The Internet was always meant to be free, I mean, apart from the common infrastructure costs, the Internet was and is still free. This fad is soon catching up in the area of software, with everyone wanting a slice of free-to-use software, available on the Internet.
Of course, a few years ago free software was frowned upon, and was said to be the forte of only cheap people who did not want to pay money for their software. However, with the herald of open source software, free software, good, workable, free software is actually a reality looming large on all those companies making millions of bucks selling software that is not something higher than substandard and something lesser than incompetent.
This list is just a ramble of a person who has been using computers since the past thirteen years (yes, I know thirteen is a unlucky number, am waiting for something wrong to happen, do not remind me of the number thirteen being unlucky).
The below list is sadly, mostly open source. This is not saying that Open Source software is bad, its just saying that apart from some companies, just that some companies yet have to hone their paid software as compared to the free software available around. Some of this software has been called Goliath’s demise, simply because of the way these nifty pieces of rascally code actually got huge companies down their knees. Here is the list.
#5: Irfan View:
Years back, when Windows 95 was not that good at handling files and folders, all of us needed an image viewer. Yes, that’s right, we actually needed a windows explorer like explorer dedicated to watching images on the desktop. Of course, ACDSEE was there and did the work pretty well. But it was not free, but was addictive. Though all of us did think that we would not want an image viewer when we have Windows 98 built in, I know many of us who went back to ACDSEE to see if the software unlocked itself automagically - it didn’t - and we found IrfanView. IrfanView had all the features one would find in ACDSEE, and most importantly, it was free. It supported the most common file extensions in the image industry, and today it supports almost all the file extensions that could be used for digital images.
The contender to this image viewer is Google Picasa, which is good in its own way, but when I last used it, the interface was a little bit cumbersome as compared to IrfanView.
#4: AVG Antivirus:
With the boost in the Internet, digital and online security has become more and more important. This brought about a need for antivirus. The market was soon flooded with all kinds of antivirus, spyware, malware, you name it, and they had it. AVG Antivirus (free for home use) was and still is a boon for home users. AVG did everything right with this antivirus, starting from creating software that was very low on resources, and therefore did not slow down the computer at all, as compared to the commercial anti-virus software available in the market at that point of time.
# 3: Spybot Search and Destroy:
I still remember that day when I spent around three hours to see my computer switch off, after I had given it the command to switch off. I spent an entirely sleepless night, wondering whether my hard disk crashed, or whether my motherboard just bid me goodbye. Of course, the next day I formatted the PC, and learnt about Spyware. I then went into Spyware world and downloaded Spybot Search and Destroy, my savior of the day and a very useful piece of software. Spybot Search and Destroy is once again one of those supporting software that keeps you safe from all kinds of spyware, adware and malware abuses without slowing down your computer.
A contender to Spyware Search and Destroy is ZoneAlarm, but one small hitch I faced with ZoneAlarm is that I personally took a longer time to set up the entire system, whereas the interface in Spyware was much more easier.
#2: Open Office:
Open Source had conquered all the bastions in the digital world, be it spyware, browsing, and some additional areas like image editing and such. However, word-processing was one area where Open Source lacked a good soldier, and the situation was rectified with Open Office. This suite had all the features that a paid-for word-processing suite has. It also has that magical feature of creating a PDF directly from any word-processing suite file (that’s the reason a free PDF reader didn’t make this list).
#1: Mozilla Firefox:
There was a time when Open Office was considered to at least one of these three things:
Useless.
Made only for advanced users.
Could crash my harddisk, operating system, or even hold your breath, clear off my BIOS memory.
However, Mozilla Firefox changed all that. It was a sharp contender (and some say winner) to the other browsers available in the market. How Mozilla won this war was simple: Test, Upgrade, Repeat.
Mozilla Firefox may have had the most number of upgrades in software in recent times, and this is not saying that the software was flawed, it’s just that change for the better was a perennial with the Firefox.
Mozilla Firefox also offered security that was unheard of in browsers at that time, and it became quite famous because of its free themes, add-ons and other populist features.
These software still remain the best in the market, and are now causing the average user to actually sit down and try Open Source software, more power to them.
The best place to get free software downloads is free software directories. There are a number of good free software directories on the Internet.
Of course, a few years ago free software was frowned upon, and was said to be the forte of only cheap people who did not want to pay money for their software. However, with the herald of open source software, free software, good, workable, free software is actually a reality looming large on all those companies making millions of bucks selling software that is not something higher than substandard and something lesser than incompetent.
This list is just a ramble of a person who has been using computers since the past thirteen years (yes, I know thirteen is a unlucky number, am waiting for something wrong to happen, do not remind me of the number thirteen being unlucky).
The below list is sadly, mostly open source. This is not saying that Open Source software is bad, its just saying that apart from some companies, just that some companies yet have to hone their paid software as compared to the free software available around. Some of this software has been called Goliath’s demise, simply because of the way these nifty pieces of rascally code actually got huge companies down their knees. Here is the list.
#5: Irfan View:
Years back, when Windows 95 was not that good at handling files and folders, all of us needed an image viewer. Yes, that’s right, we actually needed a windows explorer like explorer dedicated to watching images on the desktop. Of course, ACDSEE was there and did the work pretty well. But it was not free, but was addictive. Though all of us did think that we would not want an image viewer when we have Windows 98 built in, I know many of us who went back to ACDSEE to see if the software unlocked itself automagically - it didn’t - and we found IrfanView. IrfanView had all the features one would find in ACDSEE, and most importantly, it was free. It supported the most common file extensions in the image industry, and today it supports almost all the file extensions that could be used for digital images.
The contender to this image viewer is Google Picasa, which is good in its own way, but when I last used it, the interface was a little bit cumbersome as compared to IrfanView.
#4: AVG Antivirus:
With the boost in the Internet, digital and online security has become more and more important. This brought about a need for antivirus. The market was soon flooded with all kinds of antivirus, spyware, malware, you name it, and they had it. AVG Antivirus (free for home use) was and still is a boon for home users. AVG did everything right with this antivirus, starting from creating software that was very low on resources, and therefore did not slow down the computer at all, as compared to the commercial anti-virus software available in the market at that point of time.
# 3: Spybot Search and Destroy:
I still remember that day when I spent around three hours to see my computer switch off, after I had given it the command to switch off. I spent an entirely sleepless night, wondering whether my hard disk crashed, or whether my motherboard just bid me goodbye. Of course, the next day I formatted the PC, and learnt about Spyware. I then went into Spyware world and downloaded Spybot Search and Destroy, my savior of the day and a very useful piece of software. Spybot Search and Destroy is once again one of those supporting software that keeps you safe from all kinds of spyware, adware and malware abuses without slowing down your computer.
A contender to Spyware Search and Destroy is ZoneAlarm, but one small hitch I faced with ZoneAlarm is that I personally took a longer time to set up the entire system, whereas the interface in Spyware was much more easier.
#2: Open Office:
Open Source had conquered all the bastions in the digital world, be it spyware, browsing, and some additional areas like image editing and such. However, word-processing was one area where Open Source lacked a good soldier, and the situation was rectified with Open Office. This suite had all the features that a paid-for word-processing suite has. It also has that magical feature of creating a PDF directly from any word-processing suite file (that’s the reason a free PDF reader didn’t make this list).
#1: Mozilla Firefox:
There was a time when Open Office was considered to at least one of these three things:
Useless.
Made only for advanced users.
Could crash my harddisk, operating system, or even hold your breath, clear off my BIOS memory.
However, Mozilla Firefox changed all that. It was a sharp contender (and some say winner) to the other browsers available in the market. How Mozilla won this war was simple: Test, Upgrade, Repeat.
Mozilla Firefox may have had the most number of upgrades in software in recent times, and this is not saying that the software was flawed, it’s just that change for the better was a perennial with the Firefox.
Mozilla Firefox also offered security that was unheard of in browsers at that time, and it became quite famous because of its free themes, add-ons and other populist features.
These software still remain the best in the market, and are now causing the average user to actually sit down and try Open Source software, more power to them.
The best place to get free software downloads is free software directories. There are a number of good free software directories on the Internet.