AVG

AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition is a free anti-virus protection tool developed by GRISOFT for home use. Join the millions of satisfied customers worldwide who have downloaded the software and now enjoy the benefits of AVG Anti-Virus Free.

AntiVir

Avira AntiVir PersonalEdition Classic reliably protects your private computer against dangerous viruses, worms, Trojans and costly dialers.
More than 15 million users worldwide trust in the reliable protection of Avira AntiVir. And this is no coincidence at all: Avira has gained several awards. The product combines first-class detection rates and ease of use with a top performance that protects your computer safely and hardly burdens older PCs.

Avast! Home Edition

Avast! Home Edition is a full-featured antivirus package designed exclusively for home, non-commercial users. Both of these conditions should be met! Institutions (even non-commercial ones) are not allowed to use avast! Home Edition.

Bit Defender

BitDefender free edition is a fully featured virus scanner and removal tool featuring built in automatic updates and virus scan scheduling. The centralized management console allows protection options configuration for all BitDefender modules; Virus Scan, Scheduler, Live! Update, Quarantine, Reports.

Note: The site also hosts a trial version of BitDefender Pro, which is a different version of BitDefender with extra features. The trial version is limited and will display messages to this effect; make sure you use the download link to BitDefender Free Edition.

Ad-Aware SE

Ad-Aware is perhaps the most popular adware, malware, and spyware detection and removal software currently available. The software is free and regularly updated to cope with the ever expanding list of spyware programs hitting home and business computers every day.

HiJackThis

A general homepage hijackers detector and remover. Initially based on the article Hijacked!, but expanded with almost a dozen other checks against hijacker tricks. It is continually updated to detect and remove new hijacks. It does not target specific programs/URLs, just the methods used by hijackers to force you onto their sites. As a result, false positives are imminent and unless you are sure what you’re doing, you should always consult with knowledgable folks before deleting anything.

Note: Help is now available for those wishing to run HijackThis who do not necessarily have the knowledge required to sift through the logfile and identify malicious software. When you have run the program, save your log file and take it to this page for a FREE online analysis to get you headed in the right direction.

Windows Defender

Windows Defender (Beta) is a security technology that helps protect Windows users from spyware and other potentially unwanted software. Known spyware on your PC can be detected and removed. This helps reduce negative effects caused by spyware including slow PC performance, annoying pop-up ads, unwanted changes to Internet settings, and unauthorized use of your private information. Continuous protection improves Internet browsing safety by guarding over fifty (50) ways spyware can enter your PC.

Spybot Search & 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.

Sunbelt Personal Firewall

Protect yourself from hackers. Secure your PC with a 100% free firewall download. Get the full version free for 30 days. Sunbelt Personal Firewall (SPF) was called “our favorite” by PC Magazine.

The Windows Firewall (both XP and Vista) is worse than useless, it gives you a false sense of security. Why? It only filters incoming traffic. That means if malware has compromised your PC, it is able to send out all your personal info. That’s right; the Windows “firewall” does not stop that!

Zone Alarm Free

ZoneAlarm Free Firewall blocks hackers from infiltrating your home PC by hiding your computer from unsolicited network traffic. By detecting and preventing intrusions, ZoneAlarm Free Firewall keeps your PC free from viruses that slow down performance, and spyware that steals your personal information, passwords, and financial data.

Mozilla Firefox

The wait is over. Firefox empowers you to browse faster, more safely and more efficiently than with any other browser. Join more than 75 million others and make the switch today. Firefox imports your Favorites, settings and other information, so you have nothing to lose.

Opera

The most full-featured Internet power tool on the market, Opera includes pop-up blocking, tabbed browsing, integrated searches, and advanced functions like Opera’s groundbreaking E-mail program, RSS Newsfeeds and IRC chat. And because we know that our users have different needs, you can customize the look and content of your Opera browser with a few clicks of the mouse.

Maxthon

Maxthon Internet Browser software is a powerful tabbed browser with a highly customizable interface. It is a front-end to Internet Explorer browser which means that what works in the IE browser will work the same in Maxthon tabbed browser but with many additional efficient features.

Windows Live Mail

Do you know Microsoft Outlook Express or Windows Mail? Then you pretty much already know how to use Windows Live Mail. The clean design speeds you through the most common tasks, and lets you do some pretty uncommon ones, too—like sending eye-catching photo e-mail, and setting up the layout just the way you want it.

MSN Messenger

With MSN Messenger you can chat online via text, voice or even video conversation - in real time - with your friends, family or colleagues. It’s faster than e-mail, a great choice for conversations and the perfect alternative when you can’t be there in person. And, oh by the way - it’s FREE.

Skype

Skype is a simple bit of software they want to give you. It’ll let you make free calls to your friends all over the world. And they don’t want any money for it. It’s free, and easy to use.

GAIM

Gaim is a FREE multi-protocol instant messaging (IM) client for Linux, BSD, MacOS X, and Windows. It is compatible with AIM and ICQ (Oscar protocol), MSN Messenger, Yahoo!, IRC, Jabber, Gadu-Gadu, SILC, GroupWise Messenger, and Zephyr networks.

Gaim users can log in to multiple accounts on multiple IM networks simultaneously. This means that you can be chatting with friends on AOL Instant Messenger, talking to a friend on Yahoo Messenger, and sitting in an IRC channel all at the same time.

Mozilla Thunderbird

Thunderbird makes emailing safer, faster, and easier than ever before with the industry’s best implementations of features such as intelligent spam filters, built-in RSS reader, quick search, and much more. An excellent FREE email client.

Windows Media Player

Windows Media Player offers great new ways to store and enjoy all your music, video, pictures, and recorded TV. Play it, view it, and sync it to a portable device for enjoying on the go or even share with devices around your home—all from one place.

VLC

VLC Media Player - VLC (initially VideoLAN Client) is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, …) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. Put simply, this is a media player that has most of the common video codecs built in as standard, and therefore avoids the dreaded ‘Unable to find suitable video codec’ error messages.

Winamp

Winamp.com is home to the beloved Winamp Media player. This powerful little toy was the brainchild of Justin Frankel. Listen to Winamp Radio for free, FM- and CD-quality stations programmed by fellow Winamp users and professionals around the globe, plus video and audio playback for your mp3s and movies.

Quicktime

QuickTime has a legacy of supporting and developing the latest digital media standards ensuring that you can create and play back the widest range of standard formats in the industry with QuickTime.

Eraser

Eraser is a FREE secure data removal tool for Windows. It completely removes sensitive data from your hard drive by overwriting it several times with carefully selected patterns.

TrueCrypt

TrueCrypt is free open-source disk encryption software for Windows XP/2000/2003 and Linux.

• Creates a virtual encrypted disk within a file and mounts it as a real disk.
• Encrypts an entire hard disk partition or a storage device such as USB flash drive.
• Encryption is automatic, real-time (on-the-fly) and transparent.
• Provides two levels of plausible deniability, in case an adversary forces you to reveal the password.

Darik’s Boot and Nuke

Darik’s Boot and Nuke ("DBAN") is a self-contained boot floppy that securely wipes the hard disks of most computers. DBAN will automatically and completely delete the contents of any hard disk that it can detect, which makes it an appropriate utility for bulk or emergency data destruction.

Defraggler

Defraggler differs from other defrag tools on the market, 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. No more struggling with the Windows defragmentation tool!!

Add/Remove Pro

Add/Remove Pro displays the entries in the Add/Remove Programs list of Windows Registry, checks if each is valid, and uninstalls the selected program or removes the entry from the list.

CCleaner

CCleaner is a freeware system optimization and privacy 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. But the best part is that it’s fast (normally taking less that a second to run) and contains NO Spyware or Adware!

ATI Video Card Drivers

ATI - Since its inception, ATI has been recognized as a world leader in the supply of graphics, video and multimedia products. It is recommended that users of ATI graphics cards check the site regularly for new video card drivers, as updates are released frequently to keep the video cards up to scratch for all the latest software applications and games.

nVidia Video Card Drivers

NVidia - nVidia Delivers a proven record of compatibility, reliability, and stability with the widest range of games and applications. It is recommended that users of nVidia graphics cards check the site regularly for new video card drivers, as updates are released frequently to keep the video cards up to scratch for all the latest software applications and games.

Open Office

Office Suite

OpenOffice.org the product is a multi-platform office productivity suite. It includes the key desktop applications, such as a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation manager, and drawing program, with a user interface and feature set similar to other office suites. Sophisticated and flexible, OpenOffice.org also works transparently with a variety of file formats, including those of Microsoft Office.

Foxit PDF Reader

PDF Reader

Foxit Reader 2.0 is a free PDF document viewer and printer, with incredible small size (only 1.5 M download size), breezing-fast launch speed and amazingly rich feature set. Foxit Reader 2.0 supports Windows 98/Me/2000/XP/2003. Its core function is compatible with PDF Standard 1.6.

Gimp

Graphic Design

GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It works on many operating systems, in many languages. Available for Windows, Macintosh and Linux.

Bulk Rename Utility

File System Utility

Bulk Rename Utility is a utility which allows you to easily rename files and directories, based upon extemely flexible criteria. Add date-stamps, replace numbers, insert strings, convert case, add auto-numbers, process folders and subfolders….plus loads more!.