Must Have Free Apps for your PC

There are a wide variety of free software that you can download and use for free on your PC. After purchasing a computer and an operating system, often very little cash is left over for any kind of software that makes your purchase worthwhile.
While hardware is the blood and bones of your computer, software is the breath that brings life to it. Let us list down the most basic must have free software programs for you PC that helps you to fulfil your basic requirements. Here are some must have software for keeping your computer powered up and fun to use.
We have already discussed many such topics that you may find interesting. See them below,

• How to Use Trial Software Version Forever Without Expire
• Best Free Personal Firewall software Windows – Freeware
• MSConfig: The Windows System Configuration Utility.How to use MSConfig.exe
• Best Free Windows Explorer Alternatives

Must Have Free Apps for PC Protection

First off, getting antivirus software is essential to protect your computer. A number of products like Avira antivirus, Panda Cloud and AVG Antivirus are great options that are free to use, don’t take up much RAM and provide a good level of security for your home computer.

Email Clients

If you are looking for an email client that offers similar functionality to the much loved MS Outlook but does not cost a bomb, try Mozilla’s Thunderbird which is free. It is a light email client and offers all the functionality that you are used to and even more. Since Thunderbird supports plug-ins, you can really enhance the functionality more than paid software.

Media Players and Video Tools

Now that you’re set with the basics, consider installing a media player that is capable of playing multiple file formats. The best apps in this category are VLC media player and GOM Player.Foobar 2000 is a great media player with a lot of options to play audio files. To rip CDs, you can use the free tool CDEX that collects information of MP3 songs that you have on your system. For video editing, Avidemux is a nifty freeware suite that will solve your basic needs.

Apps to Stay Connected

To stay connected to all your friends on different networks install a chat integrator like Trillian or Miranda which bundles various services like Yahoo, ICQ, MSN, AIM and Jabber. For basic image manipulation, Google’s Picasa is sufficient in most cases. In case you need something with as much power as Photoshop, install Gimp which is totally free and is still one of the most powerful image manipulation tools.

Data security

Lastly, data security is paramount. Try Truecrypt to encrypt your data. It allows you to encrypt not just individual files or folders, but entire drives as well. To really round up the protection that you need for your system, set up automatic backup with Cobian which is a light software. After the first back up, it only updates the files that are changed on a periodical basis.

Internet Access

Here you have many choices. The most popular among them are Firefox and Google Chrome and are excellent browsers. They are fast, user-friendly and have plenty of add-ons to make them feature rich.

There are other free applications like OpenOffice and is a free alternative to Microsoft Office.