David's Freeware Collection!

OpenOffice.org replaces my Microsoft Office installation. Is it as good? I think it’s better! You won’t have any problems with adjusting to it; the basic features are similar to those in Microsoft Office.



OpenOffice.org

If you're looking for a less traditional office suite, try SSuite Office - The Fifth Element. It is completely free for download, and is only 57 MB in size after installation. It also has more than 30 very useful applications. This is not your father's office suite!



SSuite Office - The Fifth Element

Receive a Microsoft Word document, Excel spreadsheet or PowerPoint presentation but cannot open it? Don't fret. You do not need to shell out money for Microsoft Office. All you need is a free viewer. Viewers let you open Microsoft Office files. You can look at them and print them. But you cannot edit the files.
Fortunately, there are viewers available for free on the Microsoft Web site. Click the links below to access them without having to search the Microsoft site.

Word Viewer

Excel Viewer

PowerPoint Viewer 2007

The new MS Office programs use newer file formats than the older versions. You'll need to download the Compatability Pack.

Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats

GnuCash is a powerful open source accounting program, suitable for both casual and advanced users. I’m not a rich guy, I don’t have a great income, so I always try to control my expenses as much as I can. The great thing about this program is that it can be used by people like me, that don’t know anything about accounting. I just type in my expenses and my income, so that I can keep an eye on the overall balance. However if you are an expert accountant the program should work for you too.



GnuCash

Grisbi is open source personal accounting software for practically any platform/operating system. The project strives to provide simple and easy to use software for managing your accounts. Grisbi lets you keep track of all transactions on your accounts. Grouping of expenses makes it easy to see if you are using too much money according to your budget for a certain category.



Grisbi

SpeedCrunch is a much more powerful calculator than the one that comes with Windows. With more than 50 built-in math functions and a customizable appearance, it's the only calculator you'll ever use.



SpeedCrunch

FreeCalc is a replacement for the existing Windows Calculator. It adds a printable/savable transaction tape, sizable display, tray icon, digit groupings, color schemes, double and triple zero keys, visible memory value, and an always-on-top setting.



FreeCalc

Scribus is an Open Source desktop publishing program that brings award-winning professional page layout to Linux/UNIX, Mac OS X and Windows desktops with a combination of "press-ready" output and new approaches to page layout. Underneath the modern and user friendly interface, Scribus supports professional publishing features, such as CMYK color, separations, Spot Colors, ICC color management and versatile PDF creation.



Scribus

FontNetExplorer can help you search for fonts over the internet as it has the best websites indexed and lets you search through them within the program. Best of all, it doesn’t require installation; just unpack and run.



FontNetExplorer

AMP Font Viewer lets you view, install, uninstall and organize your fonts. An interesting feature is that you can “test” fonts before deciding to install them.



AMP Font Viewer

Lingoes is an easy and intuitive dictionary and text translation software. It offers lookup dictionaries, full text translation, capture word on screen, translate selected text and pronunciation of words in over 80 languages.



Lingoes

Personal Video Database is simply the best movie collection manager. It can retrieve information about your movies from several internet databases, includes loan manager and full unicode support. And it has a nice layout too.



Personal Video Database

Ant Movie Catalog is a free program made to manage your collection of movies on DVD, CD (VideoCD, DivX, ...) and tapes.



Ant Movie Catalog

SimpleOCR is a powerful and easy to use freeware program that can handle machine writing and hand writing and that can be used directly with your scanner.



SimpleOCR

PDF XChange Viewer is a very good PDF reader, a lot faster than Adobe Reader. And there’s even more: you can convert your PDF files to various file formats, including BMP, JPG, PNG or TIFF and can be integrated with Firefox or Internet Explorer. (Of course, if you're still using IE, you haven't been paying attention!)



PDF XChange Viewer

As a small and fast PDF viewer, Foxit Reader currently has over 50 million users all around the world.



Foxit Reader

Sumatra PDF is a fairly young project aiming to create a small, simple and fast PDF viewer. It's main features are showing PDFs and starting up really fast - and it does both just perfectly. Apart from the mentioned features Sumatra PDF is very portable since it has no external dependencies - it is just one file, so you can easily put on your USB stick and bring it with you.



Sumatra PDF

PDFCreator is a very good freeware PDF writer that can create PDF files out of any printable document. It can be installed as a standalone or as a server application, Just install on a single computer and have it available on all the machines in your network.



PDFCreator

TinyPDF is a freeware alternative to the Adobe PDF writer. It installs as a virtual printer on your system, and anything printed to this printer will be saved as a PDF file. It works with any Windows application that supports printing.



TinyPDF

Ghostscript is an open source program that inteprets PostScript (PS) and PDF in order to output them into raster format either for the screen or on a printer. This allows viewing of PS files and even printing eventhough you migth not have a PS enabled printer.



Ghostscript

Essential PIM stands for Essential Personal Information Manager, and it allows you to keep all your information in electronic form. All your appointments, tasks, to do lists, notes, contacts and email messages are stored in a graphical and easily accessible form. Fully Netbook compatible!



EssentialPIM

GanttProject is a free project scheduling application written in Java.



GanttProject

Even though it's about 50% bigger than it used to be, LogMeIn Hamachi is still pretty dang small - and very useful. Its zero-config VPN makes remote access to your systems a breeze.



LogMeIn Hamachi

UltraVNC offers all the features you need, including auto-configuration, easy user interface, extensive hotkeys and embedded file transfer. Add to that the fact that it's free, secure, reliable and reasonably speedy and you have a winner.



UltraVNC

TightVNC is a free remote control software package derived from the popular VNC software. With TightVNC, you can see the desktop of a remote machine and control it with your local mouse and keyboard, just like you would do it sitting in the front of that computer.



TightVNC

The goal of Gnumeric is to be the best possible spreadsheet. With its customization features and support for import of spreadsheet files from other spreadsheet applications - commercial as well as free - it strives to make the transition from commercial programs as easy as possible for new users.



Gnumeric

Stickies easily creates sticky notes on your desktop.Once you get used to it you won’t be able to live without it.



Stickies

With Task Coach, you can easily create and manage “to do” lists and monitor your tasks.



Task Coach

Notepad++ is a powerful open source text editor written in C++. It supports a wide range of programming languages and has great multi-document and multi-view features.



Notepad++

Free Unit Converter is an easy to use but very powerful unit converter that supports over 5000 units of measure.



Free Unit Converter

Converber's unit-conversion super powers are tough to beat. You might not use it often, but it's small enough to keep around just in case.



Converber

AbiWord is a free word processing program similar to Microsoft Word. It is suitable for a wide variety of word processing tasks.



AbiWord

Dark Room is a full screen, distraction free, writing environment. Unlike standard word processors that focus on features, Dark Room is just about you and your text.



Dark Room