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The Best Free Windows Applications For Daily Use

Just because they are free, doesn't mean they always have low quality. Some free applications even able to outperform their commercial competitors. In this article, we want to share list of free applications we use daily at TweakNow.

LibreOffice

LibreOffice is a free and open source cross-platform office suit. Despite its outdated user interface, LibreOffice is a very capable replacement for Microsoft Office. All you can do in Microsoft Office can be done easily in LibreOffice. To maintain compatibility, LibreOffice can open and save document in Microsoft office file format. For greater comparability, document created with LibreOffice can also be exported to PDF.

LibreOffice currently offers six feature-rich applications for all your document production and data processing needs: Writer (word processor), Calc (spreadsheet), Impress (multimedia presentations), Draw (graphics and diagrams), Math (mathematical equations) and Base (desktop database management).

Web site: http://www.libreoffice.org.




Mozilla FireFox

Mozilla FireFox is a free and open source cross-platform web browser. Small memory footprint, support for the latest web standard, fast HTML and Java script rendering engine, and hardware acceleration support are FireFox greatest features among others. Tough the best rendering Java script crown is now taken by Google Chrome. Other thing worth to note about Mozilla FireFox is that it has the largest library of add-ons.

Currently, Mozilla FireFox is the third most popular web browser behind Internet Explorer and Google Chrome.

Web site: http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new.




Microsoft Security Essentials

Microsoft Security Essentials is a free anti-virus program. This application is really what an anti-virus program should be: comes with simple user interface, fast file scanning, do not slow down computer, frequently updated virus and mall-ware database, and the best of all its cost nothing.

Web site: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/products/security-essentials.




NotePad++

NotePad++ is a free and open source text editor. If you feel notepad is too limited, then NotePad++ is what you need. This small program can be opened as fast as your good old NotePad, but with tons of extra features. Multi-tab, Syntax Highlighting, and support for Regular Expression Search/Replace are three nice feature included in this program.

Web site: http://notepad-plus-plus.org.




7-Zip

7-Zip is a free and open source file compression utility. The user interface is little bit outdated, but it is one of the best alternative to Winzip. Most common compression file formats are supported by this program and as a bonus this program also comes with its own file format, 7Z. 7Z file format is more superior than standard zip file format and its efficiency can be compared with the more popular and commercial RAR file format.

Web site: http://www.7-zip.org.




Gimp

Gimp is a free and open source cross-platform image manipulation program. It is designed with Linux in mind; hence the user interface might looks strange in Windows world. Also it still uses multiple windowing system that look rather odd for today standard. Still with all of its oddness, Gimp is the best free alternative for Adobe Photo shop. From simple photo enhancement to complex digital retouching technique can be done in Gimp.

Web site: http://www.gimp.org.




VLC Media Player

VLC Media Player is a free and open source cross-platform multimedia player. Ability to play a large number of multimedia file formats is one of the most praised features of VCL Media Player. MPEG-2, H.264, DivX, MPEG-4, WebM, and WMV are just a small list of file formats supported by VLC Media Player.

Recently major update of VLC Media Player, v2.0, was announced. The VLC Media Player 2.0 "Twoflower" brings a quite long list of improvements and new features. Highlighted improvements include faster decoding on multi-core, GPU, and mobile hardware and support for HD and 10bits. Click here to get complete list of VLC Media Player 2.0 new features and improvements.

Web site: http://www.videolan.org/vlc.




FileZilla Client

Filezilla client is a free and open source cross-platform FTP client. It is one of the best FTP client you can find today, even it can easily give commercial FTP client a run for its money. Simple user interface and support for large number of protocols are what make the program so great.

Web site: http://filezilla-project.org.




Free Download Manager (FDM)

Free Download manager (FDM) is a free and open source download accelerator. Just like any other download accelerator program, FDM main features are to increase download speed and resume broken downloads. But this application grows to be more complex over time, many new features added in each new release. Two new nice features added in the latest version are BitTorrent support and Flash video download.

Web site: http://www.freedownloadmanager.org.




VirtualBox

VirtualBox is a free and open source cross-platform virtual machine. It is the best free alternative to commercial virtual machine, such as VMWare and Parallel. Unlike its commercial competitors that have limited host support to Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, VirtualBox running on all major operating systems. VirtualBox is also known to have a far better 3D support on Linux and BSD. Unfortunately DirectX support is still in experimental stage, hence playing 3D game on Windows guest won't be as good as on VMWare.

Web site: https://www.virtualbox.org.