 | AVG Antivirus Free Edition Complete malware protection, with considerably less bloat. |  | AntiVir Free Version Lightweight and solid. Worth looking into. |  | avast! Free Antivirus Expect great all-around protection against trojans and spyware. |
 | Microsoft Security Essentials Simple, lightweight and competent protection suite. |  | Comodo Internet Security Free security suite, includes both a firewall and anti-virus protection. |
 | Spybot S&D Detects and removes spyware. Compliments anti-virus apps. |  | Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware Easy-to-use, simple, and effective anti-malware application. |  | IObit Security 360 Free Advanced malware & spyware removal utility. |
 | PC Tools Firewall Plus 6 Powerful firewall capable of providing excellent protection. |  | Comodo Firewall (standalone) Long been considered one of the best free firewall tools available. |  | ZoneAlarm Free Firewall Provides the best overall firewall protection for advanced users. |
 | Online Armor Free All of the normal features of a firewall and more. |  | Ashampoo FireWall Free Very easy to use and navigate. For intermediate users. |
 | Auslogics Disk Defrag Simple, reliable and quite fast. A must-have free PC tool. |  | Defraggler One of the best free defragmenter tools available. |  | IObit Smart Defrag Extremely easy to use. Works continuously in the background. |
 | Recuva Very effective in restoring deleted files. |  | FreeUndelete No frills, just focused on the zen of recovery. |  | ADRC Data Recovery Software The Renaissance Man of free data recovery. |
 | Revo Uninstaller Free Fast, helpful and very effective at uninstalling just about anything. |  | IObit Uninstaller The app delivers what it promises. Worth keeping. |  | Absolute Uninstaller A more user-friendly way to remove unwanted apps. |
 | Mozy Incredibly smart, highly secure, set-it-and-forget-it backup solution. |  | FBackup Backup documents, personal settings and plugins. |  | Todo Backup Able to backup the entire operating system, settings and data. |
 | Clonezilla Live CD to completely clone your hard drive. |  | SyncBack Freeware Selective synchronisation, local and remote backup to an FTP server. |
 | Glary Utilities Includes over 15 useful tools. Highly recommended! |  | CCleaner Scores high points all around. The best choice at the moment. |  | IObit Toolbox The amount of tools included in this free app is truly staggering. |
 | Google Chrome The fastest, minimal design browser now with extension support. |  | Firefox More than 6,000 add-ons. The most customisable browser to date. |  | Safari Designed to emphasize browsing. Also features extensions. |
 | Opera The “fastest and most advanced” browser available today. |
 | Thunderbird Increasingly popular. One of the best email clients for Windows. |  | Postbox Express A simple, yet powerful, new email application for Windows. |  | Google Notifier Alerts you when you have new Gmail messages. |
 | Skype The most popular cross-platform VoIP application. |  | Pidgin Easy-to-use, cross-platform, multi-protocol chat client. |  | Digsby An alternative multi-protocol instant messaging app. Cross-platform. |
 | Paint.NET Strong candidate as a potential substitute for Photoshop. |  | FastStone Image Viewer One of the best image viewer, converter & editor bundle. |  | PhotoScape One of the most powerful free photo editing applications. |
 | IrfanView The Swiss Army knife of image viewers/editors. |  | Google Picasa Picasa is a free photo editing software from Google. |  | GIMP Very capable graphic editor. Many Photoshop-like features. |
 | foobar2000 Customisable advanced audio player for Windows. |  | Songbird A music player based on Mozilla’s code. |  | Audacity Free, open source software for recording and editing sounds. |
 | iTunes Music player and video library organiser. Hosts the iTunes Store. |  | MediaMonkey Full-featured music player and music collection organiser. |  | Winamp A lightweight, small-footprint media player |
 | CopyTrans Manager Alternative app to transfer music & files to iPod, iPhone, iPad. |
 | Handbrake Open source, GPL, cross-platform, multithreaded video transcoder. |  | VirtualDub Open-source and portable video editor. |  | Freemake Free video converter & DVD burner that’s easy to use. |
 | Media Player Classic Replica of WM Player. Includes only the most basic controls. |  | VLC Media Player A cross-platform app that plays almost any video file. |
 | OpenOffice A popular free alternative to Microsoft Office. |  | Dropbox Allows online file syncing and across computers automatically. |  | Notepad++ Popular open source text editor. Favoured by programmers. |
 | FoxIt Reader Really light alternative to Adobe Reader. |  | doPDF Easily convert documents to PDF format. |
 | Fences Provides containers on your desktop to place your icons. |  | Rainlender Easy to use and lightweight desktop calendar. |  | Launchy A powerful keystroke based launcher. Replaces the Start button. |
 | VirtuaWin Gives you multiple virtual desktop. Highly customisable. |  | Evernote Save your ideas and access them anywhere. |
 | ImgBurn CD/DVD/HD-DVD/Blu-ray burning application. |  | CDBurnerXP The most popular free alternative to Nero Burning ROM. |  | DVDShrink The easiest and best DVD ripping/backup software. |
 | CDex Open-source digital audio CD extractor. |  | DuBaron CD2ISO A great tool to extract ISO images from CDs or DVDs. |  | Virtual CloneDrive Mount a virtual drive to playback CD/DVD images. |
 | uTorrent Speedy, efficient, and free. The most popular BitTorrent client. |  | Deluge An awesome but unappreciated cross-platform BitTorrent client. |  | YouTube Downloader HD Downloads YouTube videos with just a few clicks of the mouse button. |
 | LastPass Plugin to store and synchronise passwords across browsers. |  | Unlocker Kills or unlocks unresponsive system processes. |  | Soluto Improve Windows boot time by delaying apps during startup. |
 | PortableApps Suite A collection of apps preconfigured to work portably. |  | TreeSize Free Tells you where precious space has gone to. |  | TrueCrypt Free open-source, cross-platform disk encryption software. |
 | EASEUS Partition Master Freeware is an all-in-one partition solution. |