Since I was a poor college student one of my favorite free softwares to use (freeware) was meebo chat. You can log in with aim, yahoo, or any other chat program and chat with your friends on one format. The best part – it’s a website, so you don’t have to install anything. Recently this service was purchased by Google. While not all of their services are going away – the chat service is. This is a sad day for me – since this is how I always chat with one of my best friends. *shakes fist*.
While we’ve worked out how we’re going to continue our daily chats while she works and I work from the home – I started thinking about the other Freeware I use. There are a ton out there, and more than I would ever need – so feel free to share your favorite Freeware with us!
Please note these are all free downloads and legal to use! This list was compiled with the help of my boyfriend and we use each of these freeware on our machines!
Remember to always check your machine before install and know your sources of install. Make sure you have a good antivirus software on your machine at all times! But most importantly – don’t go hog wild on installing every freeware there is – you wont use them all 😉
Ninite – Choose the applications you want – then creates a downloadable executable file. It pulls down the custom installer and runs and installs each application you want!
*Most of the listed programs can be installed in a batch process using Ninite – I have linked each on individually with an alternate (and trusted) download source as well. But if you want easy peasy one stop download just run through Ninite! 🙂
Google – Ok we all know they have their search engine, but did you know you can use their email system Gmail, Calendar, Google+, Picassa (picture editor), and much much more!
To find their freeware just Google the items name, you can keep adding more and all of your accounts link together!
Google Drive – Yes this is a Google product – but it’s one of their newest and in my opinion the best! You can get a FREE 5 GB cloud drive to upload your items to. I use this to access all of my blog info on my machines – one spot shared over several machines! If you need more than 5 GB you can purchase it monthly!
Open Office – Can’t afford Microsoft products? Use Open Office. You can use excel documents, word documents and more. The best part? You can save them as .doc and .docx so others can open them in Word and more!!!
Floola – I’m not a fan of iTunes. It’s more a personal choice than anything else. I’m not a fan of being told what software to use or what format my files need to be in. So I downloaded Floola and use it on machine and iPod. It’s a quick to upload program and works great!
Picmonkey – Free Image editing software. Make layers, do photo effects and more!
Picassa – Another Google wunderkind! Have you ever seen their offices? Amazing! This is their free picture editor. Edit and store your pictures. Catalog them and more!
Irfanview – A light on your system that you can do quick edits on photos, resize, refile them. Batch process your photos and more! It can open almost any file with the extension pack!
TeraCopy – Speed up your file copies! Select and see your progress in one quick place!
VLC Player – Play your isos, mp4’s and more with this easy to use player!
PDF Creator – print to pdf, save to pdf, make your own PDF!
Cute PDF Printer – simple pdf printer for your machine
Evernote – create digital notebooks with images, writing, pdfs and more. A lot like Microsoft OneNote
CD Burner Xp – quickly burns cds, iso files and more.
CDEX – turn your cds into MP3s for your mp3 player 🙂 LOVE it!
7 zip – open zip files and rars! Compresses too!
Notepad++ – good for web developers and programmers. By default enumerates each line so you can quickly find your code info you need!
Microsoft Security Essentials – for certain platforms. It works with your anti-virus soft to make sure you’re protected!
I LOVE pic monkey! And I use Evernote on my computer at work…that way the kids can’t take off with a paper that contains important notes! 🙂