10 Useful Free Windows Apps

Posted August 21st, 2008 in Applications and Windows (Updated August 29th, 2008)

This post contains a list of 10 useful free Windows applications that I usually install on my Windows machines. They are all available for free and I haven't included obvious stuff like Mozilla Firefox.

Update 29 August 2008: I have posted another 9 More Free Windows Apps.

1. Taskbar Shuffle

One of the really annoying things about the Windows taskbar is that there's no way to change the order the application buttons appear; when you open a new program it goes to the end or groups with other apps depending on your task bar preferences. Taskbar Shuffle lets you drag and drop them and change the order. I find this really useful when I have multiple applications open and can keep particular ones in particular places on the bar.

2. Teracopy

Teracopy is a replacement for Windows' built in file copy function. It allows you to pause and resume file transfers and has excellent error recovery. Unlike Windows' file copy function, if one file fails to copy it will continue to copy the other ones, so you are not stuck trying to figure out what you've already copied and what you have left to copy.

3. PuTTY and 4. PuTTY Connection Manager

PuTTY is an SSH client for Windows so you can connect to SSH servers. It's unfortunately missing a tabbed interface so you end up with multiple applications open for each terminal session you need to connect to. The PuTTY Connection Manager attempts to fix this by having a tabbed interface with multiple PuTTY intances running within it. It's a good concept but I find it a little annoying sometimes because you need to Alt+Tab twice to get to other applications.

5. Filezilla

On the same theme as PuTTY, Filezilla is a GUI FTP and SFTP client so you can easily transfer files to your web server. There are Linux and OS/X versions of Filezilla as well as the Windows one.

6. CutePDF Writer

Having used KDE on Linux almost exclusively for the past 6 years I got really used to being able to "print" to PDF from any application and miss this function when using Windows. CutePDF Writer adds this functionality to Windows so you can save anything to a PDF document using the print function.

7. Faststone Image Viewer

Another frustration with Windows is the default image viewer, which is unable to work out that a photo is portrait and flip it automatically. When it does it takes ages, and then prompts you to re-save when you go to view another image it even though you're just looking at it. Enter Faststone Image Viewer which is able to work out the orientation of the photo and shows them quickly.

8. Kdiff3

Kdiff3 is a diff program for comparing the contents of two or three different versions of a file. This is really useful to me as a developer and I've been using Kdiff3 on Linux for years. Fortunately there's also a Windows version.

9. RarZilla

RarZilla is a free decompression tool for RAR archives. It will decompress RAR files using drag and drop and also when double clicking RAR files in Windows Explorer.

10. Cygwin

Cygwin is a BASH shell for Windows. Once Cygwin is installed you have the ability to run a lot of useful commands that aren't usually available from the Windows command line it's possible to recompile or port Unix applications to Windows running under Cygwin.

If 10 isn't enough for you check out my second free Windows apps post: 9 More Free Windows Apps.