Reviewing Applications on My Windows

June 4, 2012
Updated July 2012. A quick compliation on what applications I use and recommend for windows.

Here we present the top most must have tools for windows 2000, XP and Vista.
The software categories must be Cost Efficient (Open Source, Free software) user friendly and purpose built. Please remember to contribute to the developers either by support, donations or just sending them a thank you note. All tools reviewed and ranked have been considered for Cost, Efficiency, Simplicity and User Friendliness.
Why are these software free or opensourced? Most software in this category can be legally used for personal functions. The software are still written by professionals and i mean many professionals. They all contribute to develop softwares for the public. These softwares as software written for the public by the public. What you can do to help the development can be many ranging from testing, hands on programming, distributing, promoting it or money donations to the development consortium.

Office Products

Recommended – Google Docs
Alternatives: Open Office, Microsoft Office, Sun office
Recommended – PDFcreator
Easy to use, free pdf creation software. Just install it and print to the virtual printer and you can save the result as a pdf. You can print from your web browser, word or anything software that prints.

Movie Players

Recommended – VLC Player / MediaPlayerClassic

a movie player, plays most major movie files out there. if its Real or Quicktime. You should refer to quickalternative or realalternative from freecodecs [ http://www.free-codecs.com/ ] website.

Zip Tools

Recommended – Peazip
an zip archiving software that supports all major zip files like rar, zip, 7z and many more.
Alternatives: Tugzip, 7-zip, Winzip, Winrar, Winace

Antivirus / Protection

Recommended – Avast Antivirus Home Edition
Free personal edition of antivirus which provides decent protection.
Alternatives: Avg Antivirus

Music Players

Recommended – SongBird
A good mp3 music player by the developers of GPL Firefox Mozilla
Alternatives: ITunes, Winamp

CD / Dvd Burners

Recommended – IMGburn
Alternatives : CDBurnerXP, Burnit, Alcohol, Nero, IMGBurn

Misc Others

Recommended – Google Chinese Input Chinese input method from google. Its like MS pinyin but more cleverer.

Recommended – Virtual Clone Drive
Clone virtual drive so you can mount CDs and DvDs without burning them to disks
Recommended – Johns Background Switcher