Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Free Applications for Windows

What a lot of people don't realize is that there are some very good quality software packages that are freeware that are just as effective as the paid ones.

(Side note: for some reason, what I just typed reminds me of a quote from the movie "Real Genius" - starring a very young Val Kilmer - "there's a lot of decaffeinated brands on the market that are just as tasty as the real thing". Classic when seen in context).

There are probably about 10,000 sites that have done this, but there is a site called freeapps.co.uk that promotes many of these products. It has a list of products for the Windows operating system here:
www.freeapps.co.uk/windows

What's kind of nice is that a lot of the things my student end up wondering how to get for free - for example, free anti-virus, free digital photo editors, free alternatives to Microsoft Office...most of the common software packages are listed there, and you can click on one for a more detailed description and a link to the publisher's Web site. This is a site that's trustworthy, and it does link directly to the download sites - you won't have to worry about spyware, you are downloading from the people who created the software.

If you are looking for something free (and also LEGAL), this is a nice little site to check out.

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