Good Free (and Legal) Software

hey Goodhart have you got a pic as your avatar that you like or will you keep changing it til you look even more professorial than before

DVD Flick is a pretty kick ass open source DVD creator. it'll take any file format and encode to DVD and burn in one click. only downfall is there are no menu options. if your burning say an .AVI file it burns as is and starts from the beginning of the AVI file in the DVD player

Most of what I have comes from the people at CNET and ZDNET

I have also downloaded from The Major Geeks site....

and also from Hack Safe

OpenOffice(.org) (cross-platform word processor),
Google Docs (online word processor),
Amarok [Linux (and maybe Windows--I'm confused) media player]
The Gimp (previously GimpShop) (Linux, Windows, and possibly Mac graphics program)
Audacity (cross-platform audio editor)
(K)ubuntu (operating system)
Gmail (webmail)
Blogger (blog hosting)

Sharing some of my bookmarks. These lists have came in handy many many times for me:

Ultimate List of Free Windows Software from Microsoft

List of Alternative Open Source Programs

The 46 Best-ever Freeware Utilities

JetAudio this rocks as a media player. available at www.download.com
Jetico firewall also at download.com
Wolfenstein Enemy Territory/& mod. True Combat Elite the best free nline multiplayer first person shooter. (google for locations)

that's some....

KDEnlive : non linear video editor for KDE (linux)

http://www.kdenlive.org/

Gimp (sorry, i dont know/feel like posting the word as a link) its like a poormans illustrator

VLC Is a GREAT video player, there is basically not a single format it can't play, if it can't play something then you're missing codecs from your system. VLC is well known, even if you haven't heard of it.

Oh yeah, codecs? There's actually a big package avalible FREE called K-Lite Codec Pack . There's a lite version and a full version of it when you click the download button. If you have the HD space I'd get the full deal and install it, there's pretty much every single codec in there that you'd ever need and it's easy to install.

Let's face it though, the Government taps into our phone lines, reads our mail, and takes our computer passwords (and the odd hooligan that knows what a computer mouse is). There's a program I personally reccomend that I've been using ever since I got my first computer a long while ago. CCleaner (Crap Cleaner for short) It will clean your cache's, internet history(s). And also offers cleaning options for installed programs it finds you have (that includes clearing recent file history and whatnot). There is also a feature to search your registry for dead keys, or otherwise information leading to files/programs that aren't on your computer anymore, and most people don't realize how many reg keys just sit on your computer doing nothing.

Got Norton Antivirus? Fuckem, that software is grossly unessesary and people spend hundreds of dollars buying yearly liscenses just to keep using software that everyone praises as "The best antivirus eva!". It's a VERY large program, with a large amount of software along with it that is apparently required to run Norton. Aside from that, it's also a HUGE memory hog, and from what I've seen, it just doesn't do that good of a job. AVG on the other hand is one of the best programs I've seen, I didn't believe it myself until I used it, which before hand I was using nothing because there was basically nothing other than Norton. This program is so lightweight that I run it at startup and during gaming and it doesn't seem to slow down my computer at all, not to mention the fact it usually blocks most software that's malicious even before you have a chance to figure out you just downloaded a bad program/file. This is just the free edition (PM me should you wan the professional version) but the free version is all that you need basically, I just use the pro version just because it says pro..lol.

ISO Buster is very handy if you deal with a lot of different downloaded games and movies like I do, and some things just come in weird disc formats. Iso hunter can read/extract data from pretty much any disk image (haven't tested mac .dmg files yet but I'm sure it probably does those too) and if you have the money to pony up for the pro version it includes some features for data recovery, but again, the free version is all you should need.

I'll add more to the list when I get home, but seeing as I'm not on my windows machine right now, I can't remember all the different software I have. For now toodles and enjoy my long (long enough eh) post.

GIMP and VLC Media Player are my top two picks of the year.

Any OSS.

Agava Antispam Servant is an excellent free E-Mail filter Comodo Firewall and Comodo BoClean antimalware are also 2 great products Sketchup is a great 3D sketching program Also lookout for www.giveawayoftheday.com for full versions of software for free (some restrictions apply)

Narbacular Drop is a great free game created by students that went on to create Portal for valve software. Very fun game play.

This may sound a bit naive, but Quicktime Player, has always been the most stable video player on my systems and fairly robust as well.

Super is a multimedia conversion/extraction tool that pretty much does what it says it will, though the interface is a bit complex. Remember to right click to get a very important menu to appear.

Cadsoft EAGLE, the Schematic/PCB design software. The freeware version is quite useful, and you can buy a more full-featured version. In addition to its intended purpose, I've found it useful as a sort of generic "measured drawing" tool (where you draw shapes that will have an exact size on the finished printout...)

I don't think I've been too unhappy with any of the stuff downloaded from reputable download sites like Versiontracker.com or Sourceforge, although installing software from source can be annoyingly painful.