The best in free music, games, films, downloads and chat

Security and protection

AVG Antivirus - Security

A free antivirus that competes with purchase products such as Norton.

Spybot - search and destroy - Security

The best spyware remover available. Use with Ad-Aware for maximum protection.

Comodo firewall - Security

The best free firewall available. Out performs most paid for firewalls.

Avast Antivirus - Security

A very solid anti-virus but ranks below AVG for coverage.

Ad-Aware - Security

A very solid spyware remover. You must purchase to get full functions though. Use with Spybot for maximum protection.

Applications

Firefox - Web browser

The best web browser available. Safer and faster than Internet Explorer.

Super - Video converter

Super manages to do a better job at converting video than most purchase products. Great for converting video files to and from mobile phones, PSP's and iPods.

Filezilla - FTP Client

Essential for web designers but not much use for others. Currently the best FTP client available.

Win-Rar - Compressing & archiving

A slight improvement over Windows XP's default with better compression rates. Not an essential download.

Music and entertainment

Currently everyones favourite source for MP3 downloads.

Napster - Music

An alternative to the popular iTunes

Creative Software

An Opensource alternative to Adobe's Illustrator. A very complete vector program that is feature packed. Give this a try.

GIMP - Photo manipulation

Opensource. A great free alternative to PhotoShop for designers on a budget. Does not support CMYK but flawless other than that.

Paint.NET - Painting and photo manipulation

Designed to replace the Window's Paint. A very comprehensive painting and manipulation app that rivals 'Painter'.

NVU - Web editor

A free Dreamweaver alternative. Could do with a little more support for CSS but a very solid performer.

Picasa - Photo organiser

Google's Picasa is a great way to organise a large photo album. Locate, organise, manipulate and share photos