icons, nice interface, support for a number of formats.
4. ZipGenius - Tons of features with a nice interface.
5. Universal Extractor - Universal Extractor allows you to extract files from many types of archive files, including ZIP, ARJ, LZH, MSI, EXE created using various installer packages such as Wise and Inno Setup etc. *
II. Others
1. TreeSize - TreeSize shows you instantly which files or folders are taking up the most space on your harddisk. *
2. freeCommander - freeCommander is an easy-to-use alternative to the standard windows file manager. *
3. SyncEXP - SyncExp enables the synchronization of files and folders within a single PC or over the LAN. *
4. tabbyFile - tabbyFile is a minimalist file explorer for windows without the bloat and obscure features of the more fancy explorer replacements. *
5. FileCommander - FileCommander is a multi-pane file manager that supports up to 4 simultaneous browser windows. *
I. Misc
1. Object Dock - An OSX-clone dock. (It replaces your Windows Taskbar and provides access to shortcuts.)
2. Belarc Advisor - Provides a detailed profile of your installed software and hardware, missing Microsoft hotfixes, anti-virus status, Internet security benchmarks, and displays the results in your Web browser.
3. Rainlendar - Rainlendar is a customizable calendar that displays the current month along with various alarms and task schedules.
4. Send To Toys - Allows editing and customization of Windows' "Send To" menu.
5. Sysmetrix - SysMetrix is a skinnable clock and metering application. Its purpose is to provide system metrics in a variety of interesting, useful, and cool ways. It can monitor and report on the hundreds of statistics.
6. WinRoll - Various handling of windows including shade mode among others.
7. NASA World Wind - World Wind lets you zoom from satellite altitude into any place on Earth.
8. Yahoo Widgets - Formerly known as Konfabulator, it has several cool desktop plugins that show you weather, system info and even Simpsons quotes!
10. WinGrep - Windows Grep is designed for searching plain-ASCII text files, such as program source, HTML, RTF and batch files, but it can also search binary files such as word processor documents, databases, spreadsheets and executables.
11. DAEMON Tools - A virtual cd/dvd-rom emulator.
12. freeCommander - freeCommander is an easy-to-use alternative to the standard windows file manager.
13. Google Earth - Google Earth puts a planet's worth of imagery and other geographic information right on your desktop.
14. Celestia - Celestia is a free space simulation that lets you explore our universe in three dimensions. Page seems to be down.
15. NoteTabs - NoteTabs is a common notepad replacement program in a tabbed environment.
? X-Chat's original coder decided to charge for Windows versions of X-Chat, but due to X-Chat being licensed under the GPL, he has to release the source code. SilvereX and Daemon404 compile that code and release the binary for Windows.
* Denotes a new entry (I'll remove the "new entry" status after a month)
If you have something you would like added to the list, Please add it here and I'll edit it into the list.
If you spot a typo, please let me know.
Note: Fraps is a great piece of software, but not freeware.
Comment