Best Free Software of 2008 (so far)

I find myself reinstalling software on another friend's laptop yet again. What was the problem? Computer virii, trojan horses, adware, and spyware made the system unstable. How did it get this way? Overall, it's because of not having a good understanding of computers, but in particular, peer-to-peer(P2P) programs such as BearShare.

Here is a list of the most common FREE programs I recommend for typical users:

• Antivirus: Avast Home Edition or AVG Free
• Firewall: Comodo Firewall
• Web Browser: Mozilla Firefox
• Spyware detection: Microsoft Defender
• Image Editing: Paint.net
• Compression: 7 Zip
• Chat: Google Talk
• Picture manager: Google Picasa

Other notable programs are:

• Bittorrent client: utorrent (also get Peer Guardian)
• Media Players: Winamp, VLC, and Divx
• Office Suite: Open Office
• Email client: Mozilla Thunderbird
• FTP: Filezilla

If you feel this list is incomplete, check out: The 46 Best-ever Freeware Utilities