Recommended Applications

This article contains a list of free and/or open source applications I recommend for various tasks.  I use some of them, others come highly recommended.  This is current as of January 3, 2010.  I will periodically repost newer editions of this as needed.  Go to the next page for a full listing of applications.

Anti-Virus

AVG Free (http://free.avg.com/us-en/homepage)
A free anti-virus utility.  Once upon a time, it was the most recommended anti-virus software.

ClamWin (http://www.clamwin.com/)
I’ve never used this particular antivirus utility, but I know PortableApps adds it to some of their distributions.

Audio/Video

Itunes Library Updater (http://itlu.ownz.ch/wordpress/)
Free utility that syncs itunes libraries to a set of folders.
VLC (http://www.videolan.org/vlc/)
Free/open source media player

Disk Burning

InfraRecorder (http://infrarecorder.org/)
Great free disk burning utility.  It will burn just about anything.

File Compression

7-zip (http://www.7-zip.org/)
Free/open source file compression utility.  Supports Windows/Unix/etc formats.

Image Editing

GIMP (http://www.gimp.org/)
Free/open source image editor.  GIMP is a full-featured free alternative to Photoshop.
Infanview (http://www.irfanview.com/)
Free photo viewer/batch editor.
Picasa (http://picasa.google.com/)
Free photo library/viewer/editor by Google.

Networking/Internet

Filezilla FTP Client (http://filezilla-project.org/)
Free/open source FTP client.
Mozilla Firefox (http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/personal.html)
Free/open source Web Browser
Mozilla Thunderbird (http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/thunderbird/)
Free/open source email application.
Pidgin IM (http://www.pidgin.im/)
Free/open source instant messaging application.
Pidgin IM Facebook Plugin (http://code.google.com/p/pidgin-facebookchat/)
Free/open source Facebook plugin for Pidgin IM.
Putty (http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/)
Free Telnet/SSH client.
WinSCP (http://winscp.net/eng/index.php)
Free/open source SFTP, FTP, and SCP client.

Other Utilities

CutePDF (http://www.cutepdf.com/)
Free utility that will allow you to save anything you can print to a PDF.  Simply select CutePDF as the printer you want to use.

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