Approx 34 minutes read

Many people are unaware of fact that there are many freeware and open source tools and applications out there on internet which they can use for their day to day work without shelling out extra bucks. I have compiled a list of 100 such applications which you can use for free and they do work as good as their commercial counterpart (sometimes even better). So here we go:

Audio

  1. Audacity®: Audacity® is free, open source software for recording and editing sounds. You can use Audacity to:
    • Record live audio.
    • Convert tapes and records into digital recordings or CDs.
    • Edit Ogg Vorbis, MP3, WAV or AIFF sound files.
    • Cut, copy, splice or mix sounds together.
    • Change the speed or pitch of a recording.
    • And more! See the complete list of features.
  2. BonkEnc: BonkEnc is a free audio converter and CD ripper which integrates various popular formats and encoders. It currently supports MP3, MP4/M4A, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, AAC and Bonk files. BonkEnc makes it easy to convert your audio CDs to MP3 or Ogg Vorbis files which you can use in your hardware player or with your favorite audio software. The program supports the CDDB/freedb online CD database and CDText and automatically writes song information to ID3v2 or Vorbis comment tags.
  3. DSpeech: DSpeech is a TTS (Text To Speech) program with functionality of ASR (Automatic Speech Recognition) integrated. It is able to to read aloud the written text and choose the sentences to be pronounced based upon the vocal answers of the user. It is specifically designed to quickly and directly provide the functions and improved practical usefulness that are requested by this kind of program.
  4. Floola: Floola is an application to efficiently manage your iPod or your Motorola mobile phone (any model supporting iTunes). It's a standalone application that can be run directly from your iPod. Floola supports all common used iPod features including photos, artwork, podcasts and smart playlists! It automatically converts any incompatible audio or video file so that you can copy almost any file to it.It allows adding youtube and myspace videos with a single click. Now it even makes it possible to keep your Google calendars synched!
  5. foobar2000: foobar2000 is an advanced freeware audio player for the Windows platform. Some of the basic features include full unicode support, ReplayGain support and native support for several popular audio formats (MP3, MP4, AAC, CD Audio, WMA, Vorbis, FLAC, WavPack, WAV, AIFF, Musepack, Speex, AU, SND). Also the user interface is highly customizable and it's functionality can be extended through 3rd party plugins.
  6. LMMS: LMMS is a free cross-platform alternative to commercial programs like FL Studio®, which allow you to produce music with your computer. This includes the creation of melodies and beats, the synthesis and mixing of sounds, and arranging of samples. You can have fun with your MIDI-keyboard and much more; all in a user-friendly and modern interface.
  7. Mp3tag: Mp3tag allows to edit metadata of common audio formats where it supports ID3v1, ID3v2.3, ID3v2.4, iTunes MP4, WMA, Vorbis Comments and APE Tags. It can rename files based on the tag information, replace characters or words in tags and filenames, import/export tag information, create playlists and more. Mp3tag supports online database lookups from, e.g., Amazon, discogs, or freedb, allowing you to automatically gather proper tags and cover art for your music library.
  8. Tunatic: Ever thought 'what is this song?' Let Tunatic hear it and you will get the artist's name and the song's title within seconds. Tunatic is the very first song search engine based on sound for your computer. All you need is a microphone and Internet access.

CD-DVD

  1. CDBurnerXP: CDBurnerXP is a free application to burn CDs and DVDs, including Blu-Ray and HD-DVDs. It also includes the feature to burn and create ISOs, as well as a multilingual interface. It does not include adware or similar malicious components.
  2. UnderCoverXP: UndercoverXP is a program to easily print CD and DVD covers. It supports JPEG, GIF, PNG and BMP formats and can automatically scale front covers, back covers, front + inside, inlays, DVD Boxes, Digital Pictures and CD/DVD labels to the correct sizes. Other formats can be easily added via a graphical format editor.
  3. Virtual CloneDrive: Virtual CloneDrive works and behaves just like a physical CD/DVD drive, however it exists only virtually. Image files e.g ISO, BIN, CCD can be mounted onto a virtual drive from your hard-disk or from a network drive and used in the same manner as inserting them into a normal CD/DVD drive.

Development

  1. Aptana: The Aptana IDE is a free, open-source, cross-platform, JavaScript-focused development environment for building Ajax applications. It features code assist on JavaScript, HTML, and CSS languages, FTP/SFTP support and a JavaScript debugger to troubleshoot your code.
  2. DevC++: Bloodshed Dev-C++ is a full-featured Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for the C/C++ programming language. It uses Mingw port of GCC (GNU Compiler Collection) as it's compiler. Dev-C++ can also be used in combination with Cygwin or any other GCC based compiler.
  3. Eclipse: Eclipse is an open-source software framework written primarily in Java. In its default form it is a Java IDE, consisting of the Java Development Tools (JDT) and compiler (ECJ). Users can extend its capabilities by installing plug-ins written for the Eclipse software framework, such as development toolkits for other programming languages, and can write and contribute their own plug-in modules. Language packs are available for over a dozen languages.
  4. TortoiseSVN: TortoiseSVN is an easy-to-use SCM / source control software for Microsoft Windows and possibly the best standalone Subversion client there is. It is implemented as a Windows shell extension, which makes it integrate seamlessly into the Windows explorer. Since it's not an integration for a specific IDE you can use it with whatever development tools you like.

Education

  1. Celestia: The free space simulation that lets you explore our universe in three dimensions. Unlike most planetarium software, Celestia doesn't confine you to the surface of the Earth. You can travel throughout the solar system, to any of over 100,000 stars, or even beyond the galaxy. All movement in Celestia is seamless; the exponential zoom feature lets you explore space across a huge range of scales, from galaxy clusters down to spacecraft only a few meters across. A 'point-and-goto' interface makes it simple to navigate through the universe to the object you want to visit. Celestia is expandable. Celestia comes with a large catalog of stars, galaxies, planets, moons, asteroids, comets, and spacecraft. If that's not enough, you can download dozens of easy to install add-ons with more objects.
  2. GraphCalc: GraphCalc is an all-in-one solution to everything from everyday arithmetic to statistical analysis, from betas to Booleans, from cubes to calculus, from decimals to derivatives. GraphCalc combines all the features of a professional mathematics package with the simplicity of an easy to learn windows interface. It provides user-friendly help and tutorials to guide you through the easy and fun process of mastering GraphCalc.
  3. Periodic Tables Package: The Periodic Tables Package is an advanced suite of applications for both Windows and Linux that allow chemists and students alike to use the Periodic Table on their computers.
  4. RapidTyping: RapidTyping allows you to learn how to use your keyboard in a fun and entertaining way. It is designed to teach adults and kids to use their computer keyboard more efficiently. Learning to type is fun with the typing game included with Rapid Typing Tutor, while its extensive training statistics and customized lessons are available.
  5. Stellarium: Stellarium is a free open source planetarium for your computer. It shows a realistic sky in 3D, just like what you see with the naked eye, binoculars or a telescope. It is being used in planetarium projectors. Just set your coordinates and go.
  6. WorldWide Telescope: WorldWide Telescope (WWT) enables your computer to function as a virtual telescope, bringing together imagery from the best ground and space-based telescopes in the world. Experience narrated guided tours from astronomers and educators featuring interesting places in the sky.

File Management

  1. 7-Zip: 7-Zip is a file archiver with a high compression ratio. Packing formats supported: 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2 and TAR. Unpacking formats supported: 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2, TAR, RAR, CAB, ISO, ARJ, LZH, CHM, MSI, WIM, Z, CPIO, RPM, DEB, NSIS etc.
  2. Abakt: Abakt is a backup tool that can create normal or compressed backups in ZIP format (or 7-Zip, if installed). You can create multiple backup profiles, select files and folders to be included and apply several advanced filters based on file type, attributes, size and date. It supports command line arguments, allowing you to use in your own batch scripts.
  3. Ant Renamer: Ant Renamer is a program that makes easier the renaming of lots of files and folders by using specified settings. It supports Unicode names. Main functions are : changing extension, replacing character strings by others, inserting a character string, moving characters, deleting several characters, enumeration, name creation with mp3's Tag (ID v1.1) and much more.
  4. Defraggler: Defraggler is a file defragmentation tool. It differs from other defrag tools, by enabling you to quickly and simply defrag the files you want to, without having to process the whole drive. Simply run it, select the file and defragment in seconds.
  5. FilePro: FilePro is a disk and file manipulation utility. It generates disk treemaps for local or network volumes. You can search and locate files in treemaps by automatic zoom-in and positioning, compare snapshot against current disk state or past snapshots. Some others tools are supplied such as compare files and/or directories, duplicate files finder, etc.
  6. Q-Dir: Q-Dir is a file manager fast and easy to use with an amazing Quadro-View display. All the usual features (copy, paste, drag and drop, ...) are possible between the different windows. It can save you a lot of time.
  7. Recuva: Recuva (pronounced "recover") is a freeware Windows utility to restore files that have been accidentally deleted from your computer. This includes files emptied from the Recycle bin as well as images and other files that have been deleted by user error from digital camera memory cards or MP3 players. It will even bring back files that have been deleted by bugs, crashes and viruses!
  8. Windows Grep: The program combines the power and flexibility of traditional command line grep utilities available on DOS, UNIX and other platforms with the ease of use of Microsoft Windows. In addition to searching, Windows Grep also performs global replacing in your files, with complete safety. Windows Grep is designed for searching plain-ASCII text files, such as program source, HTML, RTF and batch files, but it can also search binary files such as word processor documents, databases, spreadsheets and executables.
  9. YoyoCut: YoyoCut makes it possible to cut out any type of file in several other smaller files. This is very useful in many cases, in particular to send one or more large files, by email. One of the forces of YoyoCut is its compatibility. You will be able to recompose files from 21 splitters softwares (HJSplit, CutKiller, XtremSplit, Splitter 4, KFK, etc.).

Graphics

  1. Blender: Blender is an integrated suite of tools enabling the creation of a broad range of 3D content. Aimed world-wide at media professionals and artists, Blender can be used to create 3D visualizations, stills as well as broadcast and cinema quality video, while the incorporation of a real-time 3D engine allows for the creation of 3D interactive content for stand-alone playback.
  2. ColorPic: ColorPic is an advanced color picker utility. It supports various color models and is able to pick colors from anywhwere on your screen. Accuracy on pixel level is even made easier with the built-in screen magnifier.
  3. FotoSketcher: FotoSketcher converts your digital photos into art, automatically. If you want to turn a portrait, the photograph of your house or a beautiful landscape into a painting, a sketch or a drawing then look no further, FotoSketcher will do the job in just a few seconds. Different styles are available: pencil sketch, pen and ink drawing, various painting renderings. You can also improve your original photo with simple tools (enhance contrast, sharpen, simplify image, increase luminosity, color saturation etc).
  4. Gimp: GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed program for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It has many capabilities. It can be used as a simple paint program, an expert quality photo retouching program, an online batch processing system, a mass production image renderer, an image format converter, etc. GIMP is expandable and extensible. It is designed to be augmented with plug-ins and extensions to do just about anything. The advanced scripting interface allows everything from the simplest task to the most complex image manipulation procedures to be easily scripted.
  5. GreenFish Icon Editor Pro: Greenfish Icon Editor Pro is an easy to use tool for designing and retouching icons, cursors, animations and static images, and assembling icon libraries. It allows you to :
    • work with ICO, CUR, ANI, PNG, XPM, BMP, JPEG and GIF files
    • make animations (cursors and GIF files)
    • create and edit icon libraries and resource files
    • patch icons in executable files
    • batch convert image files to icons, or to another image format
    and much more.
  6. ImageMagick: ImageMagick is a software suite to create, edit, and compose bitmap images. It can read, convert and write images in a variety of formats (over 100) including DPX, EXR, GIF, JPEG, JPEG-2000, PDF, PhotoCD, PNG, Postscript, SVG, and TIFF. Use ImageMagick to translate, flip, mirror, rotate, scale, shear and transform images, adjust image colors, apply various special effects, or draw text, lines, polygons, ellipses and Bézier curves.
  7. Inkscape: An Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X, using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format. Inkscape supports many advanced SVG features (markers, clones, alpha blending, etc.) and great care is taken in designing a streamlined interface. It is very easy to edit nodes, perform complex path operations, trace bitmaps and much more.
  8. IrfanView: IrfanView is a user-friendly image browser, converter and editor. It has features that include image viewing, management, comparison, red-eye removal, emailing, resizing, cropping and color adjustments. It supports all major graphic formats.
  9. Paint.NET: Paint.NET is an editing software for computers that run Windows. It features an intuitive and innovative user interface with support for layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools.
  10. Picasa: Picasa is a software application for organizing and editing digital photos. Picasa has file importing and tracking features, as well as tags and collections for further sorting. It also offers several basic photo editing functions, including color enhancement, red eye reduction and cropping. Other features include slide shows, printing and image timelines. Images can also be prepared for external use, such as for e-mailing or printing, by reducing file size and setting up page layouts. There is also integration with online photo printing services.
  11. PicPick: PicPick is an all-in-one software for software developers, graphic designers and home user. It has an intuitive interface and simple, elegant operation. After starting the software, you simply select one of the tools from the PicPick Tools trayicon menu. It has several features : a powerful capture tool, image editor, color picker, color palette, pixel ruler, whiteboard and etc.
  12. PhotoFiltre: PhotoFiltre is a complete image retouching program. It allows you to do simple or advanced adjustments to an image and apply a vast range of filters on it. It is simple and intuitive to use, and has an easy learning curve. The toolbar, giving you access to the standard filters with just a few clicks, gives PhotoFiltre a robust look.

Internet

  1. Digsby: Digsby is a multiprotocol IM client that lets you chat with all your friends on AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, Google Talk, and Jabber with one simple to manage buddy list. It also acts as a email notification tool that alerts you of new email and lets you perform actions such as 'Delete' or 'Report Spam' with just one click. It is also a social networking tool that alerts you of events like new messages and gives you a live Newsfeed of what your friends are up to.
  2. Fiddler: Fiddler is a Web Debugging Proxy which logs all HTTP(S) traffic between your computer and the Internet. Fiddler allows you to inspect all HTTP(S) traffic, set breakpoints, and "fiddle" with incoming or outgoing data. Fiddler includes a powerful event-based scripting subsystem, and can be extended using any .NET language. Fiddler can debug traffic from virtually any application, including Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, and thousands more.
  3. Filezilla: Filezilla allows you to connect to an FTP distant server to download and upload files. It supports FTP, FTP over SSL/TLS (FTPS), SSH File Transfer Protocol (SFTP), IPv6, resume, transfer of large files >4GB, site manager, transfer queue, drag & drop, HTTP/1.1, SOCKS5, FTP-Proxy and more.
  4. Firefox: Firefox is a web browser that offers tabbed browsing combined with numerous handy features like popup blocking, live bookmarks (with RSS support), password manager, full zoom and more. It can be extended with hundreds of freely available plug-ins (extensions).
  5. Free Download Manager: Free Download Manager is a download accelerator and manager. It lets you download files and whole web sites from any remote server via HTTP, HTTPS and FTP. You can also use BitTorrent protocol and download video from video sites, such as Youtube, Google Video, etc. An upload manager allows to upload your files or folders easily to share them with other users.
  6. Google Chrome: Google Chrome is a web browser with a very powerful JavaScript engine, which is beneficial for Google services (Gmail, Google Docs,...).It allows you to use Web applications like Google Docs in off line mode. Several innovations are present as the management of Tabs in separate processes which avoid you to lose Tabs content in the event of a crash.
  7. hMailServer: hMailServer is a free e-mail server for Microsoft Windows. It's used by Internet service providers, companies, governments, schools and enthusiasts in all parts of the world. It supports the common e-mail protocols (IMAP, SMTP and POP3) and can easily be integrated with many existing web mail systems. It has flexible score-based spam protection and can attach to your virus scanner to scan all incoming and outgoing email.
  8. HTTrack: HTTrack allows you to download a World Wide Web site from the Internet to a local directory, building recursively all directories, getting HTML, images, and other files from the server to your computer.
  9. inSSIDer: inSSIDer is an award-winning free Wi-Fi network scanner for Windows Vista and Windows XP. It can
    • Inspect your WLAN and surrounding networks to troubleshoot competing access points.
    • Track the strength of received signal in dBm over time.
    • Filter access points in an easy to use format.
    • Highlight access points for areas with high Wi-Fi concentration.
    • Export Wi-Fi and GPS data to a KML file to view in Google Earth.
  10. Jalbum: Jalbum lets you create and share stunning customized photo albums. You can publish your albums to your own website. Also you can customize your album with many skins available.
  11. KiTTY (PuTTY): KiTTY allows you to connect to servers using protocols such as Raw, Telnet, Rlogin or SSH. It is based on PuTTY and brings numerous added features.
  12. Pidgin: Pidgin is a multi protocol instant messenger client. It connects to various networks : AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo, IRC, Jabber, Gadu-Gadu and Zephyr.
  13. Synergy: Synergy lets you easily share a single mouse and keyboard between multiple computers with different operating systems, each with its own display, without special hardware. It's intended for users with multiple computers on their desk since each system uses its own monitor(s).
  14. Thingamablog: Thingamablog is a cross-platform, standalone blogging application that makes authoring and publishing your weblogs almost effortless. Unlike most blogging solutions, Thingamablog does NOT require a third-party blogging host, a cgi/php enabled web host, or a MySQL database. In fact, all you need to setup, and manage, a blog with Thingamablog is FTP, SFTP, or network access to a web server.
  15. Thunderbird: Thunderbird is an email software that offers numerous handy features like advanced folder views, message tagging, message history navigation, phishing protection, anti-spam, add-ons manager for extensions and themes and more.
  16. Transmute: Transmute is a bookmark converter. It will help you to try out different web browsers, synchronize bookmarks between systems, organize bookmarks, convert bookmarks for use in bookmark managers, share bookmarks with others, backup your social bookmarking collection and more. Transmute can import and export bookmarks, or favorites, between the latest web browsers, including both Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox 3, Internet Explorer, Opera, Apple Safari, Chromium, Flock and Konqueror.
  17. TweetDeck: TweetDeck is your personal browser for staying in touch with what's happening now, connecting you with your contacts across Twitter, Facebook and more. TweetDeck shows you everything you want to see at once, so you can stay organised and up to date.
  18. Wamp Server: WampServer is a Windows web development environment. It allows you to create web applications with Apache, PHP and the MySQL database. It also comes with PHPMyAdmin to easily manage your databases.
  19. WinSCP: WinSCP is a SFTP and FTP client for Windows. Legacy SCP protocol is also supported. Its main function is safe copying of files between a local and a remote computer.
  20. µTorrent: µTorrent is a BitTorrent client. Most of the features present in other BitTorrent clients are present in µTorrent, including bandwidth prioritization, scheduling, RSS auto-downloading and Mainline DHT (compatible with BitComet). Additionally, it supports the Protocol Encryption joint specification (compatible with Azureus and BitComet) and peer exchange.

Office

  1. AbiWord: AbiWord is a word processing program. It is suitable for a wide variety of word processing tasks. It supports various formats: RTF, DOC (Microsoft Word compatible), HTML, ODT (OpenOffice compatible), etc.
  2. Appetizer: This is a free application launcher, or dock, for Windows. It allows organizing your shortcuts and folders into a convenient dock. The app is open source, which means that it's free and will remain so. It is entirely customizable and is available in multiple languages.
  3. Aspell: Aspell is a Free and Open Source spell checker. It can either be used as a library or as an independent spell checker. Its main feature is that it does a superior job of suggesting possible replacements for a misspelled word than just about any other spell checker out there for the English language
  4. CamStudio: CamStudio can record the screen and audio activity on your computer and create industry-standard AVI video files and using its built-in SWF Producer can turn those AVIs into lean, mean, bandwidth-friendly Streaming Flash videos (SWFs)
  5. CutePDF: CutePDF Writer (formerly CutePDF Printer) is the free version of commercial PDF creation software. CutePDF Writer installs itself as a "printer subsystem". This enables virtually any Windows applications (must be able to print) to create professional quality PDF documents - with just a push of a button!
  6. DeskHedron: DeskHedron is a tool which switch the desktop by using 3D GUI.At 3D view you can switch the desktop by mouse wheel or left and right cursor keys. DeskHedron can organize apporoximetely 9 desktops, and switch the desktop
  7. Dia: Dia allows you to draw many different kinds of diagrams. It has special objects to help you to draw entity relationship diagrams, UML diagrams, flowcharts, network diagrams, etc. It is also possible to add support for new shapes by writing simple XML files. It can load and save diagrams to a custom XML format (gzipped by default, to save space), export diagrams to EPS, SVG, XFIG, WMF and PNG, and print diagrams (including multiple pages ones).
  8. EssentialPIM: EssentialPIM is a Personal Information Manager, to keep all your information in electronic form. All your appointments, tasks, to do lists, notes, contacts and email messages are stored in a graphical and easily accessible form.
  9. Foxit Reader: Foxit Reader is a fast pdf reader allows you to view, print, export text & images and add content to PDF files.
  10. Launchy: Launchy is a free windows and linux utility designed to help you forget about your start menu, the icons on your desktop, and even your file manager. Launchy indexes the programs in your start menu and can launch your documents, project files, folders, and bookmarks with just a few keystrokes!
  11. Magic Formation: Magic Formation is a kind of Dock program. But, It appears anywhere on desktop. Just draw a circle by mouse cursor on desktop anywhere you like.
  12. Notepad++: Notepad++ is a free source code editor and Notepad replacement that supports several languages. Based on a 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.
  13. Open Office: OpenOffice is a complete suite with :
    • a word processor (Writer)
    • a spreadsheet (Calc)
    • a module to create a multimedia presentation (Impress)
    • a database manager (Base)
    • a draw module
    • module to write mathematics formula (Math).
  14. Rainlendar: Rainlendar is a feature rich calendar application that is easy to use and doesn't take much space on your desktop. The appearance can be customized with skins and you can even mix different skins together. It is possible to use Rainlendar with other calendar applications too. Rainlendar uses the standard iCalendar format to store its events and tasks so you can easily transfer them between applications. You can also subscribe to online calendars and task lists including the Google Calendar and edit your Outlook appointments directly in Rainlendar.
  15. RocketDock: RocketDock is a smoothly animated, alpha blended application launcher. It provides a nice clean interface to drop shortcuts on for easy access and organization. With each item completely customizable there is no end to what you can add and launch from the dock. With added Taskbar support, your minimized windows can appear as icons on the dock. This allows for better productivity and accessibility.
  16. SpeedCrunch: SpeedCrunch is a fast, high precision and powerful desktop calculator. Main features are :
    • history and results on a scrollable display
    • up to 50 decimal precisions
    • unlimited variable storage
    • intelligent automatic completion
    • more than 50 built-in math functions etc.
  17. VirtualWin: VirtuaWin is a virtual desktop manager for the Windows operating system (Win9x/ME/NT/Win2K/XP/Win2003/Vista). A virtual desktop manager lets you organize applications over several virtual desktops (also called 'workspaces').
  18. Wink: Wink is a Tutorial and Presentation creation software, primarily aimed at creating tutorials on how to use software (like a tutor for MS-Word/Excel etc). Using Wink you can capture screenshots, add explanations boxes, buttons, titles etc and generate a highly effective tutorial for your users.
  19. WordWeb: WordWeb is a one-click English thesaurus and dictionary for Windows that can look up words in almost any program. It works off-line, but can also look up words in web references such as the Wikipedia encyclopedia.

Security

  1. AVG Antivirus: AVG Free provides you with basic antivirus and antispyware protection for Windows and is available to download for free.
  2. Comodo Firewall: Comodo Firewall Pro introduces the next evolution in computer security: Default Deny Protection (DDP™). Its features include:
    • Easily understood and informative alerts
    • No complex configuration issues—perfect for amateur users
    • Lots of configuration options let techies configure things just as they like
    • DDP-based security keeps you informed and PCs safe
    • Quickly learns user behavior to deliver personalized protection
    • User-friendly, attractive graphical interface
  3. HashCalc: fast and easy-to-use calculator that allows to compute message digests, checksums and HMACs for files, as well as for text and hex strings. It offers a choice of 13 of the most popular hash and checksum algorithms for calculations.
  4. KeePass: KeePass is a free open source password manager, which helps you to manage your passwords in a secure way. You can put all your passwords in one database, which is locked with one master key or a key file. So you only have to remember one single master password or select the key file to unlock the whole database. The databases are encrypted using the best and most secure encryption algorithms currently known (AES and Twofish).
  5. OmZiff: Omziff is a straightforward encryption utility that uses various cryptographic algorithms to encrypt and decrypt textual files. These algorithms include: Blowfish, Cast128, Gost, IDEA, Misty1, AES/Rijndael, and Twofish. Omziff also generates random passwords, splits files, and does secure file deletion according to DOD Standards.
  6. UltraShredder: UltraShredder is a standalone, USB portable file shredder which deletes sensitive files by overwriting them with random characters, saving it to disk each time, and then bypasses the recycle bin, thus acting as your personal, portable file shredder. If the file were to be recovered by a data recovery program, they would only be able to see unintelligible characters on disk where the file used to be. The program is a great tool to destroy sensitive data, and is very small with a minute memory footprint, and makes no changes to your system whatsoever.

System Utilities

  1. CCleaner: CCleaner is a system optimization, privacy and cleaning tool. It removes unused files from your system - allowing Windows to run faster and freeing up valuable hard disk space. It also cleans traces of your online activities such as your Internet history. Additionally it contains a fully featured registry cleaner.
  2. CPU-Z: CPU-Z gathers information on some of the main devices of your system. It displays information on CPU, Mainboard and Memory.
  3. CrystalDiskInfo: CrystalDiskInfo is a HDD/SSD utility which supports S.M.A.R.T. with monitoring health status and temperature and graph of S.M.A.R.T information.
  4. Microsoft PowerToys for Windows XP: PowerToys add fun and functionality to the Windows experience. PowerToys are additional programs that developers work on after a product has been released. For options available with Power Toys, visit the website.
  5. PC Wizard: PC WIZARD is also an utility designed to analyze and benchmark your computer system. It can analyze and benchmark many kinds of hardware, such as CPU performance, Cache performance, RAM performance, Hard Disk performance, CD/DVD-ROM performance, Removable/FLASH Media performance, Video performance, MP3 compression performance.
  6. Revo Uninstaller: Revo Uninstaller helps you to uninstall software and remove unwanted programs installed on your computer even if you have problems uninstalling and cannot uninstall them from "Windows Add or Remove Programs" control panel applet. Revo Uninstaller helps you to uninstall software and remove unwanted programs installed on your computer even if you have problems uninstalling and cannot uninstall them from "Windows Add or Remove Programs" control panel applet.
  7. USB Disk Ejector: A program that allows you to quickly remove USB devices in Windows. It was originally designed to remove only USB pen drives but will now eject any USB device. It can be run as a non-visual command line program or a normal gui program.
  8. WinCalendarTime: WinCalendarTime replaces the standard Windows clock with an enhanced clock, if you click on it a calendar is displayed.
  9. Wise Registry Cleaner: Wise Registry Cleaner free is a powerful free registry cleaner and registry optimizer, it speeds up your PC by cleaning your Windows Registry. The PRO version help you improve your PC's performance by optimize your Registry, and it's so easy, you only need make a few clicks.

Video

  1. GordianKnot: Gordian Knot started out as a simple bitrate calculator for DivX encoding but has evolved to become an integrated package or tool for the entire process of DivX/XviD encoding.
  2. K-Lite Codec Pack: K-Lite Codec Pack is a collection of codecs and related tools. Codecs are required to encode and/or decode (play) audio and video. The K-Lite Codec Pack is designed as a user-friendly solution for playing all your movie files. With the K-Lite Codec Pack you should be able to play 99% of all the movies that you download from the internet.
  3. VLC Media Player: VLC media player is a highly portable multimedia player and multimedia framework capable of reading most audio and video formats (MPEG-2, MPEG-4, H.264, DivX, MPEG-1, mp3, ogg, aac ...) as well as DVDs, Audio CDs VCDs, and various streaming protocols.
  4. Wimpy FLV Player: Wimpy FLV Player is a standalone Flash Video FLV player which will allow you to watch your FLV and SWF videos from your desktop.

Well this completes the list of 100. But there are many more great free applications out there which I'm not aware of. Please feel free to add those applications to this list.