VLC Media Player
VLC is a free and open source cross-platform multimedia player and framework that plays most multimedia files as well as DVD, Audio CD, VCD, and various streaming protocols. Simple, Powerful and Fast It plays everything, Files, Discs (DVD, CD, VCD), Devices and Streams. It plays most codecs with no codec packs needed. It's completely Free, 0 Spyware, Ads or User Tracking. Best Mpeg2, x264, DivX player. Works on most platforms: Windows, Linux, Mac, Unix... Media Converter and Streamer.
Visit the VLC Download Page Here
FileZilla FTP Client
FileZilla Client is a fast and reliable cross-platform FTP, FTPS and SFTP client with lots of useful features and an intuitive graphical user interface. Features - Supports FTP, FTP over SSL/TLS (FTPS) and SSH File Transfer Protocol (SFTP), Cross-platform. Runs on Windows, Linux, *BSD, Mac OS X and more, IPv6 support, Supports resume and transfer of large files over 4GB Tabbed user interface, Powerful Site Manager and transfer queue, Bookmarks, Drag & drop support, Configurable transfer speed limits, Filename filters, Directory comparison, Network configuration wizard, Remote file editing, Keep-alive, HTTP/1.1, SOCKS5 and FTP-Proxy support, Logging to file, Synchronized directory browsing, and Remote file search.
Visit the FileZilla Project Page Here
7zip File Compression
High compression ratio in 7z format with LZMA and LZMA2 compression. Supported formats: Packing / unpacking: 7z, XZ, BZIP2, GZIP, TAR, ZIP and WIM. Unpacking only: ARJ, CAB, CHM, CPIO, CramFS, DEB, DMG, FAT, HFS, ISO, LZH, LZMA, MBR, MSI, NSIS, NTFS, RAR, RPM, SquashFS, UDF, VHD, WIM, XAR and Z. For ZIP and GZIP formats, 7-Zip provides a compression ratio that is 2-10 % better than the ratio provided by PKZip and WinZip. Strong AES-256 encryption in 7z and ZIP formats. Self-extracting capability for 7z format. Integration with Windows Shell.
Download it from the 7zip Project Page Here
Chrome Browser
...yah I realize you probably know all about this. This is a better web browser. The best as of this writing in my humble opinion. As a web designer, though, I feel obligated to give it a shout-out on this page. If you came here in Internet Explorer, you should probably make hast to the download page for Chrome and replace that peice of junk with a more standards friendly program. From Google: " The web browser is arguably the most important piece of software on your computer. You spend much of your time online inside a browser: When you search, chat, email, shop, bank, read the news, and watch videos online, you often do all this using a browser. "
Go here and download this immediately if you have not already done so.
FireFox Browser
If thinking about computers makes you dizzy with confusion, I honestly don't know how you even found this page... nevertheless, FireFox is a pretty damn good browser too. The Firefox browser is created by Mozilla, a non-profit organization whose mission is to promote openness, innovation and opportunity on the Web. " The common thread that runs throughout Mozilla is our belief that, as the most significant social and technological development of our time, the Internet is a public resource that must remain open and accessible to all. With this in mind, our efforts are ultimately driven by our mission of encouraging choice, innovation and opportunity online."
You can Download FireFox Here
Thunderbird E-Mail Client
To be fair, Microsoft has a better e-mail client in Microsoft Outlook 2010. That said, Mozilla Thunderbird is open-source and a very close second... and unlike Outlook it won't cost you one red cent. Under the Help Menu, you can find the Migration Assistant to help you set up Thunderbird the way you want it. If you liked the old toolbar from Thunderbird 2, you can quickly make that change with the Migration Assistant. You can also install add-ons from the Migration Assistant like Advanced Folder Columns and Compact Header for your message display window. You no longer need to visit the add-ons Web site - instead simply fire up the Add-ons Manager.
Download Page is Here
OpenOffice Productivity Suite
Here's another example of great opens source software that's still in second place... it is very good though. The only reason Microsoft is better: It's a little easier to use in my opinion. That said, you can do everything in OpenOffice you can do in the MS varient... and again... it's free. OpenOffice is for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. It is available in many languages and works on all common computers. It stores all your data in an international open standard format and can also read and write files from other common office software packages. It can be downloaded and used completely free of charge for any purpose.
You can Download the Entire Suite Here
Pidgin Universal Chat Client
Pidgin is a chat program which lets you log in to accounts on multiple chat networks simultaneously. This means that you can be chatting with friends on MSN, talking to a friend on Google Talk, and sitting in a Yahoo chat room all at the same time. Pidgin is compatible with the following chat networks out of the box: AIM, ICQ, Google Talk, Jabber/XMPP, MSN Messenger, Yahoo!, Bonjour, Gadu-Gadu, IRC, Novell GroupWise Messenger, QQ, Lotus Sametime, SILC, SIMPLE, MXit, MySpaceIM, and Zephyr. It can support many more with plugins. Pidgin runs on Windows, Linux, and other UNIX operating systems. Looking for Pidgin for OS X?
Get it Here
Notepad++
Notepad++ is a free (as in "free speech" and also as in "free beer") source code editor and Notepad replacement that supports several languages. Running in the MS Windows environment, its use is governed by GPL License. Based on the powerful editing component Scintilla, Notepad++ is written in C++ and uses pure Win32 API and STL which ensures a higher execution speed and smaller program size. By optimizing as many routines as possible without losing user friendliness, Notepad++ is trying to reduce the world carbon dioxide emissions. When using less CPU power, the PC can throttle down and reduce power consumption, resulting in a greener environment.
Download Notepad++ Here
LAME MP3 Encoder
LAME development started around mid-1998. Mike Cheng started it as a patch against the 8hz-MP3 encoder sources. After some quality concerns raised by others, he decided to start from scratch based on the dist10 sources. His goal was only to speed up the dist10 sources, and leave its quality untouched. That branch (a patch against the reference sources) became Lame 2.0, and only on Lame 3.81 did we replaced of all dist10 code, making LAME no more only a patch. Today, LAME is considered the best MP3 encoder at mid-high bitrates and at VBR, mostly thanks to the dedicated work of its developers and the open source licensing model that allowed the project to tap into engineering resources from all around the world. Both quality and speed improvements are still happening, probably making LAME the only MP3 encoder still being actively developed.
Download the Latest LAME Version Here
FLAC Lossless Audio Codec
FLAC stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec, an audio format similar to MP3, but lossless, meaning that audio is compressed in FLAC without any loss in quality. This is similar to how Zip works, except with FLAC you will get much better compression because it is designed specifically for audio, and you can play back compressed FLAC files in your favorite player just like you would an MP3 file. FLAC stands out as the fastest and most widely supported lossless audio codec, and the only one that at once is non-proprietary, is unencumbered by patents, has an open-source reference implementation, has a well documented format and API, and has several other independent implementations.
Download FLAC here
µTorrent BitTorrent Client
µTorrent is a natural evolution of the classic “tiny-but-mighty” vision. While the interface has been polished and the overall size remains smaller than your average Facebook pic, µTorrent is now packed with some insanely powerful features. Remember: Always force encryption.
Download it Here
Eraser Data Overwiting
Eraser is an advanced security tool for Windows which allows you to completely remove sensitive data from your hard drive by overwriting it several times with carefully selected patterns. Eraser is currently supported under Windows XP (with Service Pack 3), Windows Server 2003 (with Service Pack 2), Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. Your first thought may be that when you 'delete' the file, the data is gone. Not quite, when you delete a file, the operating system does not really remove the file from the disk; it only removes the reference of the file from the file system table. The file remains on the disk until another file is created over it, and even after that, it might be possible to recover data by studying the magnetic fields on the disk platter surface. Before the file is overwritten, anyone can easily retrieve it with a disk maintenance or an undelete utility. There are several problems in secure file removal, mostly caused by the use of write cache, construction of the hard disk and the use of data encoding. These problems have been taken into consideration when Eraser was designed, and because of this intuitive design and a simple user interface, you can safely and easily erase private data from your hard drive.
You can Download it Here
