My top 25 must-have free Windows apps

I’ve been using a combination of operating systems for years now, including Windows, Mac OSX and various distros of Linux. It is no secret that I prefer Mac OSX but I recently had the need to switch back to a PC. While I won’t go into the reasons why this happened in this post, I would like to share the software I find absolutely necessary in order to make life on a Windows machine bearable. So without further ado, here we go.

1. Launchy – I’m a big fan of Quicksilver for the Mac, so one of the first things I wanted was a hotkey launcher which would work on my Windows 7 machine. Launchy is exactly that, and makes it extremely easy to launch applications quickly. I like to keep my desktop clean and uncluttered, so instead of clicking icons or going to the start bar, I just bring up Launchy, type in the name of the program, and hit enter. Done.

2. Steam – I must say that I didn’t play a lot of games on my Mac for obvious reasons, so I’ve been using Steam for quite some time. I even stick my non Steam games in my Steam interface so I have a nice list of games I can access from one central location.

3. iTunes – I’m not huge on music these days, but I do have all of mine located in my iTunes library. What I use iTunes most for is podcast subscriptions and trying out new podcasts which sound interesting.

4. Chrome – I’ve used Safari and Firefox extensively, but recently decided to go with something quicker and lighter. I love the light feel of Google’s Chrome browser and it is lightning fast. While it doesn’t have the robust addon system of Firefox and I do miss the Ubiquity addon as well as the more intuitive Awesome bar, the consolidated search/address bar of Chrome as well as its helpful New Tab view really makes up for most of that.

5. Digsby – While I do think the IM apps on Windows are a bit lacking compared to the brilliant Adium on Mac OSX, Digsby is pretty good. With support for Social Networking sites such as Facebook and Myspace, a nice popup notification and update system (with inline text input for messages) which reminds me of Growl on the Mac, and a pretty decent customization system, Digsby is coming a long way toward the high bar set by Adium.

6. Skype – Everyone knows about the voice over IP client Skype, but I must admit the Windows client is better than the Mac version. As I live in the UK while all of my family lives in the US, this becomes quite an important application for me.

7. XBMC – XBMC is similar to Plex or other similar systems. It is essentially a home entertainment program for your computer. You can specify a source for movies, music or TV shows as well as popular sites and the software searches for updates and keeps records in the database. It’s a full screen app which is built for sitting back and watching your favorite TV and film. It’s definitely a must for digital age video junkies like myself.

8. VLC Media Player – VLC is not as beautiful as XBMC, but it is quicker and runs most video and audio formats. If you need to play something quickly and without any fuss, this is your app.

9. Evernote – Evernote is like a notebook for your life. You can create notes, clip webpages, take photos, and shove it all in. You can tag your entries and even photographs have text recognition. The idea here is the brain dump. Shove it all in and search for it later so you don’t have to waste energy trying to remember. With clients for phones as well, it becomes quite a helpful tool.

10. Dropbox – Dropbox is what the name says. It just appears as a local folder on your machine, but it synchronizes whatever you shove in it up to a server and then back down to whichever machine you log into with your dropbox account. So if I want to have the same file on all of my machines, I just save it in my dropbox and every time I edit it, the changes are replicated across all machines via the server. There is limited space with a free account, but still well worth the download.

11. 7Stacks – This is basically a copy of stacks for the Mac. If you’re a fan of the Mac feature, then you’ll like this. I especially like using it to quickly access my documents and my Dropbox folder from the Taskbar.

12. Fences – This one is probably a bit controversial, because you could claim that it makes your desktop a bit ugly. It all depends on how organized you are. Essentially, Fences is a system which groups and labels icons or folders on your desktop. At the best of times, I don’t need it because I’m too organized. At the worst of times, it enables me to organize myself quickly so that I can get some work done until I have time to sort things out properly.

13. µTorrent – A tiny torrent client, for when you want one but don’t necessarily need tons of features and a flashy interface.

14. Picasa – Without iPhoto or Aperture, I needed a way to organize my photos. Picasa fills that gap petty well.

15. OpenOffice – While I much prefer using Google Docs these days for maximum access to my work from any location, it is always good to have a solution which doesn’t require an internet connection. As it is free and works well with multiple formats, OpenOffice is really the way to go.

16. AVG Free – AVG Free is just a good Antivirus program for Windows. While not as full featured as some options for purchase, it has generally worked for my needs without any problems.

17. CCleaner – After a while, Windows machines often get bogged down with excess registry entries, etc. This is a way of cleaning up the registry.

18. Defraggler – Made by the same people who made CCleaner, Defraggler is an excellent solution for disk fragmentation. It offers a pleasing visual interface and can be scheduled to run.

19. SyncToy – SyncToy is a backup solution which offers various levels of synchronization from one disk to another, cloning changes across drives. It minimizes the need for long backups, only copying files which have changed.

20. GIMP – I don’t do a lot of drawing or photo editing, but I know that there will invariably be a need at some point. Rather than spending loads of money on something like Photoshop, you can do just as much for free with the GIMP. With a robust set of tools equal to any commercial package, with a bit of time you can find yourself just as adept at using GIMP as you ever have been with popular commercial packages.

21. FreeVPN – This is mainly a way for me to view videos on sites like Hulu from the UK. I’ve got to have access to US stuff one way or another, people. It’s an extremely easy to use piece of software. A couple of clicks and Hulu has no idea I’m viewing from the UK.

22. Filezilla – I’m a big fan of Cyberduck on the Mac but Filezilla is probably the best alternative to it on Windows. It’s just another ftp client, but it is easy to use, it works and it is free, which counts for a lot.

23. Notepad2 – Notepad2 is a robust text editor which is meant to replace Notepad on Windows. It is small, fast, and it has syntax highlighting, for anyone who occasionally works with code.

24. 7-Zip – 7-zip is something I use as an alternative to something like WinRAR, which gives me annoying prompts due to it being Shareware. 7-zip is a file archiver which supports multiple file formats and uses high compression. With options for strong encryption, shell integration and a version for use in the command line, it is a pretty nice piece of free software which will definitely come in handy sooner or later.

25. Handbrake – Handbrake is for those times when you get a video in a strange format and want to convert it. Whether you’re doing this because your media player won’t play it or because you want to stick it on a mobile device to watch on the go doesn’t really matter. Handbrake can handle it.

3 reasons to use Firefox instead of Safari

When I first got a Mac, I was all for using Safari. I liked its integration with Keychain, the way it looked and the way it operated. Those things haven’t really changed, and in fact Safari has been getting better and better the longer I’ve used a Mac. I use 1Password now to manage my identities, passwords, forms, etc. and once I switched back to Firefox for a while, I started to notice that I had begun to use it differently than I had in the past because of some of the powerful tools available. That being said, Safari isn’t so far behind. There are really only a few reasons why I continue to use Firefox instead of Safari and I thought I’d share them with you.

1. The Awesome Bar

Mozilla likes to call the location/address bar the “Awesome Bar” and I’m not really going to argue with them, because I use it constantly and I do think it’s pretty awesome. When I do happen to find myself in another browser, I tend to try to use the address bar in the same way and inevitably end up annoyed. This is generally the first feature I miss. Basically, in Firefox the bar uses your browser history, sites you may have bookmarked with tags, etc. to autocomplete addresses. This means that I can often find things incredibly quickly just by typing in a series of very vague words into the bar. For example, when I’m sweating away at my keyboard and am contemplating taking action against the heat and want to remember that site I read about homebrew air conditioning, instead of looking it up on google or searching through my bookmarks, I just type in “homebrew ac” to my Awesome Bar and hit enter, and it brings up the site I want. On a similar note, it even seems to find things that aren’t in my history, I assume by using Google. I use this often when I know something’s not going to be hard to find, for example if I wanted to look for Robin Hobb’s Wikipedia entry, I don’t have to type it out or search for it on Wikipedia. I can just type “wiki Robin Hobb” into the Awesome Bar and Firefox brings me there.

2. Add-ons

With Safari, I just don’t have this option. There isn’t a huge group of people doing awesome things to add to the functionality of Safari, but with Firefox, that is all very easily accessed. Sometimes I just like to head over to the Add-ons page and see what is new or popular to try them out, but right now I’ve got around 10 installed. Most of them are tools for web development or productivity tools, but I’ve also got a couple in there for social networking/bookmarking as well.

3. Ubiquity

Technically, Ubiquity should be considered a subset of the Add-ons section, but it is so important to the way I choose to do things that I thought it made sense to have its own description. Ubiquity is something like Quicksilver for the Mac. If you’ve ever used it, you’ll start to get an idea of what I’m talking about here. Essentially, Ubiquity is a hotkey activated tool which performs actions within the browser in a quicker, more effective way. It’s hard to describe in exact terms what Ubiquity does, because it could potentially do anything with in the browser, given the chance. You can write your own commands and UI for it, but generally the idea is the same. It pops up quick activated, and awaits your input. You can use it do update statuses on social sites, translate chunks of pages, look up maps for selected addresses, look up wikipedia entries, do searches, perform mathematical calculations, get reviews, perform browser tab actions, format text, interact with webmail and calendars, check weather, and lots of other things. It is quick, uses fairly plain intuitive language, and is under active development and continues to improve. If there is one Firefox Add-on you should install, it is this one.