Best & Free Software Applications for PC

Even though there are millions of software programs available on Internet, Optical Discs or other media, One common problem a Computer freak faces is to choose a Program which is the Best among all & is most importantly Free of cost. They may come across many useful & better applications but they are either "Sharewares" or have a "Use Limitation" (Days or Times Used). This is very annoying as it hurts to install an application, configure it, spend time to tweak it & finally after some days it's lost! You have to reformat the Drive to make that application work again. This also leads to Software Piracy as Users tend to copy serial keys from other users. It's very disheartening for Software Developers that they spend months & hard work to create a Program & others are stealing his/her work without paying them anything. The best option is to either Register the program or Uninstall it honestly. But most people don't follow either of the 2 options. Here I come to the rescue for People who want to fight Software Piracy. If you are looking for Some great Applications for your PC which are not only Best but also FREE OF COST! then this is the place to stop by. Just read on to choose the best for your PC. Only for Windows XP or Vista (Some may run on Windows 98). These are my favourites.

A. Music Player:- The one & only Program to enjoy your Digital Music is "iTunes". It's a product of Apple company & is available for both Windows & Apple users. This has really impressed Windows users because of it's flexibility. Click here to go to Apple's Website & Download iTunes.

iTunes

What's HOT:-Already told in previous post except this one more."Cover Flow" feature lets you Flip through your collection by Album covers.

What's NOT:-Already discussed (on previous post).

B. Photo Manager & Viewer:- My Choice for this is No doubt "Google Picasa". This has come to existence just recently but has really impressed me. You might have heared about "Ulead Photoimpact". It was a similar application in terms of creating Albums & Posters, Collages etc. But it is expensive & not user-friendly. Picasa is a great Photo Manager. Click here to go to it's Website & Download Picasa.

Google Picasa

What's HOT:-

1. Ability to Scan entire Hard Disk for Photos & Import them.

2. Automatically Searches the Folders you specify for Photos. If you add other photos, it will import them automatically.

3. Great Animated User-Friendly Interface.

4. Sending Photos to Blogger, Web-Album or E-mailing them to friends is pretty easy. Sends Photos much faster Directly using your G-Mail Account or Picasa Account. No need to open web-browser & attach files.

5. Simple Editing Tools make it easy for an Average user to make photos Great. I'm Feeling Lucky tool is awesome. So are the others.

6. Timeline & Sideshow Features allow Full Screen Resolutions of Photos. Great for viewing multiple photos with friends.

7. Lightweight & Virusfree. Allows Users to create Screensavers, Posters, Collage & WebPages etc.

8. Duplicate Photo finder (Tools->Experimental->Show Duplicate Files) allows to check duplicates easily.

9. Remembers each Photo's Settings. Any Change you make to photo is kept in a hidden file. You can always save your changes to original file if you want.

10. FREE OF COST.

What's NOT:-

1. Ordinary Editing tools for Advanced users. No Brushes or Noise Removal. No Touch-Ups & Fine-Tunings of Face (of your loved ones).

2. No IPTC Data Editing available.

3. Doesn't show GIF photos' Animation. Only First frame is shown.

4. No FullScreen view of Photos. Except selecting a photo->pressing ctrl+alt. Only Slideshows have full Screen view. It should have another window to show Photo FullScreen like ACDSEE or XnView. They have seperate Viewing & Editing Windows. Picasa has only Editing Window with normal editing features.

5. Renaming a Folder adds underscore sign. Like ShaZ_1 instead of ShaZ. You have to rename it twice.

C. Visualizations + Music:- Undoubtedly "Winamp" by Nullsoft. Just completed it's 10 years (By the time this post was written Version 5.53 was released). One of the most popular Media Players. It's a very good program to enjoy music with visualizations. No any other Media player offers Visualizations like Winamp. There are thousands of Visualizations to choose & download. I really like watching Visualizations moving with music beats. Click here to go to it's Website & Download Latest version.

Winamp

What's HOT:-

1. Small download size of about 8.5 MBs.

2. Supports all the Major & minor Music Formats including M4A, OGG, MPG & WMV.

3. Good Robust Media Library. Option to remove Missing files & Scan your Hard drive for music files. New Version has Album Art Viewing opiton.

4. Many Encoders to convert music files to different formats. Includes AAC+, AAC, MP3 & OGG.

5. Good Sound Effects (Graphic Equalizer).

6. Visualizations make it the best option to SEE the music!. I use Winamp just because of it's Visualizations. It makes me concentrate on Music better. These are highly customizable & easy to use.

7. Great New Bento Skin changes the entire look & feel of player.

8. Great Skinnability of player. There are millions of skins available for download.

What's NOT:-

1. Playlists are not easy to create & manipulate.

2. Consumes more memory than usual. While exiting it remains in memory for some time.

3. Library columns are very hard to customize. iTunes is best in this regards.

4. Metadata editing is not simple though satisfactory.

5. Some skins need more memory. Causes choppiness.

6. Settings are lost everytime you reinstall winamp.

D. Picture Viewer: My choice is XnView by Pierre-e Gougelet. Very simple, Fast & Light weight Application. I recommend this for everyone. It has great & useful features. Click here to go to XnView's Website & Download XnView.

XnView

What's HOT:-

1. Supports more than 500 Picture Formats. Including most popular JPG, BMP, TGA, TIFF, PNG etc.

2. Can convert Photos to a large number of Formats.

3. Simple & Good editing tools to enhance photos.

4. Very small Download size of about 4 MBs.

5. Good feature to see the Preview of Photo & it's EXIF information, Histogram etc.

6. Feature of Tabbed browsing. Opens Images in a single window under different tabs.

7. Feature of editing & viewing IPTC & EXIF data of Photo. Also it has an option of finding duplicate files.

8. Can create a Webpage with your favourite photos. Also Slideshows.

What's NOT:-

1. No Music playback with Slideshow. Compare this feature with Picasa's.

2. No Scanning of Hard drive for photos.

3. Interface not impressive. Customizability is not satisfactory.

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