Firefox
The worlds most famous browser which is completely free and open source. It runs on Windows too.
FileZilla
FileZilla is a fast FTP and SFTP client for Windows with a lot of features. FileZilla Server is a reliable FTP server.
OpenOffice.org
OpenOffice.org is a multiplatform and multilingual office suite and an open-source project. Compatible with all other major office suites, the product is free to download, use, and distribute
Thunderbird
Simple to use, powerful, and customizable, Thunderbird is a full-featured email application. Thunderbird supports IMAP and POP mail protocols, as well as HTML mail formatting. Easily import your existing email accounts and messages. Built-in RSS capabilities, powerful quick search, spell check as you type, global inbox, deleting attachments and advanced message filtering round out Thunderbird's modern feature set.
Gaim
Install Gaim from http://gaim.sourceforge.net and chat with your friends who are using any major messenger application. Currently, it supports Yahoo, msn, Aol, Jabber and many others.
7-Zip
7-Zip is a file archiver with the highest compression ratio. The program supports 7z, ZIP, CAB, RAR, ARJ, GZIP, BZIP2, TAR, CPIO, RPM and DEB formats. Compression ratio in the new 7z format is 30-50% better than ratio in ZIP format. Has performed well on Windows.
VLC
VLC (initially VideoLAN Client) is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, ...) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network.
Audacity
The Free, Cross-Platform Sound Editor
Audacity is free, open source software for recording and editing sounds. It is available for Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux, and other operating systems.
TrueCrypt
Free open-source disk encryption software for Windows XP/2000/2003 and Linux
Eraser
Eraser is a secure data removal tool for Windows. It completely removes sensitive data from your hard drive by overwriting it several times with carefully selected patterns. Eraser is an advanced security tool (for Windows), which allows you to completely remove sensitive data from your hard drive by overwriting it several times with carefully selected patterns. Works with Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP and DOS. Eraser is FREE software and its source code is released under GNU General Public License.
Putty - Telnet/SSH Client
PuTTY is a free implementation of Telnet and SSH for Win32 and Unix platforms, along with an xterm terminal emulator. It is written and maintained primarily by Simon Tatham.
Uniform Server
The minimal server solution for windows - 3.6Mb only. It includes latest versions of Apache2, Perl5, PHP5, MySQL4, phpMyAdmin,... NO INSTALLATION REQUIRED! NO REGISTRY DUST!!! Just unpack and start. Set up your webserver in seconds and web away....
Tor (The Onion Router)
Tor is an implementation of second-generation onion routing - an anonymity system enabling its users to communicate anonymously on the Internet. Originally sponsored by the US Naval Research Laboratory, Tor became an Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) project in late 2004. The EFF supported Tor financially until November 2005, and continues to provide web hosting for the project. Easily configured and run from Windows.
The GIMP
GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It works on many operating systems, in many languages.
ClamWin
ClamWin is a (world class) Free Antivirus for Microsoft Windows 98/Me/2000/XP and 2003. It provides a graphical user interface to the Clam AntiVirus engine. ClamWin Free Antivirus comes with an easy installer and open source code. You may download and use it absolutely free of charge.
WinMerge
WinMerge is an Open Source visual text file differencing and merging tool for Win32 platforms. It is highly useful for determing what has changed between project versions, and then merging changes between versions.
Launchy
Launchy is a free windows utility designed to help you forget about your start menu, your desktop icons, and your file manager. Launchy indexes and launches your applications, documents, project files, folders, and bookmarks with just a few keystrokes!
Ethereal
Ethereal is a network protocol analyzer for Unix and Windows. It allows you to examine data from a live network or from a capture file on disk. You can interactively browse the capture data, viewing summary and detail information for each packet.
UltraVNC
UltraVNC is an easy to use, fast and free sotware that can display the screen of another computer (via internet or network) on your own screen. The program allows you to use your mouse and keyboard to control the other PC remotely. It means that you can work on a remote computer, as if you were sitting in front of it, right from your current location.
Paint.NET
Paint.NET is image and photo manipulation software designed to be used on computers that run Windows 2000, XP, or Server 2003. It started development at Washington State University as an undergraduate senior design project mentored by Microsoft, and is currently being maintained by some of the alumni that originally worked on it. It is meant to be a free replacement for the MS Paint software that comes with all Windows operating systems. The programming language used to create Paint.NET is C#.
Notepad++
Notepad++ is a free source code editor (and Notepad replacement) which supports several programming languages running under the MS Windows environment. Extremely light and with huge number of features.
eMule
eMule is a good file sharing client which relies on edonkey and kad networks
WinDirStat
WinDirStat is a disk usage statistics viewer and cleanup tool for Microsoft Windows (all current variants).
The worlds most famous browser which is completely free and open source. It runs on Windows too.
FileZilla
FileZilla is a fast FTP and SFTP client for Windows with a lot of features. FileZilla Server is a reliable FTP server.
OpenOffice.org
OpenOffice.org is a multiplatform and multilingual office suite and an open-source project. Compatible with all other major office suites, the product is free to download, use, and distribute
Thunderbird
Simple to use, powerful, and customizable, Thunderbird is a full-featured email application. Thunderbird supports IMAP and POP mail protocols, as well as HTML mail formatting. Easily import your existing email accounts and messages. Built-in RSS capabilities, powerful quick search, spell check as you type, global inbox, deleting attachments and advanced message filtering round out Thunderbird's modern feature set.
Gaim
Install Gaim from http://gaim.sourceforge.net and chat with your friends who are using any major messenger application. Currently, it supports Yahoo, msn, Aol, Jabber and many others.
7-Zip
7-Zip is a file archiver with the highest compression ratio. The program supports 7z, ZIP, CAB, RAR, ARJ, GZIP, BZIP2, TAR, CPIO, RPM and DEB formats. Compression ratio in the new 7z format is 30-50% better than ratio in ZIP format. Has performed well on Windows.
VLC
VLC (initially VideoLAN Client) is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, ...) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network.
Audacity
The Free, Cross-Platform Sound Editor
Audacity is free, open source software for recording and editing sounds. It is available for Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux, and other operating systems.
TrueCrypt
Free open-source disk encryption software for Windows XP/2000/2003 and Linux
Eraser
Eraser is a secure data removal tool for Windows. It completely removes sensitive data from your hard drive by overwriting it several times with carefully selected patterns. Eraser is an advanced security tool (for Windows), which allows you to completely remove sensitive data from your hard drive by overwriting it several times with carefully selected patterns. Works with Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP and DOS. Eraser is FREE software and its source code is released under GNU General Public License.
Putty - Telnet/SSH Client
PuTTY is a free implementation of Telnet and SSH for Win32 and Unix platforms, along with an xterm terminal emulator. It is written and maintained primarily by Simon Tatham.
Uniform Server
The minimal server solution for windows - 3.6Mb only. It includes latest versions of Apache2, Perl5, PHP5, MySQL4, phpMyAdmin,... NO INSTALLATION REQUIRED! NO REGISTRY DUST!!! Just unpack and start. Set up your webserver in seconds and web away....
Tor (The Onion Router)
Tor is an implementation of second-generation onion routing - an anonymity system enabling its users to communicate anonymously on the Internet. Originally sponsored by the US Naval Research Laboratory, Tor became an Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) project in late 2004. The EFF supported Tor financially until November 2005, and continues to provide web hosting for the project. Easily configured and run from Windows.
The GIMP
GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It works on many operating systems, in many languages.
ClamWin
ClamWin is a (world class) Free Antivirus for Microsoft Windows 98/Me/2000/XP and 2003. It provides a graphical user interface to the Clam AntiVirus engine. ClamWin Free Antivirus comes with an easy installer and open source code. You may download and use it absolutely free of charge.
WinMerge
WinMerge is an Open Source visual text file differencing and merging tool for Win32 platforms. It is highly useful for determing what has changed between project versions, and then merging changes between versions.
Launchy
Launchy is a free windows utility designed to help you forget about your start menu, your desktop icons, and your file manager. Launchy indexes and launches your applications, documents, project files, folders, and bookmarks with just a few keystrokes!
Ethereal
Ethereal is a network protocol analyzer for Unix and Windows. It allows you to examine data from a live network or from a capture file on disk. You can interactively browse the capture data, viewing summary and detail information for each packet.
UltraVNC
UltraVNC is an easy to use, fast and free sotware that can display the screen of another computer (via internet or network) on your own screen. The program allows you to use your mouse and keyboard to control the other PC remotely. It means that you can work on a remote computer, as if you were sitting in front of it, right from your current location.
Paint.NET
Paint.NET is image and photo manipulation software designed to be used on computers that run Windows 2000, XP, or Server 2003. It started development at Washington State University as an undergraduate senior design project mentored by Microsoft, and is currently being maintained by some of the alumni that originally worked on it. It is meant to be a free replacement for the MS Paint software that comes with all Windows operating systems. The programming language used to create Paint.NET is C#.
Notepad++
Notepad++ is a free source code editor (and Notepad replacement) which supports several programming languages running under the MS Windows environment. Extremely light and with huge number of features.
eMule
eMule is a good file sharing client which relies on edonkey and kad networks
WinDirStat
WinDirStat is a disk usage statistics viewer and cleanup tool for Microsoft Windows (all current variants).

