Our Favourite Free PC Software
With so much good free software that does the basics, it is often hard to justify the purchase of commercial software for the extra bells and whistles that you may never use. The list below is just our local experiences. Up to date additions to this list are welcomed. Unfortunately some good free software eventually gets infected with spam or commercialised and needs to be removed from the list. Let us know if you spot any instances of this.
Some sites have free and paid for options on the same page. Check you click the right one!
Always run the downloaded file through your virus checker before installing. Also check up to date reviews for any reported problems with new versions,
Warning
The question is often asked is whether Free Software (or for that matter paid for software) is safe? The answer is we do not know, but we can take sensible precautions. Therefore we only run free software recommended by the computer magazine “Computer Active” and also remove software they warn against. The internet and all software is like the motor car, highly dangerous, but an essential part of daily life and we use it at our own risk.
Office (i.e. word processing, spreadsheets, slide presentations etc)
Libre Office
https://www.libreoffice.org/
Photo Editing
(from simple to comprehensive)
Irfanview
https://www.irfanview.com/
Faststone
https://www.faststone.org/
Gimp
https://www.gimp.org/
DVD Player and Recorder
VLC
https://www.videolan.org/
CD and DVD Burning
Burning Studio Free
https://www.ashampoo.com/
Video Editing
Shotcut
https://shotcut.org/download/
Openshot
https://www.openshot.org/download/
Minitool Movie Maker
https://moviemaker.minitool.com
KdenLive
https://kdenlive.org/en/
Davinci Resolve
https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve
Audio Recording and Editing
Audacity
https://www.audacityteam.org/
Home Accounts
Microsoft Money Sunset Edition
Although Money Plus Sunset Deluxe has been removed from Microsoft's servers, you can still download it from the Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20140320163200/https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=20738
Password Safe
Keepass
https://keepass.info/
File Backup
Alwaysync
https://allwaysync.com/
Hard Disk Backup
Easus todo
https://www.easeus.com/
Hard Disk Cleanup
Ccleaner
https://www.ccleaner.com/
Cloud Storage
Microsoft One Drive
https://onedrive.live.com/
Google Drive
https://www.google.com/drive/
Dropbox
https://www.dropbox.com/install/
Email Clients
Mozilla Thunderbird
https://www.thunderbird.net/
EM Client
https://www.emclient.com/
Virtual Private Networks (VPNs)
Windscribe
https://windscribe.com/download/
Opera (an Internet Search Engine with a VPN option built in)
https://www.opera.com/
On-line Conference Software
Zoom (the most popular)
https://zoom.us/download/
Google Meet (good for deaf as it can display speech as text)
https://meet.google.com
(or if you use the Chrome Browser it is already there in the dropdown menu, as is Google Duo.)
Jitsi (a new entrant on the scene - on line - no account needed)
https://meet.jit.si
Display mobile phone screen on PC screen (useful for presentations)
Lets View
https://letsview.com/windows
PDF Editor (can also convert a PDF file to a Word file)
PDF24
https://tools.pdf24.org/en/creator
Send and Receive large (up to 2 GB) files over the internet
https://wetransfer.com/