Free Software

7-Zip
7-Zip is a powerful utility for compressing and decompressing files. Unix/Linux/Windows XP/Me/NT4/2000/98/95. Free.

Abiword
AbiWord is a light weight, stand alone word processor that can read and write a large number of document formats, including MS-Word. Due to its small size it is well suited for use on older hardware, and will run happily on a 486DX with 16MB of RAM, while still letting you edit all the relevant document formats of today. Key features include HTML export, unlimited undo and redo, support for spell checking, styles, columns, tables, images, and bulleted/numbered lists.

There are a number of optional plug-ins available, including a thesaurus, Babelfish translation interface, and spelling dictionaries in many languages. It is automatically localized in a large number of languages; just change the locale setting in your Windows control panel and AbiWord automatically appears in the language you selected. Abiword is also bidirectional, offering support for right-to-left languages. If you simply need a word processor with the most common features, rather than a full office suite, then AbiWord is a good choice. AbiWord is available on multiple platforms, including Windows, Linux, MacOSX and Unix.

Ad-Aware Personal
With the ability to scan your RAM, Registry, hard drives, and external storage devices for known data-mining, advertising, and tracking components, Ad-Aware SE easily can clean your system, allowing you to maintain a higher degree of privacy while you surf the Web.

Acrobat Reader
Adobe Acrobat Reader is the best solution for viewing, navigating, and printing PDF files. It offers a bunch of options, including a thumbnail view of each page. One of the cooler options is the ability to add movie files to a PDF document. Available for most operating systems. Free.

AntiVir Personal Edition
From Germany comes this highly effective anti-virus software. Here's what they say: detects and removes more than 50,000 viruses, always among the winners of comparison tests featured in computer journals, the resident Virus Guard serves to monitor file movements automatically, e.g. downloading of data from the internet, scanning and repair of macro viruses, protection against previously unknown macro viruses, easy operation,  Internet-Update Wizard for easy updating, protection against previously unknown boot record viruses and master boot record viruses. Windows XP/Me/NT4/2000/98/95. Free for personal use.

Avast 4 Home Edition Antivirus
Avast! 4 Home Edition is a full-featured antivirus package designed exclusively for home users and non-commercial use. Windows XP/Me/NT4/2000/98/95. Free for personal use.

AVG Free Antivirus
A powerful and user-friendly antivirus package that is free for home, non-commercial use. Windows XP/Me/NT4/2000/98/95. Free for personal use.

CadStd Lite
CadStd (pronounced "CAD Standard") is a simple and easy to use 2D computer aided design (CAD) program. Computer aided design replaced what used to be called drafting. CadStd is the result of thousands of hours of work and was written by a professional programmer and CAD user not by some committee. It is being used in several schools and universities around the world to teach their students how to use CAD. Since it is a general purpose CAD program it can be used for mechanical design, architecture, map making, wood working and many other vector oriented design projects. Windows XP/Me/NT4/2000/98/95. Free.

CoffeeCup Free HTML Editor 8.0
The Free HTML Editor is a Drag and Drop Editor with Built-In FTP ! The CoffeeCup Free HTML Editor is a drag and drop HTML Editor with Built-in FTP uploading. It has wizards for tables, frames, forms and fonts. Windows XP/Me/NT4/2000/98/95. Free.

CoffeeCup Free Image Viewer
CoffeeCup Free Image Viewer is a fast, powerful, and easy to use Image viewer and more. It has built in Email, FTP, and Zip functions that allows you to select a group of images and Email them to a friend, Upload them to your website, or create a Zip file, all from within the program. You can also browse images by folder, find images on your computer, view 35 image types by right-clicking in Windows Explorer, and make Thumbnail Web pages from any group of images, all with just one click ! Windows XP/Me/NT4/2000/98/95. Free.

CoffeeCup Free Zip Wizard
CoffeeCup Free Zip Wizard makes it easy to Zip and Unzip files. It has built-in E-mail and FTP functions, so you can Zip and send your files in one easy step. Free Zip Wizard can also run any program or setup file inside Zip files. It can also create self-extracting .exe files, and find all the Zip files on your system too. Windows XP/Me/NT4/2000/98/95. Free.

CoffeeCup Privacy Cleaner 2.0
Stop Websites and People from tracking your every Internet move. Privacy Cleaner can quickly erase your cache, cookies, history, visited Websites, typed URLs, Temp folders and more. Privacy Cleaner helps maintain your privacy by not allowing others to see which Websites you have visited or what you have done inside of Windows. It also permenantly removes any trace of what you have deleted from your hard drive. Protect your privacy and secure your computer. Privacy cleaner is simple and easy to use. In just a few small steps you can remove all traces of Internet activity from your computer and secure your files. You can also schedule it to clean your computer whenever you wish. Stop people and Websites snooping on your computer to gain your personal information now. Windows XP/Me/NT4/2000/98/95. Free.

CoffeeCup Spam Blocker 4.1
Spam Blocker works with any POP3 email account. It checks your HTML and Text email and removes spam right from the mail server so you never see it in your regular inbox. Then you can review the suspicious emails in Spam Blocker and choose to keep them or delete them forever. You can even send 'Bounce Back' messages to the spammers telling them that your email address does not exist so they remove you from their lists! Windows XP/Me/NT4/2000/98/95. Free.

CoffeeCup Free FTP 3.0
CoffeeCup Free FTP is a fast no frills FTP program that makes it easy to drag and drop files to and from your Website. It supports multiple server profiles, resumes broken uploads and downloads, and can transfer files in binary, ASCII, or auto-mode. Free FTP works with any server and is so easy to setup. Just enter your username and password and click "Connect". Free FTP remembers your server info so connecting to your site again is a snap. Windows XP/Me/NT4/2000/98/95. Free.

CoffeeCup Free DHTML Menu Builder 1.0
Create cool interactive sliding menus easily! Create professional looking DHTML (Dynamic Hyper Text Markup Language) menus for your Web site, without writing a single line of code. Windows XP/Me/NT4/2000/98/95. Free.

Gadwin PrintScreen
Capture the contents of a screen with a single keystroke. The captured screen can then be sent to the printer, or saved to disk as a file in 6 different graphics file formats (BMP, JPEG, GIF, PNG, TIFF, TGA). Gadwin PrintScreen can capture the entire Windows screen, the active window, or a specified area, when the hot key is pressed. The hot key defaults to the PrintScreen key, but users may also define other keys to initiate a capture. Windows XP/Me/NT4/2000/98/95. Free. 860kB.

GAIM Instant Messenger
Gaim is an instant messenger (IM) client. Use it to chat with others in real time using any supported network, including AIM, ICQ, MSN Messenger, Yahoo!, IRC, Jabber, Gadu-Gadu, and Zephyr. Gaim can be simultaneously connected to several networks, so if you have contacts on different networks, you can talk to them all at the same time, from one easy to use program. Gaim supports many native network features, such as file transfer, away messages, buddy icons, typing notification, and MSN window closing notifications well as many unique features. Buddy Pounce can be used to notify you when a buddy signs on, goes away or returns from idle. There are also plugins available for text replacement, extended message notification, spell checking, tabbed conversations, and more. Gaim integrates well with the Windows system tray, allowing you to work with Gaim without requiring the buddy list window to be up at all times.

GIMP
The GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software suitable for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. The GIMP was developed for Unix and Unix offspring operating systems - linux, FreeBSD etc. but is now available in a Windows version. Gimp can do what no other image creation/manipulation software can do, indeed is streets ahead of the pack, and is amazingly free. Unix/Linux/FreeBSD/Windows9x. 11.49MB.

iTunes
Apple Computer's music management software is free to use. It can rip to MP3 format and burn CDs to compatible burners. It is considered by many to be the best music management software available. Windows XP/2000/Mac OSX. Free.

Mozilla Firefox
Originally called Phoenix, Firefox is a web browser. Firefox is good; it's customizable, stable, fast and user friendly. Try it. Available for most operating systems. Free. 6.7MB.

Mozilla Thunderbird
Simple to use, powerful, and customizable, Thunderbird is a full-featured email application. Thunderbird supports IMAP and POP mail protocols, as well as HTML mail formatting. Easily import your existing email accounts and messages. Built-in RSS capabilities, powerful quick search, spell check as you type, global inbox, deleting attachments and advanced message filtering round out Thunderbird's modern feature set. Windows 95/98/NT/2000/XP, Mac OSX, Linux. Free.

MusicMatch Jukebox
Listen to audio CDs, MP3s, Internet streams, WMAs, WAV files and more. View videos and visualizations in the resizable Media Window. Create playlists with ease - just drag and drop music files from your Music Library or from any Windows Explorer window to hear your favorite music instantly. View album, song and artist information while listening. Be sure to select the basic version, which is free. Windows XP/Me/NT4/2000/98/95. Free.

NVU Web Page Editor
Nvu (pronounced en-view) is the open source world's answer to Macromedia's Dreamweaver. It is a fully featured what-you-see-is-what-you-get web page editor, enabling you to create compelling web pages without having to devote months to learning HTML. Nvu includes an integrated FTP site manager, a style sheet editor, tabbed workspaces, and all the features you've come to expect from a fully-featured web page editor. Nvu also features integrated support for HTML code validation, to help you make your HTML as clean and light-weight as possible. Because Nvu is built based on the award-winning Gecko rendering engine that also powers the Firefox web browser, every moment is a live preview: what you see is truly what you get.

Openoffice.org
OpenOffice.org components include word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, drawings, data charting, formula editing, and file conversion facilities (including those for Microsoft Office formats). Available for most operating systems. Free.

PDFCreator
Use PDFCreator to generate PDF documents directly from any Windows program. PDF (Portable Document Format) files are the de facto standard in electronic publishing, because the author can be sure that the document will look as intended on all platforms, regardless of local fonts or lack thereof. PDFs can also be generated with commercial packages, but PDFCreator is by far the easiest and cheapest option (free). Once installed, simply select 'Print' from the File menu of your word processor or drawing program, and select 'PDFCreator Printer' from the list of printers. Click 'Save' and enter a name for your PDF output file. That's it!

Pegasus Mail
A splendid free eMail client with multiple features including bulk emailing to pre-selected groups. Far superior to Outlook Express and not subject to all those pesky worms which attack Outlook and Outlook Express. Versions for a number of operating systems. Free.

Quicktime Player
QuickTime is an excellent movie viewer application that uses the latest streaming technology to access instant content on the Web. This viewer plays clips in almost every movie format, and is the only player that will work with some exclusive Apple formats (*.mov). Available for several different operating systems. Free.

Spybot Search and Destroy
Spybot - Search & Destroy can detect and remove spyware of different kinds from your computer. Spyware is a relatively new kind of threat that common anti-virus applications do not yet cover. If you see new toolbars in your Internet Explorer that you didn't intentionally install, if your browser crashes, or if you browser start page has changed without your knowing, you most probably have spyware. But even if you don't see anything, you may be infected, because more and more spyware is emerging that is silently tracking your surfing behaviour to create a marketing profile of you that will be sold to advertisement companies. Spybot-S&D is free, so there's no harm in trying to see if something snooped into your computer, too. Windows XP/Me/NT4/2000/98/95. Free.

TeeChartOffice
This is a comprehensive package for creating any type of chart. Output is in your choice of JPEG/JPG, PNG (Portable Network Graphics), GIF, BMP (Windows Bitmap), WMF/EMF (Windows Metafiles), PCX, or VML (Vector Markup Language). Windows XP/Me/NT4/2000/98/95 1.1MB. Linux 1.3MB. Free.

VicMan's Photo Editor
An image editor that is user-friendly, offering users the simplicity of image editing, high productivity and easy customizing abilities. Includes a wide range of essential features for both novice users and professional designers. Refine your digital photos, draw artwork naturally and effortlessly, and produce graphics for the Web. Windows XP/Me/NT4/2000/98. Free. 4.8MB.

VNC - Virtual Network Computing
VNC is, in essence, a remote display system which allows you to view a computing 'desktop' environment not only on the machine where it is running, but from anywhere on the Internet and from a wide variety of machine architectures. Developed and distributed by AT&T Laboratories in Cambridge (UK) and hosted by the Department of Engineering at Cambridge University. Available for several different operating systems. Free.

XnView
XnView is a utility for viewing and converting graphic files. Import 360+ graphic file formats, export 40+. Multipage TIFF, Animated GIF, Animated ICO support. Resize. Copy/Cut/Crop. Adjust brightness, contrast. Modify number of colors. Apply filters and effects blur, average, emboss, lens, wave etc.. Slide show. Picture browser. Batch convert. Thumbnail create. Screen capture. TWAIN support - Windows only. Print support Windows only. Drag & Drop support - Windows only. 36 languages support - Windows only. Windows XP/Me/NT4/2000/98/95, Linux x86, FreeBSD x86, Solaris sparc, Solaris x86, Irix mips, HP-UX, AIX. 1.79MB. Free.

Zone Alarm
One doesn't need to install expensive systems to protect your computer from invasion. ZoneAlarm includes five interlocking security services that deliver easy-to-use, comprehensive protection. Unlike any other security utility, ZoneAlarm incorporates a firewall, Application Control, an Internet Lock, and dynamically assigned Security Levels and Zones. Combined, these elements yield the strongest security possible. And it's all free for personal use. Windows. Free.

Zoner Draw 3
A complete graphic creation, manipulation, and editing application. This is an excellent product for desk top publishing and for creating internet friendly images, including vector animations. Be careful that you choose Zoner Draw 3, which is free, not version 4, that costs. Windows XP/Me/NT4/2000/98/95. Free. 8.81MB.