I have reviewed a ton of freeware applications for Lockergnome’s Windows Fanatics over the years. So many, I’m not sure if people really know which ones actually make it into my day to day life. Here are ten offline applications that I use on a day to day basis. Some are free, some are not – they are all quality goods though that you should all check out.
- Firefox
It has been my Web browser for year, and unless they do something extremely crazy – don’t think I’ll be moving away for one of the other browsers anytime soon. - NoteTab Pro
NoteTab Pro is another program I have been using forever and have never found anything better. Three reasons I love it are: basic text editing, spell checker and word count. If your a text editor without those three don’t bother me. - WinRAR
Out of all the zipping and un-zipping tools out there, I think WinRAR does the best job and stays out of my way unless I need it. Good stuff all around. - VLC Media Player
I mainly have this one loaded up to play all the wacky video downloaded from the Web that doesn’t play right in your standard video players. - CoreFTP Lite
I am not deeply in love with this FTP client – but it does the job without choking much. If I could find a better client – I’d probably use it instead. Alternatives welcome! - Audacity
A must have for any podcast that is working with a $3 budget. Totally free and easy to use even for a beginner in the audio editing arena. - CDBurnerXP Pro 3
Toss out your old CD burning software because you no longer need it. CDBurnerXP Pro 3 does for free what some of the other burning packages can’t even get done for $50 or more. - XNeat Windows Manager
This is one I just ran across not too long ago. It allows you to hide things on your taskbar, send anything to the tray, show and hide windows, and a heck of a lot more. - Foxit Reader
Adobe can bite my Web hosting butt. Foxit Reader gives me a PDF reader that doesn’t ask to update itself every five minutes with crap I don’t need. Thank you Foxit! - OpenOffice.org
Anybody who says you can’t live day to day inside of Open Office is wrong. For me, at least – it does what it needs to do when I need it to do something. Usually I only use it for editing and creating invoices though so maybe I’m not the spokesperson they are looking for.
What about you? What do you think of these suggestions – or can you suggest a replacement for one? Let me know and make sure to leave some links for them as well.
