avast! Free Antivirus
Expect great all-around protection against viruses and trojans.

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AntiVir Free Version
Lightweight and solid. Good ratings. Worth looking into.

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AVG Antivirus Free Edition
Not as good as Avast or Avira but with considerably less bloat. The most popular free antivirus.

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Microsoft Security Essentials
Simple, effective and lightweight protection suite.

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Comodo Internet Security
Free security suite, includes both a firewall and anti-virus protection.

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Spybot S&D
Detects and removes spyware. Compliments anti-virus apps. Has a very good reputation

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Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware
Easy-to-use, simple, and very effective anti-malware application.

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IObit Malware Fighter
Advanced malware & spyware removal utility.

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Threatfire
Spyware removal tool with real-time antispyware protection. Lightweight and memory sparing.

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Superantispyware
Lightweight scanner to detect and remove spyware, adware, trojans, and other threats.

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PC Tools Firewall Plus 6
Powerful firewall capable of providing excellent protection.

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Comodo Firewall (standalone)
Long been considered one of the best free firewall tools available.

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ZoneAlarm Free Firewall
Provides the best overall firewall protection for advanced users.

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Online Armor Free
All of the normal features of a firewall and more.

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Ashampoo FireWall Free
Very easy to use and navigate. For intermediate users.

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Auslogics Disk Defrag
Simple, reliable and quite fast. A must-have free PC tool. Considered no.1 by many.

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Defraggler
Another excellent defrag tool. Portable. From the same guys behind hugely popular CCleaner.

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IObit Smart Defrag
Extremely easy to use. Works continuously in the background.

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Recuva
Very effective in restoring deleted files. Extremely popular.

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FreeUndelete
No frills, just focused on the zen of file recovery.

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ADRC Data Recovery Software
The Renaissance Man of free data recovery. Not as popular as Recuva but still has its own fans.

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Revo Uninstaller Free
Fast and very effective at uninstalling just about anything. Popular choice for the purpose.

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IObit Uninstaller
New kid on the block. Gaining popularity. Boasts a bunch of features not found on other uninstallers.

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Absolute Uninstaller
Less popular than the other two but probably the simplest to use one.

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Mozy
Incredibly smart, highly secure, set-it-and-forget-it backup solution. Backups data to web.

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FBackup
Easily backup important files and documents, personal settings and plugins.

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Todo Backup
Able to backup the entire operating system, program settings, browser data, emails and other data.

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Clonezilla
Live CD to completely clone your hard drive.

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SyncBack Freeware
Selective synchronisation, local and remote backup to an FTP server.

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FreeFileSync
Open source folder comparison and sync tool. Optimised for speed and usability.

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CopyTo Synchronizer
Wide set of options for backing up, updating, and synchronizing files.

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DriveImage XML
Easily Backup or copy entire disks block-for-block directly to another drive without the need to reboot your computer to run the cloning process.

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Glary Utilities
Includes over 15 useful system maintenance tools. Been recommended by MakeUseOf several times!

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CCleaner
Scores high points all around. The most popular choice at the moment. Not as many features as in others.

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IObit Toolbox
The amount of system maintenance tools included in this free app is truly staggering.

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Soluto
Speed up Windows boot time by removing unnecessary apps from startup. Very effective.

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IObit Advanced SystemCare Free
One-click approach to help protect, repair, clean, and optimize your PC.

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Google Chrome
The fastest, minimal design browser (from Google) now with extension support. Growing extremely fast.

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Firefox
More than 6,000 add-ons for every possible feature. The most customisable browser to date.

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Safari
A web browser from Apple. Designed to emphasize browsing. Also features extensions.

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Opera
The “fastest and most advanced” browser available today.

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Thunderbird
Increasingly popular email client from the same guys behind Firefox browser. One of the best email clients for Windows.

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Postbox Express
A simple, yet powerful, new email application for Windows. Check it out.

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Google Notifier
Alerts you when you have new Gmail messages. Simple and handy.

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Skype
The most popular cross-platform VoIP application. Must-have for everyone online.

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Pidgin
Easy-to-use, cross-platform, multi-protocol chat client. Supports all major chat programs.

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Digsby
An alternative multi-protocol instant messaging app. Cross-platform. Extremely popular.

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Trillian Astra
Popular multi-protocol instant messaging client.

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Paint.NET
Strong candidate as a potential substitute for Photoshop for beginner/intermediate users.

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FastStone Image Viewer
One of the best image viewer, converter & editor bundles.

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IrfanView
The Swiss Army knife of image viewers/editors. Extremely popular.

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Google Picasa
Powerful photo manager software from Google. Includes 1-click photo retouching features. Easy online photo sharing.

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GIMP
Very capable graphic editor with Photoshop-like features. Often labeled as free Photoshop alternative.

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PhotoScape
Another good free and easy-to-use photo editing application.

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foobar2000
Advanced audio player for Windows with highly customisable user interface.

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Songbird
A popular music player based on Mozilla’s code. Includes some really useful plugins.

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Audacity
Very popular open source software for recording and editing audio tracks and sounds.

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iTunes
Music player and video library organiser. Hosts the iTunes Store.

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MediaMonkey
Full-featured music player and music collection organizer.

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Winamp
Well-known, lightweight, small-footprint media player.

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CopyTrans Manager
Alternative iPod manager app. Sync and transfer music & files to iPod, iPhone, iPad.

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VLC Media Player
Extremely popular cross-platform video player that can play almost any video file. Highly recommended by many.

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Handbrake
Open source, cross-platform, video converter that can convert video files between many video formats.

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VirtualDub
Open-source and portable video editor.

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Media Player Classic
Replica of WM Player. Includes only the most basic controls but can play pretty much any video.

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Freemake
Free video converter & DVD burner that’s easy to use.

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Format Factory
Multifunctional audio and video converter. Supports MP4, AVI, WMV, FLV, SWF, RMVB and lots more.

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KMPlayer
Highly customizable, popular, multi-format video player.

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FileMenu Tools
Customize the right-click context menu of Windows Explorer. Adds lots of useful functions and utilities.

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FreeCommander
Free file browser and Windows Explorer replacement. Two-pane browsing, secure file deletion and more.

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TeraCopy
Copy and move files at maximum speed. Pause and resume file transfers.

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EASEUS Partition Master
All-in-one, easy to use disk partition manager. Create, resize and merge partitions.

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Unlocker
Can’t delete a folder or a file? Getting an error that it’s being used by another program? Unlocker can easily delete it.

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TreeSize Free
Shows you where your precious hard drive space has gone to. Easily view how much space is being used by each folder.

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DropIt
Tiny tool to automate categorizing files and folders. Drag a file on top of it and it will place it for you where you need it. Portable version available.

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Free Opener
An easy way to quickly open over 80 types of file types using one tiny program.

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LibreOffice
Microsoft Office alternative. Open source professional productivity and office suite.

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Dropbox
Must-have for everyone. Sync folder with docs and files to web or other PCs / Macs. Share documents.

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Notepad++
Popular open source text editor. Favoured by many, including programmers.

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FoxIt Reader
Really light alternative to Adobe Reader. Open PDF files.

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doPDF
Easily convert documents and pictures to PDF files from any Windows program with two clicks.

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PDF Xchange viewer
Desktop and portable PDF viewer. Lightweight and fast.

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Nitro PDF Reader
Read PDFs, create PDFs. Extract content, annotate and fill PDF forms.

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OpenOffice
Another popular free alternative to Microsoft Office.

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PDFTK Builder
Free graphical interface version of PDFTK. Merge, split, decrypt, encrypt, watermark PDF files.

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VIM Text Editor
Highly configurable text editor.

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PDFsam
Easily split and merge PDF files.

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Fences
Provides rectangular containers for your desktop to visually organize your icons. Very handy!

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Rainlendar
Very easy to use and lightweight calendar for your Windows desktop.

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Evernote
Save your ideas on the go and instantly take notes. Access notes from anywhere. Highly recommended!

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VirtuaWin
Gives you multiple virtual desktops to organize your workflow. Highly customizable.

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Launchy
A powerful keystroke based program launcher that lets you open program and files really quickly.

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Send to Toys
Enhances the right-click ‘Send To’ system menu. Personalise and configure the Send To menu content.

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Dexpot
Create virtual desktops to separate different running apps and Windows. Comparable to Spaces on Mac OS X.

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Q-Dir
Free multi-pane file manager to save you time. Portable version available.

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ClipX
Tiny, free clipboard history manager. Access up to 1024 items in your clipboard’s history.

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Bruce’s Unusual Typing Wizard
Gain typing speed and accuracy with its unique touch-typing teaching program.

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SendToSendTo
Easily add new entries to the right-click “Send To” menu.

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7-zip
Takes care of most of your archive extracting/compression needs. Supports ZIP, RAR and many others formats.

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Universal Extractor
With over 50 supported file formats, Universal Extractor is superb.

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IZArc
One archive utility to rule them all. Supports almost all formats.

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ImgBurn
CD/DVD/HD-DVD/Blu-ray burning tool. Also, lets you easily create image files from CDs and DVDs.

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CDBurnerXP
The most popular free alternative to Nero Burning ROM. Burn CDs, DVDs, Blu-Ray and HD-DVDs

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bitRipper
Back-up your DVDs as AVI files or MPEG to your hard drive. Excellent backup tool for DVDs.

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CDex
Open-source digital audio CD extractor. Saves CD tracks as MP3′s.

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DuBaron CD2ISO
A great tool to extract ISO images from CDs or DVDs. Very simple and easy to use.

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Virtual CloneDrive
Mount a virtual drive to open and playback ISO image files (CD/DVD images).

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DVDShrink
The easiest and one of the better free DVD ripping and backup tools.

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Exact Audio Copy
The most accurate and error-free audio CD extractor.
Can extract MP3s from a CD.

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DVD Flick
Easy-to-use DVD creation software. Allows adding subtitles and making DVD menus as well.

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WinCDEmu
Mount ISO, CUE, NRG, MDS/MDF, CCD, IMG images by simply clicking on them in Windows Explorer.

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uTorrent
Speedy, efficient, and free. The most popular BitTorrent client.

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Deluge
An awesome but unappreciated cross-platform BitTorrent client.

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YouTube Downloader HD
Downloads YouTube videos with just a few clicks of the mouse button.

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PeerBlock
Control/block your PC’s communication with ad or spyware servers. Secures P2P activities.

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Free Download Manager
Open source download accelerator and manager. Increase download speeds and resume broken downloads.

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Jdownloader
The most popular downlaod manager. Quickly and efficiently download files from sites such as Rapidshare, Megaupload and many others.

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LastPass
Secure plugin to store and synchronise login passwords across browsers. Comes auto-login and form filler.

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TrueCrypt
Free open-source, cross-platform disk and data encryption tool. Encrypt and hide sensitive files.

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TeamViewer
Request remote technical assistance. Connect to remote computer. Zero setup required.

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PortableApps Suite
A collection of useful portable apps that can be stored on USB stick. Carry the apps with you wherever you go on a thumbdrive.

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Sticky Password
Free password and identity manager. Browser add-on for automatic login and form-filling.

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KeePass
Free, open source, lightweight and easy-to-use password manager.

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LiberKey
Suite of over 300 free useful software apps that you can carry with you wherever you go.

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Hiren’s BootCD
All-in-one bootable CD providing an alternate boot environment to troubleshoot Windows problems.

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Eraser
Advanced security tool to completely remove sensitive data from your hard drive.

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iPrint
Print multiple pages on each sheet of paper, delete unwanted pages. Lowers printing costs.

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Antirun
Protects your PC by blocking viruses and malware from infected USB thumbsticks and flash drives.

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