So you bought a new laptop and probably it came preloaded with Windows. Now what?
In today's Daily Feature section, we give you 12 softwares that every new Windows PC should have. All the softwares mentioned here are freewares that you can download and use without spending a penny.
1. PC Decrapifier - Remove All Pre-Installed Trial Version Software
Thanks to certain diabolical agreements made between your laptop manufacturer and software companies, your laptop comes with numerous trial version softwares pre-installed, whose icons will be found littered on the fresh desktop that you boot into. Now would be a good time to kiss goodbye to all those pre-installed bloatwares and install something useful.
It would have been a real pain if you had to manually uninstall all those programs. But thanks to PC Decrapifier that this process is now a two click affair. This little tool can automatically detect and remove a large number of trialwares from your PC without your intervention.
Download PC Decrapifier
2. AVG Free Anti Virus
Now you need to protect your Laptop from viruses, worms and trojan horses. AVG Free is the best free antivirus program out there that gives best protection consuming very little system resources.
Download AVG Free
3. Comodo Personal Firewall
Comodo Personal Firewall is a free firewall program that keeps your PC safe from external network intrusions and prevents malicious programs that slipped into your PC from dialing home.
It has a great user (newbie) friendly user interface, detects a large number of legitimate programs (like Firefox and Internet Explorer) automatically allowing them to access internet without bugging you with questions, detects malicious programs trying to impersonate as legitimate programs, kills them and provide great peace of mind.
Download Comodo Personal Firewall
4. 7z File Archiever
7z is “the best” File archiever/zip/rar utility available. With a blazing fast user interface, bare minimal system requirements and ability to handle almost any compression format that you can throw at it, 7z rules over all other competing non-free products like Winzip and Winrar.
Download 7z
5. Firefox Web Browser
Considered to be the best web browser by many, there are many reasons why you should switch to Firefox immediately right from the beginning.
Download Firefox
6. VLC Media Player
VLC Player is the swiss army knife of media playing. If you, like many, hate hunting for codecs in order to play a video file that your friend just send you, then VLC is for you. VLC can play any popular video/audio format currently in existence without installing anything additional.
Download VLC player
7. Songbird Music Player
If you happened to be a good music fan with gigs of music collections, then songbird is a must for you. Songbird is a great music manager and player. With ability to play a large number of audio formats,smart playlists, ability to edit audio meta data, one-click album art grabber and integration with last.fm, Insound.com and HypeMachine, Songbird is surely bound to become an iTunes killer. It’s based on the Mozilla XULRunner platform and hence like Firefox can be extended via addons and can be themed to your heart’s content.
Download Songbird
8. OpenOffice.org Office Suite
If your computer didn’t come with Microsoft Office installed, you need an office application suite to create documents and presentations. There is no better alternative to Microsoft Office than the free and open source OpenOffice.org office suite.
Download OpenOffice.org
9. Bitmeter Bandwidth Monitor
Bitmeter is an unavoidable tool if you are happen to use a bandwidth capped network connection. It can run in the background, keep a tab on your usage stats and warn you it the figures go above the limit you have set.
Download Bitmeter
10. Power Meter Plus Battery Monitor
Those who have used the Windows default batter monitor can surely vow how badly it suck. Disappointed by the barely usable Windows battery icon, a smart coder named Matt Collinge decided to code his own Battery Monitor. This little utility shows a progress bar in the desktop that is visible only when you are charging or discharging your battery. The transparency of the bar decreases as the battery charge drops and hence the application becomes more visible as your battery approaches lower charge levels. It’s a free download available for all versions of Windows.
Download Power Meter Plus
11. A.L.A.R.M - Protect Laptop From Thieves
The worst nightmare of any new laptop owner is his/her laptop getting stolen. A.L.A.R.M is a pretty intuitive little utility that silently runs in your system tray until you lock your laptop. If someone tries to remove the power cable to steal your laptop, ALARM will play an audio file from the laptop very loudly alerting everyone around until you plug back the power supply. Next time you leave your laptop unattended, remember to turn on A.L.A.R.M.
Download A.L.A.R.M
12. Sumatra PDF Viewer
At some point, you’ll definitely require a PDF viewer. The question is - will you go for the bloated Adobe Reader, the less bloated Foxit reader or the lean, mean and open source Sumatra PDF Viewer.
Sumatra viewer opens PDF files in a blink of an eye, consumes very less memory, uses gmail like keyboard shortcuts and can be run from a thumb drive.
Download Sumatra PDF Viewer
Is your favorite application missing in this list? Tell us in the comments
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