Best things in life come for free. What about the best software? Personally the best software programs I have in my notebook have come for free. There are many good people out there who think amazing software programs are not only for making money but also for making this world a better place. So, they share it as Open Source. And Here, in this post, I am listing 20 best and must have free software programs for your computer. There are hundreds of great free software programs that I can list here but I will stick to the 20 best ones; the ones I myself always have in my PC. These are the software programs that I have been using for years and they have increased my efficiency and made my life easier. All these software are completely free to download and safe to use.
DropBox
Dropbox is a free Cloud Storage service. Dropbox is a must for those people who always lose their USB drives. I never needed a pen drive after installing Dropbox in my PC. It makes a special folder in your computer and whatever files and folders you save there can be accessed from any computer which is connected to internet. Not only that, those files are synced across all your portable devices like phones and tablets having android or iOS. When you sign up for dropbox you get 2GB of free storage which is enough for small Word, Excel or pdf files. You get more storage when you refer your friends to Dropbox. Students from universities can also get some extra free space. You can get Dropfox from www.dropbox.com
Kindle for PC
Kindle is one of the most popular ebook reading applications on android and apple phones and tablets. Good news is that now it’s also available for your PC. Download Kindle for PC from http://www.amazon.com
F.lux
F.lux is something that I have started using very recently. And I am loving it. If you are someone who uses computer for long hours, especially at night, you must get this little freeware. F.lux adjusts the color temperature of your display according to your location and time of the day. It’s scientifically proved that blue screen light affects your eyes badly at night and can mess up with your sleeping pattern. F.lux helps your eyes by warming up the screen display temperature. Check it out and you will know the difference. Download F.lux from http://justgetflux.com/
FileZilla
When it comes to FTP( file-transfer-protocol ) program FileZilla is the most trusted name (If you have no idea about what FTP is please skip to the next software or go to Wikipedia). FileZilla is an open source software which can be used as FTP server or client. It has a very user friendly interface with drag and drop functions. The software is available for free for all major operating systems like Windows, MacOD and Linux. You can download FileZilla from http://filezilla-project.org
Evernote
Evernote is an amazing cloud based software which is great for so many things from taking notes to saving files, sounds, webpages and accessing them later on the same device or a different one. Evernote syncs your notes and other materials across all your devices. Writing and saving something in gmail draft is the old method. Use Evernote. Download it from here https://evernote.com/
Easeus Partition Manager
This is a great tool for creating, formatting and managing Hard Disk Partitions. Whether it’s your new laptop with just a single partition or your external hard drive Easeus Partition Manager makes handling your storage device partitions a piece of cake. You can download Easeus Partition Manager from http://www.partition-tool.com/
VideoPad Video Editor
It’s officially proved that Windows Movie Maker sucks! We all recognize that and that’s why we need a good video editing software that can replace the default soft crapware from Microsoft. Premium Video editing software programs like Sony Vegas Pro, Adobe Premier etc. come for a heavy price and not for novice people. VideoPad Video Editor from NCH Software is the best software I was able to find for my simple video editing needs. It’s simple, light, easy to use and fast. It does almost all video editing jobs that a normal computer user might have. You can Import images, videos and audio, cut, paste, trim the clips and make a great quality video in minutes. It doesn’t need any special skills to edit and make videos with VideoPad Editor; simple clicking and drag-dropping is all you need to know. It offers great features like video transitions, visual effects, audio recording, narration, text and subtitles, HD format video and sharing and much more. You can download VideoPar Video Editor from http://www.nchsoftware.com/videopad/
uTorrent
Who doesn’t love free stuff available for download on Internet? Great movies, music, games, software, ebooks and what not. Torrents are the best way to download and share stuff on internet. and uTorrent is the disputed king when it comes to choosing a torrent download software. You can download uTorrent from http://www.utorrent.com/
PicPick
It is one of the most useful gems that I have on my PC. PicPick is an all-in-one Design Tool, Screen Capture, Image editor, Color Picker, Pixel Ruler, Magnifier, Protractor and Paint freeware. I use PicPick as an image capturing tool. You want to capture anything on your computer as an image, PicPick will do it effortlessly for you. This is a must have tool for every computer. You can download PicPick from http://www.picpick.org
pdf995
This software adds pdf995 as a virtual printer to your computer. You want to convert any file (MS Word/Excel/Powerpoint etc.) or a webpage to pdf just go to print and select pdf995 and it will create a PDF file for you. Clean, Fast and Simple. You can download pdf995 from http://www.pdf995.com/download.html
Media Player Classic
I have used almost all major media players available on internet – windows media player, VLC, KMC, Rela player, GOM Player and i don’t remember how many more. But Media Player Classic was where all my needs ended. It is the one and only media player software you need on your PC. It plays almost all major audio and video formats. The interface is simple and clean; no bells and whistles. It just does the job the best. You can download Media Player Classic from http://mpc-hc.org/
MagicDisc
MagicDisc is a utility software which is a must have if your computer does not have a CD/DVD drive. These days most of ultrabooks and netbooks don’t have a physical CD/DVD drive. In such case MagicDisc works as a virtual CD/DVD drive for your PC. You can access any CD/DVD files and run programs, play games, or listen to music from your virtual CD-ROM. This software saved my life a number of times when I had to install a software which was in a CD/DVD image form and my notebook didn’t have a CD/DVD drive. MagicDisc can be downloaded from http://www.magiciso.com/
CPU-Z
This one is for those tech savvy users who want to know their computer really well. CPU-Z displays the specifications of your computer in great detail. Get this wonderful tool from http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/cpu-z.html
Connectify
I used this great software for around 2 years before I got a WiFi router. What Connectify does is it converts the the wired internet connection of your computer into WiFi so that any computer, phone or other device in the room room can get connected to internet through WiFi. basically it’s the software form of a WiFi router machine. It gives you option of creating a password for your WiFi Connection so that no device could connect to it without authentication. You can download Connectify from http://www.connectify.me/lite-vs-pro/
Ccleaner
CCleaner is basically a Swiss Army Knife of computer management. It keeps your clean and clutter free. It not only cleans all the junk from your browsers and other software programs but also scans your registry and fixes it. And all this is for free. I also use it for uninstalling any programs. I find it much more efficient than the default uninstaller from Windows control panel. Highly Recommended. Dowload from www.piriform.com/ccleaner
CamStudio
It is a very light screecast software that records your screen activities along with audio. You can use this program to create video tutorials or demonstration videos. It’s a free opensource programs, so it doesn’t offers a lot of features but it’s good for simple screen recording tasks.. You can download CamStudio from http://camstudio.org/
Calibre
Calibre is an open source Ebook management system as well as an ebook reader. I discovered this software 1 year ago and since then it has been my favorite. It’s a must have software for ebook users. Calibre can download books from you, get the metadata for ebooks, convert them to various formats and sync them with your phone and tablet. What else do you want from a completely free software. You can download Calibre from http://mpc-hc.org/
Audacity
Audacity meets all your audio recording and editing needs. It’s a very powerful equally suitable for not so tech savvy and professional users. With Audacity you can not only record the audio from external microphone and your sound card and internal audio but also trim and mix audio. It has all great audio effects and other features that a good digital audio editor should have. You can download Audacity from http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
IrfanView
IrfanView is probably the most popular multimedia (especially graphics) viewer software on internet. It can display almost any image format. Not only that it also offers other great features like Image editing and image capture. A must have software application for any computer. You can download IrfanView from http://www.irfanview.com/
PDF-XChange Viewer
We know Adobe Acrobat Reader is free and almost every computer on earth has it. But sometimes it doesn’t fulfill all your needs. PDF-XChange Viewer is an award winning PDF viewer application which is available for free. Its name says ‘viewer’ but it’s not just a viewer. You can create pdfs, make annotations and do a lot of changes to pdf files using this amazing software. You can get it from http://www.tracker-software.com/product/pdf-xchange-viewer
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