Essential Windows freebies Round Up

• Firefox web browser
  Tabbed, pop-up-blocking web browser with an ever-expanding base of functionality-enhancing extensions.
• Thunderbird email client
  Email spam filters, saved search folders, RSS-reading and multi-account support.
• Gaim instant messenger
  Multi-protocol instant messenger supports AOL, ICQ, MSN, IRC, Yahoo!, Jabber, Gadu-Gadu,Open Nap, Novell, SILC and Zephyr, tabbed IM conversation windows, login to multiple AOL accounts at once, instant Wikipedia lookup, spellcheck, and conversation logging.
• Picasa photo manager
  Tracks digital images and albums with keywords and ratings, exports web galleries, resizes images, removes red-eye and offers effects and edits.
• iTunes music player
  Organizes gigabytes of tunes into saved search “smart” playlists, records play counts and last played timestamps, de-duplicates your collection, auto-arranges songs into folders by artist and album.
• Ad-aware spyware cleaner
  Spyware detector and cleanser can save even the slowest, most advertising-pummeled Windows installation.
• AVG Anti-Virus
  Monitors your computer and email for viruses, auto-updates and schedules regular scanning.
• OpenOffice
  Office suite package opens, edits and saves to Microsoft Office formats, minus the licensing costs.
• Skype internet telephony
  Long-distance computer voice calls over the ‘net.

Die Dulci Fruere