Mozilla Firefox

Firefox is somewhat of an opposite of Opera. When you’ve downloaded and installed this browser, you will find a piece of software doing little more than browsing the net. You’ve got a bookmark manager alright, a password manager, but there’s no email client. Firefox is what you call a ‘slim’ browser initially focusing on one single task: to browse the net.

ImgBurn

Without doubt – our favourite. Possibly for all the wrong reasons – as ImgBurn comes with a very Spartan, minimalistic look and feel.

Exact Audio Copy

Most certainly our first choice. The most impressive capability of this program is its tolerance toward read errors on your probably old (and sometimes dirty) Audio Disks. Very rarely indeed will that result in an error in the sound file as Exact Audio Copy (EAC) interacts very closely with your hardware. On first use a fine tuning is performed to achieve the best possible results, and alas, sometimes, a CD/DVD drive may not be supported.

VLC media player

If you want to play a movie or listen to an audio file, if you want it simple, easy and clean, if you just want it to work ...

freeCommander

The main feature list of freeCommander is a complete wish list for any decent filemanager, as a matter of fact for any filemanager that may rightfully be called: excellent!

Spybot Search & Destroy

Do install Spybot Search & Destroy! It is very easy to use, offers an Easy Mode for beginners, real time protection and an on-line tutorial. This tutorial will help you to understand many of the tasks involved with securing and protecting your PC.

Furthermore the program may help you to turn Adware into common programs, which might violate the respective license agreement. You are well informed by Spybot Search & Destroy and the matter is left to your good judgement.

Paint.NET

This freeware has its origin as an ersatz, a replacement for MS Paint. The features now entitle it to be classified as advanced image and photo editor. The interface is simple, intuitive, and impressive. It presents the pics you’re editing in tabs that display a thumbnail preview of the image.

This functionality can be extended by plugins, which are provided and maintained by the Paint.NET community. There you also find an extensive help, and many, many tutorials.

GIMP

This one is not for the immediate beginner. First get your feet wet with the ones above, find out what image editing is about, what you like about it, what you want to do with it. Then come back. The GNU Image Manipulation Program – GIMP surprises with an unusual user interface which is adventurous at least for those learning the basics of image editing. It will take you a while to realize its benefits - which will be easy when using this professional image editor under Linux.