The Florida Citizen’s 10 Best Free Software Downloads

With hundreds of thousands of applications (apps) and programs available, it’s impossible for the average end user to keep up. If you can name it, more than likely there’s an app for it.

The differences between apps and programs are synonymous.  Apps usually perform a specific function such as games, spreadsheets or databases. Programs or system software, are a function of a computer’s operating system (OS) and execute code to manage a computer’s resources.

Rather than focus on apps for mobile devices (the Apple Store has over 500,000 and counting), we will concentrate on system software with a few apps thrown in.

In The 10 Best Free Software Downloads listed last year, we found some real winners and this year’s freeware list is even better.

Avast free antivirus – Avast displaced last years top antivirus pick, AVG, by detecting and blocking threats that AVG failed to recognize.  During our tests, threats detected triggered a voice alert and visual on-screen warning while simultaneously blocking the threat with suggested actions to take. Easily configurable, Avast has a friendly user interface allowing users to execute and schedule boot time scans, standard and custom scans.  Avast is feature rich with many options, including Android protection that stand up to many paid products.

CCleaner - From Piriform software, CCleaner repeats as a top 10 free utility for computer maintenance. The Department of Defense and National Security Administration-level cleaning options make it even harder for anyone to consider another registry cleaner. Tools include a registry back up function, drive wiping tool, free space scrubbing, and the option to choose what cookies to retain or delete.  This utility removes unused files and fragments from your system significantly improving performance.  CCleaner should be a standard utility in your computer maintenance arsenal.

Smart Defrag –  From Iobit for PC’s. With the install it and forget it ‘feature’, defragmentation of your internal or external hard drives is a breeze.  Smart Defrag automatically runs in the background and is fast and efficient, speeding up your hard drives to run at peak performance.  After testing, the boot-time defrag is a nice touch and is indeed, faster than Window’s defragmenter as is claimed. A color-coded defrag map on the handsome interface, shows the volume of fragmentation, frequently used files unmovable files and free space.   A highly recommended utility.

Google Chrome –  Google includes page-loading speed as a miniscule ranking factor for websites on their search engine.  So it is no surprise that the internet giant comes out with one speedy browser.   Known for their clean minimalist interfaces, the Chrome web browser loads ‘heavy’ web pages with complex apps quickly. Standard security features include phishing and malware detection complete with a loud warning page if a website is suspect.  Even if you use other web browsers, Chrome is worth a try

Google Earth Free – For PC, Mac and Linux, Google Earth 6 is free software (also available in Pro and Enterprise), that allows you to ‘fly’ virtually anywhere. View galaxies, dive beneath oceans, skim over terrain and model buildings in 3D.  Google Earth is a great research tool for satellite and historical imagery, locating businesses or just simply for fun. Beats Angry Birds any day of the week.

OpenOffice 3 – From Apache, OpenOffice  for Windows, Mac Linux and Solaris makes our list again as an open source project, making it freely distributable, among other things.  As an alternative to paid applications, OpenOffice is comprised of six applications including a word processor, spreadsheet, graphics editor, drawing, equation editor, and database.  OpenOffice is extendable and comes in a variety of languages.  Truly an open community project OpenOffice is a winner.

Skype –  From Microsoft, Skype is a VoIP software application for Windows, Mac and Linux that allow users to make Skype-to-Skype phone and video calls to anyone in the world free of charge.  Landline phone calls are available on a pay-as-you-go or subscription basis.  With smartphone capabilities, Skype is definitely worth a look.

GIMP 2.6.12 –.  For Windows and Mac, GIMP (acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program), is a high quality graphics and image editor.   GIMP performs as well as any paid program, from simple image retouching to complex graphics editing.  With image, layering, filter, painting, gradient and drawing settings to name a few, this program is an adequate replacement of the potentially cost prohibitive Photoshop.

PrimoPDF –  From Nitro for Windows, PrimoPDF is a strong alternative to Adobe Acrobat.  Anything that you can print, you can convert to a Portable Document File.  Primo is simple and easy to use with drag-and-drop PDF creation.  Their website offers a 14-day free trial of their Nirtro PDF professional, if you need full-featured PDF conversion, but the free version was just fine for us.  A nice tool to have on your desktop.

Audacity® - A GNU open source project for Windows, Mac and Linux/Unix.  Audacity graced our list last year and with every year their audio recording, editing and sound conversion software just gets better.  Audacity® does just about everything the pricy audio apps can do.  For aspiring sound engineers, producers and artists, you can’t beat the price. $.00.

The above-mentioned freeware is purely random and does not constitute any rank order or endorsement by The Florida Citizen of any of the products listed.