The Best Free Software Downloads for Windows

I don't sit at home crunching numbers on spreadsheets or making slide presentations.  At most I do an occasional letter or make a simple spreadsheet to keep track of finances.  Instead of going out and spending hundreds on Microsoft Office just download OpenOffice for free, it does the same thing at a great price!

If you have lots of photos on your PC, and you just throw them into your 'Pictures' directory and have to scan through non-descript file names all the time just download Picasa 3, it's made by google and allows you to organize your photo albums easily and cheaply.

A great alternative to Adobe Acrobat Reader is Foxit, This incredible program opens quicker, takes up way less memory and is free.  It allows you to do everything that Acrobat does including PRINT PDF files.  Ditch Acrobat and get this program, you'll be happy you did.

If you are running multiple chat programs like ICQ, AIM, Yahoo, MSN and so on.  Download Pidgin, this great frontend chat interface logs into all your chat interfaces with one, lightweight, ad free interface. 

Internet explorer is a bloated interface that can, at time, be annoyingly slow not to mention it being a prime target for hijackers.  Try Firefox, it's free and, it happens to be a wonderful browser. 

If you have a laptop with one of those annoying touchpads get Launchy, it's a mouse free program launching tool.  This really does make a difference when I use my laptop, give it a try.

Anti Virus programs can be bloated, slow, and, after their yearly fees quite expensive.  For a great, free, constantly updated anti virus program try AVGfree, it's a powerful AV with features just like the big boys without the cost.

Computer running slow?  Defrag your drive, or, better yet, Defraggle it.  Defraggler is a free hard drive defragging tool with way more features than the built in windows one.   

For my full list of 100's of downloadable free windows programs, go to TheCheapBastid.