Last week we talked about five pieces of Open Source Software that everyone should know about. This week, I’d like to focus on free software that is not open source. There is a huge difference between free software that is open source and free software that is not. The main difference being is the fact is that open source software is open source, in other words you as a normal user have access to the source code of the actual program. The following programs are free and you can download and use them in non-commercial settings free of charge which makes using them on your personal PC perfectly legal.

• 5) Microsoft Defender (Beta 2): If you’re looking for free software in your fight against all the spyware and adware out there on the net, then one of your options is Microsoft’s Defender program. Currently in beta but fully functional, this is one of the best free spyware defense programs you can download.

• 4) Picasa: When it comes to photo management, Picasa is probably one of the best free programs you can download for this task. Picasa allows you to share photos through the Picasa Web Albums (think Flickr but by Google) section on Google and also gives you a small set of tools to handle everyday photo tasks like red-eye reduction or cropping.

• 3) Trillian: Trillian is an all one instant messaging software that allows you to connect to several of the more popular IM protocols like AIM, Yahoo, and MSN. It will also connect to IRC for chatting. Trillian comes in two flavors a feature reduced version that is free and a pay version that expands Trillian’s feature set. While the pay version has more features, the Trillian Basic program will allow to connect to most of the IMing protocols available (minus Jabber, which is what Google uses for Google Talk).

• 2) Textpad: When it comes to editing basic text files, Notepad, the program included in Windows is about as simple as it gets. Textpad is one of the best replacements for Notepad you can download. This program is what they call unrestricted shareware. What that means is that while you are encouraged to pay for the program, you have full access to all of the programs features without paying a dime. With Textpad, you will occasionally get a pop up dialog when you save a file asking for you to pay for the program. However, you can use Textpad and all of it’s features from the moment you install the application.

• 1) Visual Studio Express: Right before Microsoft released the latest version of their .Net toolset including Visual Studio 2005, they offered what they were calling Express versions of Visual Studio. These Express editions were offered free of charge and you were limited to installing 1 Express version plus the Express version of SQL Server 2005. Coming in flavors for C#, Visual Baisc, C++, J#, and Web Development, the user has full access to many of the same features available in the full version of Visual Studio. This allowed programmers a way to legally develop in Microsoft development tools on their home desktops without having to pay the outrageous price of Visual Studio. The good news is that Microsoft expanded the free offering period indefinitely so you can download one of the Express versions of Visual Studio and begin developing today.

I hope you find some of these programs useful. If you know of any other good free applications, be sure to leave a comment about them.

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