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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 organiser. |
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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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TagScanner A multifunction program for organizing and managing your music collection. |
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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 audi and video converter. Supports MP4, AVI, WMV, FLV, SWF, RMVB and lots more. |
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KMPlayer Highly customisable, popular, multi-format video player. |
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FileMenu Tools Customise 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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SyncToy Free application that synchronizes files and folders between locations. |
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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 customisable. |
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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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Ditto Saves each item placed on the clipboard allowing you access to any of those items at a later time. |
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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 download 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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Everything search engine Locates files and folders by name instantly. |
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Game Booster 3 Speeds up your PC for faster gaming. |
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DriverPack Solution 11 Makes the job of finding and automatically installing drivers really easy. |
Disclaimer: All applications listed were thoroughly reviewed. MakeUseOf is not responsible for any damage and/or data loss
that might result from use of any of the above mentioned applications.