These are freeware sites and programs that are Windows-specific. There are alternatives to almost any commercial software that you can think of. Why not save some $$$ with some of these time-tested programs. I have used many of these over the years.
SumatraPDF
Adobe Reader sure has the market for PDF readers. However, it is bloated, and will slow your computer down with all the crapware that it installs (Adobe Download Manager, etc.). Fact is, you don’t need all that to have a fast, easy PDF experience. SumatraPDF is an open-source (= free!) PDF reader that is lightweight and fast. Uninstall Adobe Reader and install SumatraPDF and you will enjoy a slightly faster computer!
ninite.com
Ninite is a free software installation “wrapper” application. The web site lets you pick the free software you want to install (Adobe Reader, Firefox web browser, etc.) and packages it into one installable file. Very convenient!
alternatives.rzero.com
A good article on alternatives to commercial Microsoft products. Certainly can save you some $$$ with minimal effort. I use a ton of this type of stuff (open-source, freeware) on a daily basis.
www.thefreecountry.com
Pretty good source of free web design and programming tools. Indispensible if you dont have the $$$ to spend on Adobe Dreamweaver or some other commercial web/programming software package.
www.opensourcewindows.org
Free, open-source software for Windows computers.
www.digitaldarknet.net/thelist
Mohawke’s Best of the Best Free and Open Source Software Collection. What I like about this list is it breaks down the list by columns with title, description, license type (free, shareware, etc), and program type (utility, office, audio, programming, etc) headings in a nice table format. You can even sort the list by the column headings. Pretty easy to browse.
www.jehtoday.net/freeware
Jeh’s Freeware. This is another of the seemingly unending list of freeware sites. I found this one a long time ago and it has yielded me many good leads on free software.
www.cdburnerxp.se
CDBurnerXP is an awesome free CD/DVD burning program. It is regularly updated and works great. I like it better than the stuff that comes bundled with a typical CD/DVD burner.
ultradefrag.sourceforge.net
Ultradefrag. Please don’t spend money on something like Diskeeper ($$$). Ultradefrag does all Diskeeper does and does it for free. It can even do a boot-up defrag, which is the only way to defrag the paging file that Windows uses. Good program!
www.piriform.com/recuva
Recuva. Ever delete something permanently (as in Emptying the Recycle Bin) and then said “whoops”? Well, Recuva can help you get it back. Just make sure you have it installed BEFORE you need it, or install it to a DIFFERENT drive than your Recycle Bin is installed on.