5 Must Have Applications for Any PC (and FREE to boot)

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Looking over some of my most commonly used applications, its clear that I use a lot of free applications.  Its amazing how many excellent tools and applications are available completely free!  So I decided to jot down 5 must have applications that I would really be lost without.

These 5 applications really should be on any PC as they are extremely good at what they do, don't take up any space and of course are completely free.  So here they are in no particular order:

  1. CCleaner  - best junk cleaner for your PC.  It still amazes me how much it finds each time it runs.No question about it, every PC needs this as it is a LOT faster than the Windows cleanup tool and finds WAY more junk.                                      
  2. AVG anti virus - I stopped using Norton a long time back as it was so slow.  AVG has worked just fine so far, though even it leaves a lot of junk on your PC, so use CCleaner (above).
  3. Google Picasa  - outstanding image viewer/organiser, with some great editing tools as well.  Nice interface, easy upload to Web Albums, and when you don't have time to open Photoshop, this is a real time saver when it comes to quick edits and uploads. The latest name tag feature is quite amazing and the first time you will sit back stunned at how it finds all the faces from your photos.  After that you simply name the faces and watch Picasa find all the pictures of that person with unbelievable accuracy. 
  4. VLC media player - plays just about anything, I never really tried any really esoteric files, but whatever I did throw at it, it handled with ease. 
  5. Tie: Adobe Acrobat Reader (or alternative) and Google Chrome/Opera - have read of better alternatives to Adobe Reader, but don't really haven any problems with it.  Anyway, you will need one PDF reader or another as sooner or later you WILL bump into a PDF file.  Love Opera have used it for sometime but nowadays using Chrome.  Both are excellent and have their own unique features. 

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