Essential Pieces Of Free and Open Software for Windows. Recently, I received a fresh new laptop from Dell. Upon receiving it, I did the traditional installation of Windows from scratch on it to remove a lot of the garbage that is preinstalled on Dells. Then I got really busy installing tons of great software that takes care of pretty much every software need I have. Not only was all of the software free, every piece of it was open source, which means that the code is peer reviewed no spyware here What follows is a list of thirty pieces of software that are the cream of the crop of open source software for Windows. Rip CDs, convert MP3 to WAV, write ID3 tags, rename audio files. TEncoder.jpg' alt='Download Mplayer Mencoder For Win32' title='Download Mplayer Mencoder For Win32' />Free DivX Converter. This is one free video converter can help you to convert between DivX video and other video formats, you can use it as one free alternative for. Not only is every piece of it free, almost all of them directly replace expensive software packages. Now, if only there were an open version of The Sims 2, I might go the whole way and switch to LinuxThirty Free and Open Software Programs Worth Downloading. Replaces Internet Explorer. If you havent switched to Firefox for your web browsing needs, do it now. It stops annoying popups and it has tons of amazing plugins that can make surfing the web even better. I could evangelize all day about Firefox, but one things for sure the first thing I do on any new Windows machine is run Internet Explorer just long enough to download Firefox. Replaces Microsoft Outlook or Eudora. Thunderbird is an email client that has five big things going for it its free, its full featured, its lightweight and runs quick, it has an unparalleled spam filter, and it protects you from those ridiculous phishing attacks by clearly indicating which emails send you to a bogus website. If youre not already using a web based email solution, Thunderbird should be your client. Replaces Microsoft Outlooks calendaring functions. Might as well get the Mozilla trifecta out of the way by mentioning Sunbird, which is the Mozilla Foundations calendaring program. Its extremely easy to use I figured out everything I needed in a minute or two and easy to share your calendar with others. I consider a calendaring tool to be essential if youre using a laptop, and this is no different. Replaces Microsoft Word. Want a good word processor but find Microsoft Word too expensive Abi. Word is my favorite replacement for Word. Its lightweight meaning it runs quickly and includes pretty much every feature that I use regularly in a word processor, plus it can save files in formats that you can exchange with Word and Word. Perfect users, plus open any of their files, too. Replaces Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Power. Point. If you want to replace the rest of the Office suite, your best bet is Open. Office. It includes very nice replacements for Excel and Power. Point and workable replacements for Access and other Office elements. In fact, I actually prefer their Excel and Power. Point replacements to the real thing. Replaces Norton Anti. Virus or Mc. Afee. Clam. Win is a slick anti virus software thats quite easy to manage and is unobtrusive while keep your system free of viruses. Thats pretty much all I want from a package, so why pay money for Mc. Afee to keep bugging me all the timeReplaces AIM, Windows Messenger, etc. This is a very clean instant messaging program that allows you to be on AOL Instant Messenger, Windows MSN Messenger, and Yahoo Messenger simultaneously with one program. There are other free packages that do this, but Gaim is stable and clean and simple. Original but essential. From their website, Bit. Torrent is a peer assisted, digital content delivery platform that provides the fastest, most efficient means of distributing, discovering, and consuming large, high quality files on the Web. Our mission is simple to deliver the content that entertains and informs the digital world. In other words, Bit. Torrent allows you to download large media files and also use your bandwidth to help others download these files. Search for media files you want and download em. Replaces Adobe Photoshop. This is a version of the GNU Image Manipulation Program that does a pretty solid job of imitating Adobe Photoshop a regular user of Photoshop like me can adapt to it quite quickly. Its very richly featured and runs quite well in fact, I see no reason to ever go back, even if Photoshop were free. Replaces Lime. Wire, Bear. Share, etc. Sure, Lime. Wire and Bear. Share are free, but why not just get the same basic software without all of the spyware Gnucleus is pretty much identical to those software packages but without all that extra junk that slows down your computer. Replaces Windows Media Player, Quicktime, Real. Player, etc. If you get tired of having tons of media players on your computer, get this package that runs pretty much every media type youll run across without breaking a sweat. Unique but essential. Juice lets you effortlessly subscribe to podcasts, organize them, and listen to them at your convenience. In conjunction with Pod. Nova, I find it easier to use Juice to organize podcasts than using i. Tunes itself. Unique but essential for someIf youre interested in recording your own podcast or just want to make your own voice recordings for whatever reason, Audacity and a microphone are pretty much all you need to get the job done. Im not much for podcasting lets just say I dont have a radio voice, but I use Audacity for other voice recording purposes. Unique but essential. RSSOwl is one of many open source RSS readers. In other words, it enables you to use one program to keep track of the content of a lot of different blogs if you read a lot of blogs, its the only way to keep tabs on all of them without devoting hours jumping from site to site. If you have a laptop, its preferable to using sites like Bloglines, but if youre on a desktop, a web based feed manager might be better. Replaces Win. FTPMany people occasionally have a need to FTP files to other computers if you ever have the need to transfer files in such a fashion, File. Zilla will do the job slickly and quickly. Unique but essential. Keynote is basically designed specifically for the task of taking notes on a laptop. If you ever find yourself in a meeting or a presentation with your laptop open and want to jot down notes and organize them just a bit, Keynote is unquestionably the program for you. Its not good at quality word processing, but thats not the point. In my professional work, I find myself using Keynote almost as often as any other utility. Replaces i. Tunes. If youre not already committed to downloaded music from the i. Tunes Music Store, then Musik. Cube is the best choice available for a music organizer and player. It organizes your mp. Unique but essential. Handbrake enables you to stick a DVD in your DVD drive and have the contents of that film stored to your hard drive in a form that can be read by pretty much any media player. I often use it to put a few movies on my laptop for travel purposes, so I dont have to worry about keeping track of DVDs while on the road. Replaces m. IRCX Chat is a free IRC client. For those unfamiliar with IRC, its a place for technical people and, as my wife loves to point out, nerds to meet and discuss topics in an open environment. I often find it very useful when piecing through difficult technical issues. Unique but essential. Kee. Pass is a program that securely stores and manages the abundance of passwords we all use on a daily basis. I have literally hundreds of usernames and passwords spread out all over the place Kee. Pass keeps them all for me and keeps them safe. Unique but essential. Free Div. X Converter. This is one free video converter can help you to convert between Div. X video and other video formats, you can use it as one free alternative for the Div. X Converter from Div. X, Inc, so its name is Free Div. X Converter. Now Div. X become more and more popular than before, this small tool can let you fully enjoy this advance video format good quality and smaller file size. This free program is small but has powerful features, the two main functions of this program are Div. X Encoder and Div. X Decoder, with Div. X Encoder you can convert almost all popular formats video to Div. X video, and with Div. X Decoder you can convert Div. X video to other video format, the output files video quality as good as the source files. How to Convert Video to Div. X. The first, you need download and install Free Div. X Converter on your PC, launch program, the default interface is for Div. X Encoder, which can convert other video to Div. X video, click Add button to select your video files as the source, Free Div. X Converter support many input video formats read more Input Video Format Support, program support batch conversion, you can add all your video files that you want to convert to Div. X one time, after you done, click Convert and select one output video folder, then program will do all conversion jobs for you, one by one, with quick speed and high output video quality. Sceenshot for Div. X Encoder. Input Video Format Support. AVI Files. avi. MPEG4 Files mp. MPG Files mpg. Quicktime Files WMV Files wmv. Real. Media Files Flash Videos flv. VOB Files vob DVD Video media. Australian Army Combat Survival Manual Pdf. How to Convert Div. X to Other Video. The first, click the Div. X Decoder tab on main interface, program will switch interface for convert Div. X to other video, then you use Add button to choice some Div. X videos, before program start to convert, you must choice which video format for the output vide, Free Div. X Converter can support almost all popular video formats, from MPEG4 to Quicktime MOV video, you can find more details on the section Output Video Format Support, the default output video format is MPEG4, after you decide the output video format, click Convert and select one output folder to save the conversion files, program will start conversion and show one Progress Bar to tell how much conversion jobs have be completed. If you want to convert the DVD discs video, you just need add the VOB files in your DVD discs, DVD video media come as a videots folder with vob files, these files contains all the compressed video and audio data. Sceenshot for Div. X Decoder. Output Video Format Support. MEPG4 MP4. MOV Quicktime. WMV Windows Media Video. MP3 audio only. Convert Div. X to DVD Format. If you want convert Div. X to DVD video format, you must choice DVD NTSC or DVD PAL, the DVD NTSC National Television System Committee is used most of America USA, Canada, If you come from Western Europe and Australia, you should choice DVD PAL Phase Alternating Line as the DVD video format. Before you use this Free Div. X Converter to convert your Div. X video, you need make sure which DVD format be used in your nations and territories, after the conversion done, you can use other DVD burn software to create your DVD movie disk. Program can work fine with most Windows platforms, include latest Windows Vista Remark. This software is a freeware, it use two free STANDALONE command lines, FFmpeg GPL and MPlayerMEncoder GPL. The command line FFmpeg come from ffmpeg. Jan 2. 01. 1 builds, FFmpeg is a trademark of Fabrice Bellard. MPlayerMEncoder mplayerhq. Div. X is a registered trademark of Div. X, Inc. Copyright 2. FREEDIVXCONVERTER. COM, Div. X is a registered trademark of Div.