12 Essential Free Programs

Here is a useful breakdown of some of the best free software available on the internet, from media players, to IM clients!

uTorrent - uttorent.com

one of the best torrent clients out there. Despite the RIAA rumors it still sits at the top of the pack. With a smooth graphical interface, and a slew of great useful features utorrent defiantly rises to the top of torrent clients everywhere.

NoNameScript + mIRC - nnscript.com

mIRC is the most customizable IRC client released to date. Unfortunately for those who are not very technical, most of mIRC's content is buried beneath menu after menu of hard to understand options. Thats were NoNameScript (NNS) comes in. With a very apealing array of themes, and a improved menu for those who want to unlock all of mIRC's hidden features. Definatly the best combonation of programs to date. I highly recomend NNS to any IRC user.

Foobar2000 - foobar2000.org

After I had to uninstall iTunes from my computer due to software incompatibilitys, I thought all hope was lost for another worthwhile media player. Well, needless to say I was dead wrong. After a friend introduced me to foobar, I have never gone back to any other media program. The apealing factor for me, was how simple and easy foobar could be. Not only does it require very little resources, it has a HUGE array of 3rd party pluggins and themes. Enough to satasfy even the most critical eye. But, installing pluggins can be complicated to some people, so if you are not that computer literate, but still want a easy, and simple media player. Foobar is the program for you.

Firefox - firefox.com

I don't think I even need to explain the superiorities of Firefox to Internet Explorer. Firefox has so many advantages over IE (Internet Explorer) that I could write a whole article just on that!

Notepad - no url

The word processor of choice for most everyday bloggers. Simple and fast. No addons, no special "features". Just a blank pad, that you type on.

MS Paint - no url

Do you need a quick witty caption to that picture? Open up MS Paint! One of the most obvious candidates for this list was non other then Microsoft's own paint. Just like notepad, this is just a simple, quick and fast image editing program that comes standard with any windows computer.

VLC Media Player - videolan.org

The only video player you will ever need. This program plays practically every video file known to man. Perfect for those obscure DVD and anime rips!

Skype - skype.com

Skype has recently started to dominate the free VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) lately, with its release on the PSP and other hand held devices. But even though it is extending its reach to a more practical market, they still have one of the best and easiest services out there. With a very pleasing look, and easy to navigate menus, I highly recomend this to anyone who's phonebill looks like thier phone number.

Gtalk google.com/talk

I was reluctant putting Gtalk, google's own IM service on this list. Just because I wasn't sure if the reason I was putting it on was because of personal preference, or because it was legitimatly worth looking in to. Now, I use this program daily. For sending files, chatting and calling, so I definatly give this program more of a workout then most. But because of this I have noticed some things that qualify it for this list, as well as make me question wether or not I should of listed this here. First, it links to your gmail account, so it notifies you in a very unobtrusive way when you have a new email. Second it saves all your logs online, automatically. No hassle, or settings to change. And third as with most of google's programs, gtalk is simple and beautiful to look at. Now, I only have one complaint, but it is enough to almost warrant not being listed. It freezes. And sometimes not only for a second. It sometimes freezes for up to five minutes. And now this might not seem like a big deal, but when your talking to someone casually, and then out of nowhere in the middle of the conversation the window just freezes. Unable to respond, unable to view messages. This gets very VERY tedious, as this doesn't just happen once in awhile.

Pidgin - pidgin.im/

Pidgin in a nutshell is a multi-platform IM service. Say that you have 20+ contacts on MSN, then another 10+ on YIM (Yahoo), and then another 50+ on AIM! How are you supposed to keep track of all these people?! Lets not even think about the amount of resources are wasted on keeping these three monsters up and running 24/7. Pidgin takes all that unnecessary clutter, and simplifies it. By allowing you to take all your accounts and run them in pidgin.

Soulseek - slsknet.org

One of the top replacements P2P clients, is Slsk (soulseek). Slsk is a P2P file sharing program / network, that share some similarities with popular clients such as Limewire, and differences. The similarities are obviously the ability to share files that other people want to find, and find files that other people are sharing. Now here is were the differences really stand out. Instead of just blindly searching, unaware of who is sharing what, you know see user names, and chatrooms, and file lists. You could even find something just by absent mindlessly wandering through some random persons files that was in the same room as you. Slsk is a very solid P2P client that thanks to low publicity has managed to keep a somewhat low profile, were its users can share in peace.

Audacity - audacity.sourceforge.net

If you happen to be a podcaster, or just want to edit music or sounds, but don't have $700 to spend on a professional program, Audacity is a great alternative. Ask any independent podcaster what software he / she uses, and 9/10 times they are going to respond with Audacity. My only gripe about this software, is that when you want to export your creations to .mp3, you have to download a additional encoding file (it is extremely easy to find).