50 Essential Free Apps

Whatever you want to do, do it, and pay absolutely nothing in the process.

- Alex Cox

Free: that’s the magic number. At least, it is when it comes to PC software. Why break the bank populating your PC with applications when enterprising individuals and organizations have created a raft of software that does the job adequately for not a single dollar down?

Now, we’re well aware that there are several different categories of free software. There’s the stuff that comes from the open-source community, which is usually a little rough around the edges, owing to its many-cooks approach. But open-source software has its own advantages: Sometimes it’s home to experimental features that those in the commercial market might hold back on; sometimes it’s designed for a niche that commercial developers can’t profit from. There’s also that slight guarantee that your software is going to stay free—while it might take an age to update and basically come with no warranty, open-source software suddenly attempting to dig around in your wallet is a rare occurrence.

The other side of the coin is “free” software, in quotation marks. There’s a swathe of it in this list, but we’ve done our best to dodge anything too feature-light. Essentially, as has been the case for decades, software publishers often offer a taste of the goods in an effort to get you hooked enough to buy the real thing. Often, that taste is adequate on its own. Sometimes, it’s not really a taste for you as much as it is for the business market, where expensive per-seat licenses can be a real moneyspinner. You can have the software, but these guys need to pay.