A Guide to FREE Software


A FREE Operating System, Works AmazingViable Substitute to Windows

Ubuntu 8.04 (Linux Operating System) Ubuntu is an amazing operating system that is entirely free. It is based off of the Linux OS (Debian). It is extremely intuitive and all the programs with this little Ubuntu logo below come standard with the OS.

The software EVERYONE needs

Apple iTunes Everyone knows iTunes	Adobe Reader Lets you open PDFs
Ad-Aware 2007 Gets rid of ad-targeting adware	Mozilla Firefox Way better than Internet Explorer and Safari
Google Earth Really cool globe-like program	Google Picassa Good picture organizer. Can have "Web Albums" and upload and share your photos.
DivX Lets you play more video files (just in case, one day a file wont play for you)	XP Codec Pack Same story as for DivX but covers more filetypes.
WinRAR Lets you open and create all compressed files (.ZIP, .RAR, .ISO, .TAR....)	AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition The best free Anti-Virus
Spybot Search and Destroy Good spyware removal program	OpenOffice.org 'Microsoft Office' Substitute. You Can open, edit, and create Word, Powerpoint, Excel, ect. ect. For FREE!

The software EVERYONE needs (But probably already have)

Adobe Flash Player Needed for cooler websites, like YouTube	Adobe Shockwave Player Same story as for Flash Player

Software for Downloading and Chatting

FrostWire The best P2P downloading client. Similar to LimeWire, Morpheus, Aries, KaZaa, ect.	uTorrent The best Torrent client. Downlaod this, go to http://www.torrentz.com and search for what you want and it will download into this program.
eMule The best eD2k client. You can search for files directly in here, similar to FrostWire, ect. For Macs and Linux you must use http://www.amule.org	mIRC An IRC client. You can go to http://www.ircspy.com and search for what you want and it will download here
Pidgin A really cool Instant Messaging (IM) client. You can log into all of your accounts at once (AIM, Yahoo, Google Talk, MyspaceIM, ect ect.)

Some cool Multimedia Software

VideoLAN.org VLC Player A really good Media Player that can play pretty much all filetypes	Any-Video-Converter A cool program that allows you to convert from one type of video file to another. Helps for iPods and PSPs ect.

Some cool free things offered by Microsoft

Microsoft Vista Experience Pack A bunch of cool programs and games for Vista	Microsoft Vista Ink Desktop 2.0 Puts sticky notes on your desktop. More for Tablet-PCs but still useable for regular computers with Vista
Microsoft Word 2007 Add-In: Microsoft Math A cool plug-in for Word that allows you to create complex math formulas. Must have Microsoft Office 2007	Microsoft Office 2007 Save as PDF Allows you to open and save your Office (Word, Excel, Powerpoint) files into PDFs. Must have Microsoft Office 2007
Microsoft Office 2003 COMPATIBLE WITH Office 2007 You know how the Office 2007 files cant be opened in Office 2003? Microsoft came out with this patch to fix that! Its FREE

Scientific and/or Technical Software

WinSCP Allows you to connect to another computer or website and have side-by-side file browsing and transfer.	JabRef A pretty cool Reference Manager. Lets you keep up all your citations and cite while you write your papers in either Microsoft Office or even the free OpenOffice.org above. You can even search reference databases for papers.
Jalview A protein or DNA sequence editing tool	MEGA 4 A protein or DNA sequence analyzing tool
HTML-Kit HTML and website textpad

For People with Nokia Phones

Nokia Lifeblog Only for certain Nokia cell phones. Copies all of your texts, pictures, videos, multimedia texts and keeps it in a time-line. Cool program	Nokia PC Suite Only for certain Nokia cell phones. Lets you plug your phone into your computer and do cool things
Nokia Software Updater Only for certain Nokia cell phones. Updates your phone software when you plug it into your computer and use PC Suite

For the lucky Mac people...

xTorrent Integrated search makes this an awesome Bittorrent client, and makes you very happy to have a Mac.	Acquisition Possibly the best, simplest filesharing client ever written. Never be without music.
CyberDuck Cyberduck is a great, simple and very quick FTP/SFTP browser. It lets you do everything you need to, and even lets you edit text documents remotely, without the need to download them. It also takes full advantage of Apple’s Bonjour, and supports full drag and drop.	Adium Connect to multiple IM accounts simultaneously in a single app, including: AOL IM, MSN, Google Talk, YahooIM, ect. Beautiful, themable interface.
Smultron Text / html editor. Integrates with Cyberduck for editing websites	SchoolHouse Schoolhouse is perfectly suited for organizing your school life. Never miss an assignment again, and know exactly how you’re getting on in each of your subjects.
AppFresh Keeps all of your Mac applications up-to-date, automatically. Still in beta, but so necessary.	Seashore "Photoshop" your photos without buying Photoshop. 100% free and open source, based on the open source image editor "Gimp".
Burn Burns to DVD, VCD, and SVCD. Take your downloaded videos and burn them to disks you can watch on regular DVD players. For VCD and SVCD you don't even need a DVD burner. Free and open source!	Handbrake Handbrake is the One-Stop-Shop for ripping DVD’s to your Mac, to use on your iPod, Apple TV, iPhone, or pretty much anything you can think of. A lovely bit of software that nearly everyone will probably need to use at one point or another.
Joost Joost is one of the most talked about products of the year, and is one of the first products to bring IP TV to the masses. It’s still in Beta, but it’s getting better all the time! It’s very simple to use, and although the resolutions can often be fairly low, the image quality is high, and it’ll work nicely on your nice 24″ iMac! *Joost only works on Intel based Macs	Nvu Nvu is a fully featured web authoring application (WYSIWYG) similiar to something like Dreamweaver that allows you to edit HTML/CSS with no technical expertise or knowledge of either. Well sort of. Nvu is not without its caveats but it is opensourc
Perian Perian enables any OS X application that uses QuickTime to be able to play many other media types like DivX, XviD, mpeg4, AC3 audio, etc. A must download for anyone watching video on their Mac.	The Unarchiver Uncompress RAR, 7zip, tar, and bz2 files on your Mac. Many new Mac users will be puzzled the first time they download a RAR file.
Nestopia Kick it old school with this NES emulator for Mac.	iEatBrainz iEatBrainz automatically adds the right song, artist, and album info to your iTunes music. No more messy iTunes Library.
Senuti Senuti is the most effortless possible way to get all of the content off an iPod or similar device without even needing to open iTunes. If you have an iPod you need Senuti.	Buddi A personal finance and budgeting program, aimed at those who have little or no financial background.