For open source and free softwares addicts, they are surely know what kind of softwares that can be used as the best alternative to replace the commercial softwares in the market places today. For example, it’s a wise decision if you use the Open Office in your PC rather than spending some of your bucks to buy the expensive Microsoft Office Suite (except if you want use the portable or pirated copy version).
Beside the example above, there are still more of them. Here, you can find some those great and free softwares that definitely have the functions as powerful as the paid softwares. To make it easier, I’ve divided the them into few categories based on softwares that used by PC users mostly. Full list after jump.
Security and System Tools
AVG Free Edition undoubtly is one of the popular anti-virus among many computer users. It have some practical features such as automatic and manual upodate, email scanner, and AVG Resident Shield which allows you to get protection after the files are opened or the programs are run. Beside its user friendly interface, AVG is quite promising as free anti-virus that was ever developed.
Comodo Firewall provide excellent network protection as a free personal firewall that you can download. It has a robust and a very active HIPS or application monitoring feature called “Defense+”, which matches or exceeds the security performance of pay products. he new release contains many new features while allowing experienced users to maintain absolute control over their system by controlling ports, protocols, and complete configuration command.
So, if you want a free and powerful firewall that can protecting and monitoring a whole of your computer system, I suggest you try this one.
CCleaner is a cleaning robot for your computer, which is smart enough to know which places to look for unwanted files and traces. As a free and trusted cleaner application by a huge number of PC users, you should try this one too.
Office (PDF Reader)
Foxit PDF Reader is no doubt one of the best alternative to the Adobe PDF reader. It’s much more faster and reliable for sure. There are several features that will make you completely ditch Adobe PDF reader, if you have not already done that.
Multimedia
A must have application for your PC. Since Mp3 introduced to the world, Winamp had took everybody’s heart in no time. Until today, Winamp always rewarded by mostly IT magazines as the best free media player softwares.
KMPlayer might be your best choice for media player software. There are many reasons for this but the big ones include ease of use and installation, awesome playback, and no need for extra codec packs. Originally the work of one programmer, the project is now owned by Pandora TV and continues to be developed. On a default install, it is configured to play almost any media file available without the need for additional codecs, making it easy to use for those with less experience.
Email Client & Messenger
Maintaining several email accounts in a single place always Microsoft Outlook job before Thunderbird storming it. Thunderbird can be your alternative which is as good as Outlook if not better. Thnderbird lets you manage your POP and IMAP accounts with ease. Thunderbird also allows you to extend the basic functionality by allowing you to add useful add-ons and extensions making it just too good to resist.
Digsby is not just a multi-protocol IM client, with it you can communicate with your friends over AIM, Yahoo, MSN, GTalk too without having to install separate clients, as well as check your emails from multiple providers. If that was not enough you can also use Digsby to update your social networking status in Facebook, Twitter and MySpace.
Download Manager
One of the best free download manager that I’ve ever found. This application can accelerate your downloads time with ease because it will separating your download file into few parts then downloading them simultanously. This software surely can be the best alternative rather than Internet Download Manager, which with IDM (the abbreviation of Internet Download Manager) you have to buy the license to active it.
If you are looking to download files using torrents, look no farther than µTorrent, one of the best softwares to manage torrents. Not only is it lightweight it also can be managed using the browser by accessing the µTorrent site and the best part is it runs out of the box without requiring any installations.
Compression & Backup
7Zip is one of the best open source software which allows you to manage several types of archives with simplicity and ease. 7Zip supports all the popular archive formats such as zip, rar, gzip, tar and more. It is by far a much better alternative to the dominating WinZip and WinRar softwares that require you to purchase licenses.
“Oops I deleted that important file” is a statement many users have right after using Shift + Delete option for a file.If you thought that you could never recover the deleted file you are in for a surprise. There are several softwares that will allow you to recover deleted files. Recuva is one of the best alternative that is available today, not only is it very reliable, you will not have to spend a penny for it as it is completely free.
Optical Drive Tool
At the first time I used this software, I was amazed with this application interface. Beside its user friendly interface, CDBurnerXP is the best alternative rather than using Nero or Roxio either. As might you know, with it you can burn CDs and DVDs, including Blu-Ray and HD-DVDs. It also includes the feature to burn and create ISOs, and multilanguage interface as well.
Image Viewer & Tools
You might think Irfanview come in my list. No, it almost come actually. But, what makes Xnview is slighty better than Irfanview is because it user friendly interface. So for ACDSee, XNview far better than those one, because to use Xnview you do not have spend any amount which with ACDSee, you have to dive into your pocket to buy the license.
Audio/Video Formats Converter
Honestly, I suggest you try and install this free great software in your PC. Iwisoft free video converter undoubtly is your best choice as a free and powerful audio and video converter. It has extremely clean interface and easy to use. For features, you can check in this application main website. In short, this program is an outstanding choice for most free device conversion.
Gimp is undoubtedly the best alternative available for Photoshop. Edit your images with ease without having to worry about paying a fortune for Photoshop. Gimp also can be used in conjunction with plugins bringing a host of new features to the core of software.
If GIMP is the best repacement for Adobe Photoshop, so Inkscape intend to serve as replacement for Adobe Illustrator, CorelDraw, and Xara. The user interface is fairly intuitive, if you’re familiar with comparable graphics software. The program has enough depth to make quality graphic designs comparable to what you would make using Illustrator or CorelDraw, yet the interface is simple enough for a newbie to graphic design to create an attractive layout.
Even Inkscape and GIMP are the open source softwares, they serves as formidables replacement for more complex and expensive program suites, and supports some more advanced features.
Creating 3D applications is not an easy task. But it will more harder if you spending much of dollars to get a software that allows you to create 3D animations. To reduce your pain, Blender will be your partner to handle it. What do you want to doubt about if you have a great application which can work with 3D modeling with a great interface and absolutely don’t need spend a lot of bucks to use it?
Blogging Tools
One of the best tools to manage your blogs offline, Windows Live Writer has grown to become one of the most loved applications from Microsoft. You can manage multiple weblogs and post to them with ease, save drafts online and offline, edit images, add watermarks to them and more.
In order to maintain your websites, you need one thing that can help you copy-paste files from your local computer with ease to your hosting server. FileZilla might be your best answer that can do it for you. As open source FTP client, FileZilla does the job neatly. You can upload-download files and so drag and drop your files from your local computer to the server instantly.
