Net Key Consulting | Free Software

Updated: August 20, 2009

It can be difficult to find useful free software. This list is a good place to start.

Key: Business & Home Use Home Use Only

Security

AVG Anti-Virus (Anti-Virus)
http://free.avg.com/
Avira AntiVir Personal (Anti-Virus)
http://www.free-av.com/
Comodo Internet Security (Anti-Virus & Firewall)
http://www.comodo.com/

Multimedia Burners, Rippers and Players

CDBurnerXP Pro (Burn CDs and DVDs with ease.)
http://www.cdburnerxp.se/
DeepBurner 'Free Edition' (Burns CDs and DVDs, not as user friendly as CDBurnerXP but slightly more powerful.)
http://www.deepburner.com
HandBrake (Convert almost any media such as DVD movies into formats that can be used by devices like iPods.)
http://handbrake.fr/
ImgBurn (Quickly and reliably burns image files of all types to CD, DVD, HD DVD and Blu-ray discs.)
http://www.imgburn.com/
VirtualDub (A video capture/processing utility with simplified capabilities like Adobe Premier.)
http://www.virtualdub.org/
VLC Media Player (Plays DVDs and most other media files.)
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

Miscellaneous

7-Zip (WinZip or WinRAR? Who needs them? This is free and works faster!)
http://www.7-zip.org/
Audacity (A great multi-track audio editor.)
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
Cartes du Ciel Sky Charts (Powerful Sky/Space charting and mapping.)
http://www.stargazing.net/astropc/index.html
FBackup (This backup software works great and has features usually only available in commercial products) http://www.fbackup.com/
Google Software (Many useful programs and utilities.)
http://www.google.com/intl/en/options/
Inno Setup (Program for creating customized software installations. Similar to Installshield and WISE.)
http://www.jrsoftware.org/isinfo.php
Orbit Downloader (Helps you easily and quickly download all types of files and multimedia from the Internet.)
http://www.orbitdownloader.com/download.htm
SpeedFan (This can help some computers run quieter. Tricky to use though!)
http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php

Office Productivity

CutePDF (Cute? I will let you decide. It does work well for PDF Creation though!)
http://www.cutepdf.com/Products/CutePDF/writer.asp
You will also need to install Ghostscript to make CutePDF work:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/ghostscript/
PDFCreator (Another great replacement for Adobe Acrobat.)
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/
PDF Split and Merge (Does what it says. Slice and dice or make them all whole again.)
http://www.pdfsam.org/
OpenOffice.org (The best replacement for MS Office.)
http://www.openoffice.org/
Scribus (Desktop Publisher. Professional page layout with "press-ready" output and new approaches to page layout.)
http://www.scribus.net/

Photo Editing & Management

GIMP (Advanced Photo Editor.)
http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/stable.html
Google Picasa (One of the best photo management tools on the net.)
http://picasa.google.com/index.html
ImageMagick (Create, edit, and compose images.)
http://www.imagemagick.org/script/index.php
Inkscape (Scalable Vector Graphics Editor with capabilities similar to Illustrator and Freehand using the (SVG) file format.)
http://www.inkscape.org/download.php
Paint.Net (Great alternative to Adobe Photoshop.)
http://www.getpaint.net/

Remote Control

TightVNC (A well packaged remote control software that is know for reliability.)
http://www.tightvnc.org/
UltraVNC (Another flavor of VNC remote control. This version has some other compelling advanced features.)
http://www.uvnc.com/

** Net Key Consulting provides no warranties for the software available from this page. **
** Net Key Consulting will not provide free support or advice for this software. Use at your own risk. **