Recommended freeware

Last updated: April 2010.

A few software recommendations

All free, all good on a netbook.

Net-related:

• Dropbox: Absolutely critical for users of multiple computers; keeps things in sync and available everywhere.
• Google Chrome: Best browser. Use the most recent Beta, and you can use extensions.Way faster on my netbook than Firefox.
• “Create Application Shortcut” thing in Chrome: Lets you make handy and quick GMail, Google Calendar, and Google Tasks shortcut widgets.
• Thunderbird: Mozilla’s open-source mail program. Portable version is here.
• FileZilla: FTP program.
• µTorrent BitTorrent Client: Super small footprint BitTorrent client.

System security and cleaning:

• Use Microsoft Security Essentials: Virus protection. No, really. Smaller, quicker, and very effective. (Second choice: AVG Free Edition.)
• Malwarebytes Anti-Malware: For routine malware scanning.
• CCleaner and Defraggler:  There’s some dispute about how much cleaners help, but I use these.
• DiskMax: Disk cleaner for milking all the space you can from a small sold-state drive on a netbook.
• TrueCrypt: Create unlimited encrypted drives for sensitive material.

Especially for netbooks:

• EEERotate: Rotates your netbook (not just EEE’s) screen so that you can flip the screen to vertical and hold the thing like a book to read stuff.

Video and audio:

• Media Player Classic Home Cinema: Best default media player, I think
• Any Video Converter: Converts video files between formats; also rips video’s audio to MP3
• Audacity: Very nice free audio editor.

Graphics-related:

• ScreenCatch: Simple tiny screencap/crop/save or uploading.
• IrfanView: Quick picture viewing, cropping, and adjusting.

DVD/CD tools:

• ImgBurn: For burning to CD/DVD media. 
• DVD Shrink: Rips, decrypts, and shrinks (to 4.7Gig so as to fit on a single-layer disk) DVDs to your hard drive; hard disk version can then be burned to DVD for a backup copy of the original ripped DVD.

Other random stuff:

• PDFXViewer: Light and fast reader for PDFs (like FoxIt) that allows some annotating as well.
• Xplorer² Lite: Two-pane Windows Explorer replacement for file management.
• FolderGuide: Nice little add-on for quick navigation to regularly-used folders.

Freeware Sites:

I tend to get my freeware mostly from FileHippo and the Portable Freeware
Collection, which has the best collection of stuff to run without installation (like, off a portable USB drive).