µTorrent – I’ve used a few BitTorrent programs in the past, but I love µTorrent. It’s lightweight but feature packed. If your ISP is anything like mine, just having the scheduler to download at off-peak times is a god send.
CCleaner – This has got to be one of my favourite apps of all time. Just the ability to change start up with out using the MSCONFIG promt is great, but it gets better. The default Windows uninstaller is so slow, CCleaner has it’s own programs uninstaller built in, saving a lot of time. Oh, and did I mention is also has a registry cleaner?
ClamWin Free Antivirus – I haven’t been using this for too long, I tried it out because I got annoyed with AVG Free taking three hours a day to do a virus scan. This is quick, easy to use and lightweight.
Defraggler – Another good app from the guys at Piriform. The default windows defragger takes a lifetime. That’s time I just don’t have. This tool does the job in a fifth of the time. Get it.
Dup Detector – Not everyone will need this, but if you download a lot of porn pictures (I don’t, I’m just trying to use it as an example) you’ll find you have hundreds of dupes. This tool scans folders looking for pictures which are identicle then it asks you which copy you want to remove, giving you such information like file size and image size so you can keep the better copy.
FileZilla Client – Quite possible the best FTP client I have ever used.
Foxit Reader – If you haven’t noticed by now, I hate bloatware. Adobe Acrobat Reader is one of the worse programs for it. This is a great alternative. It doesn’t take three days to open, it doesn’t ask to update when you’re opening a PDF file.
K-Lite Mega Codec Pack – I’m not sure why Microsoft don’t have basic things like DVD codecs built in to Windows as standard. But hey, this will sort it out and add lots of other codecs. Also included is the Media Player Classic. Remember that? A very simple media player. I love it.
Notepad++ – The best text editor I’ve ever used. Simple things like Find & Replace are a breeze with this program. I use it for editing HTML, PHP, MySQL and CSS. It also supports lots of other languages.
Paint.NET – When I just want to simply edit a picture without waiting for Photoshop to open, I use Paint.Net. It’s neat and tidy and has a lot of features.
Pidgin – I hate all the IM clients out there, they’re bloated and too many useless “features”. I have something like five MSN accounts, three AIM accounts and two Yahoo accounts. This lets me keep them all in one program. Easy to use, no bells and whistles, just a basic cross platform IM client.
Skype – I love Skype, it is built into my mobile phone and home phone. I used to make a lot of calls to America and Mexico when I was drunk using my land line phone, now I can do it for cheap and free at times. A real money saver.
Spybot S&D – I never get spyware or any thing like that any more, but I keep this as a security blanket.
Torrent Harvester – This hasn’t been updated since 2006. So if anyone knows of a program like this, please let me know. It searches all the main torrent sites to find what you’re looking for. In the past I’d use sites like TorrentSpy.com (R.I.P), Mininova.org, Thepiratebay.org. Now I just use this tool and it searches all the sites, even ones I’ve never heard of.
XAMPP – I like to play a lot with PHP & MySql scripts. This is perfect for the task. An easy install, clean interface and everything you need to get running a test server on your own computer.

Do you know any other good programs which are free and very useful? Leave a comment and I’ll add them to the list. Sharing is caring.