While it's lost out to Chrome in the battle for desktop dominance, its free, open-source approach and active community of users and add-on developers makes Firefox an excellent alternative for your PC's web browser. LastPass takes the pain out of password management, providing users with an excellent cross-platform password management tool that allows users to easily keep track of logins, passwords, and other online credentials through the use of an encrypted password vault that only you know the password to.
The service provides free cross-platform syncing, a password generator, and an auto-form fill tool for a variety of browsers, with premium subscriptions unlocking more features such as premium two factor authentication, account sharing, and LastPass for Applications. Why blow your budget on expensive subscriptions for office applications like spreadsheet or document editors, or be dependent on the vagaries of the cloud with browser-based tools when you can get an excellent productivity suite for your desktop free, open-source, and offline?
That's the idea behind The Document Foundation's LibreOffice , a free suite of office tools that provide users with a complete set of productivity tools for handling everything from documents, spreadsheets, slideshow presentations, and more. LibreOffice is that wonderful combination of free and polished, making it a great alternative to expensive professional office tools.
Need to keep in touch with friends and family from across the world? Tell them to download and install Skype on their computer, and do the same with yours.
Skype remains popular because it makes free video calls over the internet possible, even with contacts that are literally halfway around the world. The only problem: you need a good internet connection to maximize it. Need to play that video or audio clip stored in an obscure file format? StumbleUpon is a fantastic way to discover new and interesting things online, and the Windows 8 app makes it even easier to stumble upon your next favorite video or article by updating the live tile with websites tailored to match your tastes.
Some of the information on films and actors especially the more obscure ones is sourced from Wikipedia and can be a little anemic, but the beautiful design and easy discovery paths more than make up for that. Download: PeaZip Free. Chances are that you use at least one messaging service to stay in touch with your friends during the day. With so many options to choose from, there's no way we could pick the best messaging service, because it all depends on what your friends use.
So why not have all of them in one place? Rambox is our pick for the best messaging app on Windows. The app simply adds a new tab for every service you use, letting you keep up with every group in one window. It includes some extra features that make it more useful than opening these apps in your browser, and you can easily close one program when it's time to focus. While Rambox's free plan has some limitations, it offers more for free than competitors like Franz. Download: Rambox Free, subscription available.
A clipboard manager is an important Windows app because it saves you a lot of time. Instead of only being able to keep one item on your PC's clipboard at once, clipboard managers let you keep track of the last several dozen entries you've copied. ClipClip is a great Windows 10 clipboard manager to use. In addition to logging what you copy, the app also lets you pin frequent snippets for easy access, and create folders for easily pasting canned text like addresses, email responses, and similar.
The app doesn't overwhelm you with options, but does let you tweak its hotkeys, disable clipboard monitoring when needed, and choose what the app ignores.
Add it to your list of basic Windows software and you'll never have to worry about managing your PC's clipboard again. Download: ClipClip Free. It's not humanly possible to create strong passwords for every account and remember them all. That's why you need a password manager.
It's a secure service that creates good passwords for you and locks them behind one master password, which is the only one you have to remember. Bitwarden is the best free password manager and one of the most important pieces of software you can download. In addition to the desktop app, you'll need to install the Bitwarden extension in your browser of choice to easily auto-fill passwords.
Follow our complete guide to getting started with a password manager to learn how to get started. Download: Bitwarden Free, subscription available. Backing up your PC is essential, as there's only a natural disaster, break-in, or malware attack could wipe out all the files on your machine.
You don't want to lose all your documents, photos, and other files and have to start from scratch. We like Backblaze as an essential backup service for Windows For just a few dollars a month, the service backs up everything on your PC, as well as any external drives you connect, to the Backblaze cloud.
Some of these programs are pretty obvious, like Steam and Google Chrome, but there are plenty of other everyday apps that deserve to be on your system, and plenty others that are handy every so often. Thanks to a bundling service called Ninite , you can download and install most of these in one go.
First, we're going to give a brief overview of the programs we suggest installing with Ninite. Then we're going to list a few more of our go-to apps. Don't let your new system live long without them and, if you need it, here's our guide to the best antivirus for gaming PCs. Ninite builds a custom installer for you of the applications you want, then installs all of them in one go.
It's mercifully free of the annoying toolbars and free offers and other adware most installers try to sneak onto your PC. It's simple, and it works perfectly. It also offers a lot of software you probably don't need, so we picked out what we'd recommend for a new gaming rig.
Avira - Windows' built-in tools do the job well these days, but if you want added security, this is what we consider the best free antivirus available. Discord - The de facto gaming messaging client, and one we use every day. It also has a great mobile app. Join the PC Gamer Club and come chat with us!
Zoom - You're probably going to get roped into a Zoom call sooner or later. Might as well be prepared. Free and lightweight and it'll never bug you to pay for it. It's perfect for me because it lets me tag images, search for them on a new computer, and quickly access RAW images the ones that comes my my Canon high-end camera. The Spotify app is what I normally use for music streaming because I know most of my favorite bands like The National and Frightened Rabbit are a click away.
It's also a great app for curation--I've found new releases and singles faster than other music app. I prefer the desktop version of the collaborative workplace app Slack for one reason alone: It reduces clutter in my browser window. You can also use the app online. Without so many tabs, I can quickly check conversations and send files.
There's also a Mac version and even one for Linux and your phone and tablet. You need some diversions from work, right?
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