There are some things that Windows does well and some things that it doesn't. While it is possible to do almost everything you need to do with the set of applications that Microsoft provides there is still a lot of room for improvement in terms of features and capabilities. This is where other vendors truly shine, and luckily it does not require an investment of anything more than a few minutes of your time to begin using these programs. Each of the programs on this list is free, and can be found by doing a simple Google search for its name.
The Best Free Media Player -VLC
Microsoft Media Player is good, but it lacks many of the more obscure compression formats that you will occasionally run into while surfing the web. Suppose you want to play an audio file that is encoded in the open-source OGG format? Media Player won't play it. To take the hassle out of finding strange codecs to get downloaded files to play properly try using VideoLan Client (VLC). This strangely named media player will play almost everything you throw at it, and it is far faster and less processor intensive than Windows Media Player.
The Best Free Web Browser - Firefox or Chrome
Internet Explorer is a prime target for hackers and malware authors to get onto your system and cause problems. This is not to say that Firefox and Chrome don't have their own problems in this area, but in general these alternative browsers are not only faster they are also much more secure.
The Best Free Online Storage Program- DropBox
If you are like most people you back up your computer's data only when you think about it. DropBox is a wonderful application that syncs your MyDocuments folder to another computer in your home, at your place or work, or anywhere you have Internet access. Simply install DropBox on all of the computers you use and then put into it files that you want available at all of those locations. Audio files, documents, photographs, all of the items placed in the DropBox folder are automatically uploaded and sent to the other computers when they are powered on. Although not strictly intended as a backup program DropBox works great for this purpose. It works even better as a replacement for the need to carry around thumb drives from computer to computer.
The Best Free Photo Organizer- Picasa
Picasa has been around for quite a while now, but its most recent version incorporates facial scanning technology to make organizing your images even easier. After training the system on a few photos Picasa will scan your photo library and start to try to recognize the faces of the individuals in the photos. You can easily adjust any wrong guesses or add new names for faces that are not already in the database. In addition to this great feature Picasa is also one of the easiest ways to edit and print photographs if you are not in need of the more powerful features of a program like PhotoShop.
The Best Free Privacy Cleaner- CCleaner
Surfing the web leaves all kinds of junk on your system. Remnants of software, cookies, and other files that eventually slow down the system's resposiveness. CCleaner is a handy bit of freeware that goes in and cleans the registry of unused entries as well as deleting cookies and other temporary files that simply take up space on the hard drive.
