Believe it or not, there is a wide variety of high quality software for Microsoft Windows that is free. This resource represents a collection of freeware that meets our expectations for what freeware should be: stable, free of malware, reasonably nag-free, and cost free (at the least for personal use).

Productivity Applications

AbiWord A robust, full-featured word processor.

AceMoney Lite Get a handle on your financial life.

Cute PDF Creator You don't have to spend a lot of money to make a PDF version of your documents.

Foxit Reader (for PDFs) A very fast reader for Portable Document Format (PDF) files.

FreeCalc A great Calculator replacement.

Microsoft Office Accounting Express Business-oriented accounting solution, albeit on the light side.

OpenOffice.org This suite is best for your utilitarian office productivity needs.

OpenProj It's almost as polished and just as functional as MS Project.

Thunderbird With a few add-ins, Thunderbird can be as useful as Outlook.

Wink Create interactive visual tutorials.

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Utilities

7-Zip More functionality for free...

Ant Renamer Rename a batch of files easily, even using file dates, ID tags, or EXIF data.

Auslogics Disk Defrag Another solid disk defrag utility.

Auslogics Registry Defrag Keep your Windows Registry small and efficient.

Autoruns Find out what's really starting along with Windows.

BurnAware Free Edition A sophisticated optical media creator.

Cacheman Regardless of your hardware, this utility can improve RAM performance.

CCleaner Clean up your Windows computers.

ClearType Tuner In a few steps, everything will be crisper on your LCD monitor.

CPU Wizard Very detailed system information.

CPU-Z Find out what's inside your PC case.

DeepBurner Free Simple media burning utility for data needs.

Defraggler A fantastic disk defragmentation utility.

Everything When Vista's search feature is too slow, Everything might be your savior.

Exalead one:desktop Find what you want quickly ... even Exchange email.

ExplorerXP Windows Explorer on Firefox steroids.

GPartEd A somewhat limited hard disk drive partition editor.

Launchy Faster than the command line ... and more versatile.

Network Scanner Discover the computers on your network, including their MAC addresses.

nLite Pare down XP's footprint on your computer.

PageDefrag Defragment the Windows paging file and registry hives.

PC Decrapifier Rid your new computer of crap applications (craplets).

Process Explorer Find out what's going on under the hood of your Windows PC.

Process Lasso Passive control for when an app runs amok.

QTAddressBar Get the Windows Vista address bar's functionality for Windows XP.

QTTabBar Add a tabbed interface with some other nifty enhancements.

Recuva Powerful undelete.

SyncToy Synchronize two folders the smart way.

Tweak UI This is the Leatherman of all Windows utilities.

TweakVI Tweak and tune Windows Vista.

VirtualBox Easy OS virtualization ... including your USB ports.

VistaBootPRO Get full control over Windows Vista's boot process.

vLite Pare down Windows Vista's footprint on your computer.

WinDirStat Get a whole new perspective on the files on your data drives.

WinTabber Unclutter your desktop.

X1 Enterprise Search Client A robust and complete search utility.

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Security

avast! Home Edition Competent computer security.

AVG Free Anti-Virus A solid, often-updated anti-virus sentry.

KeePass Password Safe Safely store all you usernames and passwords.

MyUSBOnly Free 2007 Effectively secure your computer's USB ports.

RootkitRevealer Learn whether the worst malware is on your computer.

SDelete Really delete your files once and for all.

Spybot Search & Destroy Malware protection.

SUPERAntiSpyware Free Edition Good security with a more elegant interface than Spybot. And it'll repair network connections, too.

ThreatFire Free Enhance your virus protection with advanced heuristics.

TrueCrypt Keep your sensitive data safe.

Tweak UAC Get rid of the annoyance in Vista, but keep the security.

ZoneAlarm Popular and powerful software firewall protection.

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Cloud Services

Gladinet Cloud Storage Access your cloud storage using Windows Explorer.

Windows Live Photo Gallery Photo management connected to the Cloud.

Windows Live SkyDrive Put your files in the cloud.

Windows Live Sync Synchronize your files across Internet-connected computers.

Windows Live Writer A rich blog editor that's friendly with competing services.

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Desktop Enhancement

Bumptop Use your Windows Desktop more like, well, a desktop.

DisplayFusion Manage wallpapers on multiple monitors and more.

gAttach Use Gmail from right within Windows instead of only locally installed email applications.

Glass CMD for Vista Get the add-on that makes CMD take on Aero sexiness.

LClock Make your Windows clock stylish.

ObjectDock Apple-ify your Windows desktop.

RocketDock An elegant application launcher.

Switcher Find your open windows very quickly.

Taskbar Shuffle Gain control of how apps line up on your taskbar and in your task tray.

TaskSwitchXP An Alt+Tab replacement offering tons of features without crawling.

Ultimate Windows Tweaker Get a handle on the Windows interface.

Vista Drive Icons Get Vista-like icons for XP's My Computer.

Visual Task Tips Get the Vista application thumbnail from XP's taskbar.

WinFlip Vista eye candy for Windows XP.

Y'z Shadow Get a configurable 3D effect in Windows XP.

Yahoo! Widgets Information right on your desktop.

yAttach Use Yahoo! Mail from right within Windows instead of only locally installed email applications.

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Graphics

Color Selector Find the real color of that screen object.

Fotosizer A full-featured image resizing utility.

Fotosizer A very flexible batch picture utility.

GIMP A full-featured image editing application with features found in Photoshop CS.

Image Renaming Rename your image files.

Paint.NET A great replacement for Windows Paint with editing features found Photoshop Elements.

Scribus Professional Desktop Publishing.

VSO Image Resizer A better Windows image resizing PowerToy.

Window Clippings Get really professional results from your screen captures (recently became shareware).

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Audio & Video

Audacity A full-featured audio editor and recorder with free MP3 support.

CamStudio Simple and powerful screen recorder.

Songbird Plays music, syncs MP3 Players, tunes Internet radio, finds music, and even browses the Web.

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Web & Internet

Core FTP LE A plain and simple FTP utility.

CraigsList Reader Custom searching for everyone's favorite online garage sale.

CrossLoop Connect to any remote computer with an Internet connection and collaborate or offer technical support.

Firefox The little browser that could ... scare Microsoft!

GPass (Global Pass) Bypass Web filtering software and encrypt your data traffic.

IE7Pro Put Internet Explorer 7 on steroids.

Inline Search for IE Get enhanced search capabilities in Internet Explorer.

McAfee SiteAdvisor Is that Web site really safe? See what SiteAdvisor thinks.

PicLens Peruse images from the Web with astounding ease.

WinSCP A handy and flexible Secure FTP client.

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Development

CSS Tab Designer Take the drudgery out of creating tabs for your Web site.

LINQPad Experiment with the new way to access data.

Notepad++ Windows Notepad on developer steroids.

SQL Server Management Studio Express Develop and tweak a database on a SQL Server.

Visual Studio Express Editions After a free download, you essentially have Visual Studio.

WordPress If you have your own Web site, then host your own blog, too!

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Screensavers

GL Warp Liquify your desktop.

Really Slick Screensavers Flat-out awesome screensavers.

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