When it comes to Windows software, the best is often free. We've compiled a list of our favorite free tools that can boost productivity and add a lot of functionality to your computer, from antivirus protection to entertaining photo editing. No Windows computer is complete without a powerful office suite that can handle document creation, spreadsheets, and presentations. While Microsoft Office is expensive, there are plenty of free alternatives such as LibreOffice. It is a comprehensive, all-in-one office suite that is compatible with MS Office documents and offers alternatives for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Another essential piece of software is a file manager that can keep track of what you copy to your clipboard. Free apps such as ClipClip make this task easy by allowing you to pin frequent snippets of text, and you can tweak its settings to tailor its behavior to your needs. If you're a coder, Notepad++ is a popular text editor and source code viewer that has tabs support and syntaxes for as many as 78 programming languages. When os weekly comes to photo editing, many people turn to Photoshop, but that program can be a bit pricey and not everyone wants the extra features that come with it. Gimp is a lightweight, open-source alternative that's just as capable but costs much less. It's perfect for anyone who isn't interested in the extra features of Photoshop, but still needs a robust tool for photo and video editing. If you're looking for a straightforward PDF reader, try Adobe Acrobat Reader. Its streamlined interface makes it easy to navigate, and it supports the popular.ISO,.CUE,.BIN, and.RAW disk image formats. For a more advanced option, check out WinCDEmu, an open-source CD/DVD emulator that can be used to mount ISO files and other disc images as disk drives on your computer. Backup software is a must-have, and while most programs offer premium features for a fee, Clonezilla is an excellent open-source solution that can create full system images of your disks. It can also clone disks with different file systems, making it a great choice for moving data between computers. If you're looking for a media player that can play most of the major audio and video formats, VLC is an excellent choice. Its modern Fluent UI is simple to navigate, and it supports an impressive number of media file types, including a wide range of codecs. If you're looking for an even more powerful media player, check out Rise Media Player, which is built on the same Fluent framework and offers a number of additional features.
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