Let's list your favorite FREEWARE you think will be useful for others

Ad-Aware - Scan and get rid of all that spyware 'n stuff
Audacity - Simple sound-editor with some good addons available.
Avast Antivirus - One of the better freeware anti-virus programs today.
CCleaner - The craaap-cleaner. Get rid of all that junk stored on your computer.
Comode Firewall - Probably the best firewall today.
Defraggler - Much better tool for defragging your computer than the build in ones in XP/Vista.
Filezilla - For you FTP surfers out there.
Firefox - Much better browser than Explorer. Way more secure too.
GOM Player - A mediaplayer who gives you a link to where to download the coded who's missing if it can't play the file.
JE Birthday - If you're like me and can't remember birthdays. Also tells the chinese astrology.
ManyCam - Gives you loads of fun effects to your webcam.
Miranda IM - Gather all your IM's in one program. You can skin it to look just how you like if you know just 2 things about computers. Kinda.
Paint.net - Probably the best freeware image/photo editor I've ever tried.
Screamer Radio - Plays loads of online radiostations. For all types of music.
sTabLauncher - Make a bar for all your shortcuts instead of filling your desktop.
StickyPad - Put notes on your desktop similar to yellow post-it's.
SuperAntiSpyware - Another great program for getting rid of all that spyware.
Winamp - I kinda love this music-player.

EDIT: Oh, freggin' forgot: Dungeon Runners - A really cool game.

I'm glad you put this thread together! For the last week, I've been thinking about putting together list of recommended applications. You've already listed a few of my favorites, but here are some more:

Auslogics Disk Defrag - excellent and fast defragger

Eraser - I deal with a lot of sensitive data for my clientss, so I use this excellent free security tool to securely erase anything with private data.

GIMP - feature-rich, free alternative to PhotoShop

Thunderbird - If web-based email doesn't do it for you, this is a great, free alternative to Outlook Express

Foxit Reader - excellent alternative to the Adobe Reader, opens instantly, doesn't require tons of APIs to load prior to launch, nor does it require adding an application to your startup folder in order to launch quickly. FYI, their website can be a little confusing, since they're pushing their Pro Pack (a commercial add-on to their free reader). Just go to their download page and download the free reader - don't click those stupid "get the Pro Pack free" links on the main Foxit Reader summary page (unless you actually want the Pro Pack).

IETab Extension for Firefox I use FireFox as exclusively as I can, but there are some websites that just don't work with it. For example USAirways.com works perfectly fine with Firefox until it tries to process your credit card. So, whenever I absolutely have to use IE, I do so in a tab within Firefox.

AIM Pro - AIM Pro, WTH? It's a more secure version of AIM that doesn't have all of the normal AIM crap. More importantly, it's actually maintained by WebEx and includes the ability to generate a free One-Click WebEx web conference between participants. There are a lot of web meeting/conference software applications, both commercial (which WebEx normally is) and free, most of which work very well, but I have very, very specific needs. I don't just do powerpoint presentations over web-meetings, I actually control client's PC's through this tool and do drag-and-drop report development on their machines. That means I need a very low latency connection, which this gives me for free. Plus, I use my professional email address as my buddy id - my clients can see me online and ping me whenever they need me to fix something for them. It's invaluable to the type of work I do to be able to be accessible to my clientele and to connect with them immediately to resolve their issues.

Open Office - great, free alternative to MS Office.

Altiris SVS - lets you create virtual application layers instead of having to create and load an entire virtual OS. I have several versions of Crystal Reports on my laptop, including a highly-customized OEM version for Microsoft CRM that would completely bork all other versions installed. This tool lets me have them all installed with no fear of .dll conflicts. There's also a good case study on using it for lan party games!



Edited by Ripper_McGee (07/24/08 02:40 PM)

Ah, Auslogic is great too. GIMP i don't like that much, think paint.net is better since most newbies have easier to use that.

As for Open Office, it's really great, but if one just wants a fast and great text-editor similar to Words, go for AbiWord but if you want the whole package, go for Open Office.

Skype - for phonecalls to everywhere
SpywareBlaster - stops spyware from even installing itself, works best grouped with Adaware and Avast (or similar apps)
Speedfan - monitor your case and component temperature, and tweak the fan speeds in your tower
CDBurnerXP - Like Nero but much better, and completely free
MediaMonkey- far superior to Winamp

And three bonus apps, for computer setup and maintenance:

Norton Removal Tool - does exactly what the name says and so far seems to be the only way to fully get rid of this incompetent system hog.
McAfee Removal Tool - same as above, but for McAffee
PC Decrapifier - just bought a new computer? Find yourself surfing with the speed and grace of a geriatric slug thanks to all the trialware and demos that were preinstalled on it? Decrapifier is your friend and savior.

Oh yeah, the Decrapifier is great. And Skype is awesome. Didn't include that 'cause I thought everyone know about that great swedish software already.

I never worry about decrapifier, since I almost always do a clean disk reformat and OS install whenever I get a new PC, but that's a great tool for the less technically inclined.

Decrapifier is also a great tool for anyone buying an OEM system of the disc-less kind. The ones that come with a restore partition and no installation CD, and certainly no disc with drivers...

LM, I moved from Sweden to the US, and no one in my family moved with me. If not for Skype, I'd spend all money on phone bills

it's not really freeware, it's actually browser based but
Pandora is an awesome free web music station(?) You actually select the artists you want to hear and Pandora programs your station around those. I have zero problem running it in the background while playing DR.

My Station hopefully this will take you to Bogey's station...is mainly older country...Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard, Hank Snow, Bob Wills.... on and on and on

Gary



Edited by Bogey (07/26/08 05:49 PM)

I cannot believe I forgot about Pandora! Pandora and SkullCandy have saved my sanity so many time during chat duty at work...!

While on the subject of good websites, I want to mention SpiralFrog. This is legal and free music. Free as in beer. Free as in, you pay absolutely nothing.

The DRM license will let you put your downloaded music on two different devices, and you will be asked to answer a 6-question survey every 30 days to renew said license, but that's it. The site does not spam if you ask it not to, it does not sell your email to spammers, and the .wav files sound really good on my Creative Zen Touch. And it has a wide selection of music. Check it out, if you are a music lover you will be glad you did.

Don't Know if all these count:

Hulu - Watch your favorites. -T.V, Station that requires free registration.

PCgen - don't know if the link will work. D&D Character builder.

DS clock - A nice simple clock for computers that have trouble syncing theirs.
Acronym Finder -Just had to look up QQ
NoteTab Light -A really powerful Text editor.
Dictionary.com
Home | Pidgin -A messenger client that talks across most platforms
White Pages -useful
Free Tabletop Roleplaying Games -yep
Baen -Free Current books from Baen
Internet Book of Shadows index -A bunch of religious text links.
GameFAQs -they have no Dungeon Runner FAQs. the best FAQs site
======
Ones I am not sure about
Encyclopedia.com -free Encylopedia
Wikileaks - Wikileaks -Think wikipedia from the darkside.


Will that is all I could find in my Bookmarks that hasn't already been covered.

Will repost later with links, at work right now but

HiJackthis - Nice registry program (make sure you know about the registry first, can make bad changes too if not careful)

Teracopy - Very nice substitute for Windows standard copying BS. Can increase the buffer to 20mb, allows you to queue up copying files. Does a work around of a lot of windows blocks that makes copying take forever, and should your copying error out, unlike windows where you would have to start the entire copy over, you can just skip over the error file and continue copying the remaining "good" content.

Start-up Control Panel - Gives you a much more accurate and detailed listing of your start-up applications as opposed to going through the start-up manager in windows. Can easily enable and disable start-up just by checking a box.

Ubuntu 8.04

Since my main computer broke down, I'm on Kubuntu 8.04 now. This is my first "real" (been testing before but really never taken the time to get into it) and I gotta say I really like it. I'll miss it when I get my laptop back from repairs.

I currently run Xubuntu 8.04 on an old laptop with a 1.2GHz PIII processor and 512MB of RAM, and it is blazing fast and cool.

Out of curiosity, have you checked out The Mana World (it's under Games in Add/Remove), and what did you think? I've been meaning to sit down and look closer at it but never had the time.

I've been playing with the Chrome browser for a few days and really like it:

Chrome

Since I can't play any 3D-games for a couple of weeks still, Mana World is what's kept me occupied. Found it directly the first day I found myself stuck with Kubuntu. Hehe!
It's ok I guess. No real winner but no major looser either. It's a bit weird in it's construction (having to stay IN the first town until level 25 and hardly being able to stay alive outside even then IF NOT you actually cross a bunch of areas 'cause then there's lowbie-monsters again). and quite a few bugs to work out still. There is (was?) a Casiono-bug who made some people extremely rich and people has cheated in other ways so they will reset everything in the game in a week or two. All players will be level 1 and have only the newbie-gear.

Since I'm stuck with Kubuntu for a while, I haven't been able to check it out yet but I've like what I've seen though.

For you who's interested in how it will compare to other browsers, check out this link where they compare IE 8b2, FF 3.1b and Chrome 0.2.