Computer applications are expensive and often have a lot of features that we don’t really need. On the contrary, free applications often do one specific task and are simpler to use.

There are tons of free applications available on the web. So, it is hard to find the ones that suit our needs. I have tried a lot of them before in order to find what I need. In this article, I would like to share my best 10 free applications with you. If you are satisfied by other free applications not listed below, please leave me a comment to let us know about them. Here are my best 10 free software:

• avast! 4 Home Edition www.avast.com
  It is slick and supports so-called skins, allowing users to change the appearance of the application interface. It scans files on demand and on access, including e-mail attachments. It does not have scheduling.
• EditPad Lite www.editpadpro.com
  EditPad Lite has a lot of good features that you cannot find in Notepad such as tabbed interface for editing multiple files, line numbering, auto-­indenting, and printing blocks of text.
• OpenOffice www.openoffice.org
  Microsoft Office is too expensive. Use OpenOffice instead. It includes a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation application, diagramming tool and database.
• FileZilla filezilla.sourceforge.net
  FileZilla supports Secure FTP, SSL, and other protocols. It has a tree-structured site manager that lets you store settings for multiple sites. You can set speed limits which can prevent download quotas from being triggered on networks that monitor bandwidth usage.
• Foxit Reader www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php
  Adobe Reader can slow down older computers. Foxit Reader lets you view your PDF documents without the Adobe bloat. It runs fast either as a standalone application or within your browser.
• Google Desktop desktop.google.com
  Google Desktop has a large collection of widgets for displaying weather, news, file searches, Gmail, translation services.
• GIMP www.gimp.org
  GIMP is an excellent graphics manipulation package and a good alternative to expensive Photoshop.
• Firefox www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/
  It is the award-winning Web browser from Mozilla because it is fast, secure and totally customizable by using themes and extensions created by its users. With the power of the open source community behind it, Firefox will likely remain ahead of its competitors.
• Mozilla Sunbird www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/sunbird
  It is a cross-platform calendar application, built upon Mozilla Toolkit. It provides you with full-featured and easy to use calendar application that you can use around the world.
• IrfanView www.irfanview.com
  IrfanView is a very fast, small, compact and innovative graphic viewer for Windows. It is simple for beginners and powerful for professionals.

If you like this post and want to read more, please subscribe to my full feed RSS.