The top 5 freeware PC utilities

Ashish pointed me to Darren Rowse’s new initiative – the Top 5 Group
Writing Project. The gist of it to have bloggers from all kind of disciplines writing
a post on their top 5 list. The goal is to foster interaction between indidviduals in
the Blogsphere and to increase exposure of relatively new blogs.

Being a tech blogger, who’s deeply into tips and tricks aimed to help you make the most of your PC, I jumped on the Top 5 train,  and would like to contribute my favorite top 5 list: My top 5 freeware PC utilities.

The great thing about these utilities/applications, is that they provide state-of-the-art performance, functionality and support for free. I strongly recommend that you install them all on any PC you use.

So here are my top 5 freeware utilities:

• Foxit Reader: No doubt that PDF has became the universal format for file sharing. Unfortunately, the PDF reader market is dominated by the extra annoying Adobe (Acrobat) Reader. The main drawback of Adobe is that it consumes plenty of your system resources. Foxit Reader, a lightweight application that enables you to read your PDF files like a breeze, is the preferred solution for PDF file viewing.
• AVG Anti Virus Free Edition: Malware of any kind and specially PC viruses can hurt your productivity and cause you valuable data loss. AVG Antivirus free edition, a free antivirus utility that not only features virus scan scheduling capabilities, but also scans your incoming and outgoing emails, can help you protect your PC and fight malware. 
• TweakVI Basic: Tweaking a Windows Vista system can be a tough task even for Windows XP veterans. TweakVI makes Vista customization a fun thing to do, by offering a you powerful User Interface and miscellaneous settings tweaking options. Moreover,  it features an extremely handy Windows utility menu, that eases the access to miscellaneous utilities (like the Registry Editor, the Backup and Restore utility and so forth).
• Audacity: Audacity is a free, easy-to-use audio editor and recorder for Windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux, and other operating systems. This great piece of open source software is developed by a bunch of volunteers. Highly Recommended!
• Salesforce.com personal edition: One of the main characteristics of the Web 2.0 paradigm is the emergence of Software as a Service (SAAS) applications. SAAS is a new delivery model where companies pay not for owning the software itself but for using it. Salesforce.com, a CRM (Customer Relationships Management) web based service, pioneered the SAAS domain. Salesforce.com personal edition features a super-intuitive web interface (no need to install anything on your PC!)  as well as a streamlined set of processes that helps you make the most of your Contacts, Accounts, Leads and Opportunities, and increase your sales productivity. If you are into marketing and sales – this is the tool you are looking for!

Well, that’s it. I know some of you might disagree, many will ask how come i didn’t include Google Talk, Twitter, Skype, Thunderbird, Firefox, Wordpress, Joomla and those alike. I am interested to hear your thoughts, What’s your top 5 ?
[tags] Audacity, Foxit Reader, Salesforce.com, SAAS, Tweak VI, Darren Rowse [/tags]

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