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Last week I got a brand spanking new computer at work. A new computer means starting over – installing my favorite apps, tweaking settings, and transferring all of my old files. As I was installing all of the programs I wanted, I got a great idea to share with you, my loyal reader, all of the great free software that I couldn't live without.

You wouldn't believe how much good, free software is out there. You can literally load your computer up with tons of useful software without paying one thin dime (and it's legal!). I'm not advocating downloading free software willy nilly. All of the free software I use and recommend work well and are completely spyware and adware-free.

Before you go out and buy expensive bloated software (or continue to put up with annoying programs on your computer by default), be sure to give all of this free software a try.

Antivirus

AVG Antivirus Free edition - I've been recommending AVG for years. Here's why I like it: it's free, unobtrusive, simple, and it protects well. Forget paying Norton or McAfee a yearly subscription and download AVG today.

Internet Browsers

Mozilla Firefox - Firefox has become so popular that Microsoft decided to upgrade Internet Explorer for fear of losing market share. Firefox is an awesome, full-featured browser. It features tabbed browsing that you have to try if you've ever been annoyed by having six IE windows open at the same time. Firefox is a small download, but you can customize the browser to your needs by installing extensions, small downloads that add extra functionality. Even better, Firefox is way more secure than IE.

Slimbrowser - Slimbrowser basically takes Internet Explorer and makes it better, way better. I've written about Slimbrowser before. It's worth its price just for the addition of tabbed browsing. Oh wait, I almost forgot, it's free.

Productivity Suite

OpenOffice.org 2.0 - A lot of people are surprised to find that their new computer doesn't come with Microsoft Office. Usually, new computers only come with the heavily-stripped-down Microsoft Works and the full version of Office costs $400. That price is absolutely outrageous. Most of us use about 10% of the features in Office. Thankfully, the good folks at OpenOffice.org have built a great Office alternative that is completely free. When OpenOffice 1.0 was released, it was applauded but not considered seriously because it lacked some major features and was slow. OpenOffice 2.0 is a huge improvement. It's fast, has just about every feature in MS Office including some it doesn't have (like conversion to PDF built-in), and it looks good. In fact, I'm writing this article on OpenOffice's Writer program. OpenOffice includes Writer (word processor), Calc (spreadsheet), Draw (vector drawing tool), Math (creates mathematical equations), Base (a database), and Impress (presentations). You wouldn't believe how full-featured and polished these programs are for being completely free.

File Browser

Xplorer2 - Windows Explorer is well, limited. Xplorer2 fills in all the gaps. It gives you two panes so that you can be at two places at the same time. You can even add tabs to each pane giving you instant access to any number of folders. It hyperlinks the entire folder path over each pane so that you can easily get to a folder with one click. No more clicking the up or back button a dozen times to get back to where you were. You might think that Windows Explorer does the job, but until you've tried Xplorer2, you really can't appreciate how useful it is.

Windows Tweaking

TweakUI - Have you ever wanted to turn off those stupid balloon tips that pop up in Windows XP? Well now you can. TweakUI is a little add-in to Windows that is brought to you by Microsoft. It allows you to customize Windows in dozens of different ways, including turning off those stupid balloon tips.

Media Players

Real and Quicktime Alternatives - You need RealPlayer and Quicktime to watch some videos on the web. Problem is, both are irritating because they sit in your system tray, continually ask you to upgrade to the paid version, and are very difficult to uninstall. The Real and Quicktime Alternatives simply play Real and Quicktime videos and nothing else. Just how they should be.

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