Best free software and tools for Windows 7 computers
Are you looking for the best free software and tools to be installed on your new Windows 7 PC? Here is my list of top free tools for Windows computers.
I just finished installing Windows 7 on a new laptop. As usual, I started installing my favorite free tools as soon as I completed the Windows 7 installation. Just for my own records, I had noted down the list in a spreadsheet but this time I thought I would share it here with everyone. I know a lot of people will be wondering what software to install when they buy a new laptop or desktop.Google Chrome - my favorite free browser
Google Chrome is the first software I usually install on any new PC or laptop. It is a free browser from Google and is very light, fast and user friendly. I use Google Chrome for everyday browsing and will consider any other browser only on special cases like login to more than one account in some sites etc. Since I need a browser to download other software, I install and use Google Chrome first. CCleaner - free Windows cleaner software
There are hundreds of other free Windows cleaner and tuner software available. Unfortunately, most of them cleans your computer but adds their own malicious software to your computer. CCleaner has been there for a while, is fast and does the job perfectly. It finds and removes a lot of unwanted temporary files and log files from your computer and tunes a lot of other sections of your computer to make it faster and claners.
You can download CCleaner free version for Windows from here: http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner/download
CDBurnerXP - Free CD/DVD writing software
Windows comes with free DVD writing software, but I am not very impressed with it. There are lot of restrictions for the builtin CD writing/DVD burning software coming with Windows. I have found a good, free writer software that works with Windows 7: CDBurnerXP
CDBurnerXP is clean, fast and does the job perfectly. I have burnt hundreds of CDs and DVDs in the past using CDBurnerXP. I tried to many other software to record .ISO images and data files to CD/DVD, but many of them are either paid software or has some limitations like maximum you can record only 300MB etc. CDBurner is an absolutely free Windows software that writes CDs and DVDs without errors.
You can download CDBurnerXP here: http://cdburnerxp.se/en/download
Another absolutely free CD burner software I have used is Ultimate CD/DVD Burner 3.0. Even though I am not much impressed with their UI and features, it still does the job properly and can record DVD and CD without any problem. It is a free software and can be download from here: http://www.mispbo.com/download.htmPaint.NET - Free image editing software
I am not a web designer or graphics guy, but I frequently edit some pictures or photos for uploading to websites and some other uses. Windows has a built-in paint software but it does not any advanced editing options. Paint.NET is alternative for the Windows paint software. Even though it is not a highly advanced image editor like Photoshop, Paint.NET still has a lot to offer. You can do a lot of editing work like creating multiple layers in images, merging layers etc. It is an absolutely free software for Windows and works well with Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7.
Download Paint.NET: http://www.getpaint.net/download.htmlAdobe Reader X: Free PDF viewer
Acrobat Reader is a must have software for any computers since .PDF files are the most common type of documents used currently. You need Adobe Reader or similar software to read PDF (Portable Document Format) files. Adobe Reader is a popular and free software that works well to read .pdf files. The free software can only read pdf files. If you need to edit or write to pdf files, you will need another version of it called PDF Writer.
Download Adobe Reader here: http://get.adobe.com/reader/Picasa Photo organizer
Picasa is a free photo organizing software from Google. Even though it does not come with a large number of options, it still gives you some interesting and useful features that help you organize your photos on your computer as well as on the cloud (Google+)
Some of the interesting features of Picasa are:
1. Organize images in to folder
2. Search for photos
3. Organize photos by people using face recognition feature
4. Upload photos easily and share in your Google+ page.
5. Apply some graphical effects to your photos.
My favorite feature in Picasa software is the face recognition feature. It automatically detects all faces in all the photos and allows you to apply a name to any face. Picasa will prompt you to name the people it recognizes and when it can't choose, it will ask for confirmation before automatically applying a name to the photo. After it recognize and organize all photos by people name, you can just click on name and see all photos of the same person from all folders in your computer. The face recognition in Picasa works pretty well. If I want to see all photos of my child, I simply click on the name and then it shows all of his photos from his birth until the latest one, spread across all folders, even the group photos in which he is included.
You can download Picasa from here: http://picasa.google.com/
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