Every PC has those essential tools that are needed to either keep it running or to allow the user to do specific tasks. To go along with this, the two questions I am frequently asked are, “Can I borrow your MS Office disc?” and “What options do I have for applications that will do what I want at a low cost?”
The obvious answer to the first question is “No”, which then leads into the answer to the second question. That second answer results in many people surprised to hear that there are many options available, free. The purpose of this post is therefore a list of such applications that are free alternatives to many mainstream retail choices, so lets get started.
Open Office
For anyone who uses MS Office on a regular basis I’m sure it is no surprise that this is the most frequently sought application suite when ever I am asked for such advice. While MS Office has many great applications which do perform their particular tasks very well, it is also one of the most expensive software packages used and purchased by the general public, often very frustrating.
OpenOffice, a free MS Office alternative distributed by Sun Microsystems is an excellent productivity suite. There are five main applications in the suite comparible to those found in the more costly Microsoft package. The apps are Writer word processor, Calc spreadsheet, Impress for presentations, Draw for graphics and diagrams and Base for database tasks. Each of these applications is similar in feature set to MS Word, Excel, etc. and will open up files from their MS Office equivilants such as .doc and .xls files from Word and Excel respectively. OpenOffice will open files from MS Office apps up to Office 2003. For a Microsoft Office alternative or if you are just looking to save a bit of money, OpenOffice is definitely worth looking into.
AVG Antivirus
Often another highly sought after application is antivirus software. With the every growing threats present in today’s online world, it is critical that your PC run some sort of security application package. There are of course well known packages from companies such as Norton and McAfee but many of these are pricey and require a subscription renewal each year for an additional cost. As an alternative I give you AVG Antivirus.
AVG Antivirus is a great package for basic free virus protection for a Windows PC. While it does not contain items such as built in firewall that many of the commercial packages do, for basic antivirus protection, AVG is hard to beat. It can be scheduled to perform automatic scans at specified times, it runs in the background to consantly scan for new threats, is updated automatically on a regular basis and does not hamper system performance like many of the commercially available packages do. For free virus protection, I recommend AVG hands down.
Paint .NET
Paint .NET is a free alternative to the popular Adobe PhotoShop package. There is no doubt that PhotoShop is one of the most powerful and highly sought after packages for photo editing available. It also happens to be very expensive. Paint .NET has many of the powerful features that you’ll find in PhotoShop but at no cost. Paint .NET runs on the Microsoft .NET Framework version 2.0 which is included with Windows Vista and is downloaded as an automatic update on Windows XP.
7zip
7zip is a file compression utility similar to the popular WinZip, and the zip file management built into Windows itself. File compression offers great advantages to archiving older files or compressing large files so they may be sent via e-mail. While supporting the same .zip file format from WinZip and the Windows Zip Folders, 7zip offers higher ratios of compression and supports its own format, 7z, which can shrink files down even further than Zip, among other features.
ImgBurn
ImgBurn is a CD/DVD authoring package allowing you to record data and media to dvd or cd. Like its commercial counterparts Nero and Roxio, you can create file backups, DVD video discs, audio discs but without the cost of the retail boxes. ImgBurn is a recent discovery for me, and one I am happy I stumbled upon. Unlike Nero and Roxio software, ImgBurn has a very basic user interface that is easy to understand and use. All the options are straight forward and easy to learn. Another package I highly recomend.
Free Alternatives to Free Sofware
The previously discussed is just a handful of the free alternatives that exist for the more expensive retail packages. As you can see, there are some powerful free choices available. The same holds true for software that is already free. While you may ask, why do I need a free replacement for something I already got free, there are a few reasons. For me, the primary answer to this question is PC performance. Many applications out there now, while free, do a great job of slowing down your PC, they are just to bloated. Here I will provide a few alternatives you may or may not be familiar with.
FireFox
My first recommendation is one that anyone who spends any sort of time online is probably familiar with, at least name wise. This is the FireFox web browser. FireFox has been around for some time now and has been my primary browser of choice since its inception. While MS Internet Explorer is bundled with Windows and overall does an excellent job, I’ve always found FireFox to be a better performer. FireFox does not crash my PC as often as IE does, I find that most pages load faster, display better and there is a huge assortment of plugins available for it. With these plugins and themes you can add all sorts of functionality to the browser such as weather forcasting, time zone comparisons and all sorts of visual themes to name just a few of the thousands available.
Foxit Reader
Foxit Reader is a small utility for viewing and printing .pdf files from Adobe Acrobat. Of course Adobe provides its own free Acrobat Reader utility to view these same types of files, the latest versions have become very fat and slow, to the point where a portion of it must be loaded up when Windows first starts to enable faster loading of .pdf documents. Foxit Reader does a much better job of quickly loading up the documents for your viewing, and like Acrobat Reader, plugs right into your browser to open the document up in the same view with an option to save if desired.
CCleaner
My final recommendation is CCleaner or Crap Cleaner which is the full name. With this handy dandy tool you can keep your PC clean and running smoothly. CCleaner removes the “crap” from your PC such as temporary files, helping to free up precious hard drive space and also sports a great Windows Registry repair tool to optimize the performance of the system.
These are but a handful of the free applications that are available to make your everyday computing life easier to handle. I hope that you’ve found some useful tips here, I use almost all these applications on a daily basis and haven’t looked back since.
Until next time. 
