6 Must Have Free Programs

It seems that a lot of commercial software, including the "free" stuff, has become a lot more complicated than it needs to be. And most people that aren't steeped in the industry don't realize that there are better, simpler alternatives out there. Here's a list of my favorite 6 pieces of free software that can make your computing life a little easier:

Firefox Web Browser (Windows, OSX, Linux)
Faster, more secure, more flexible, and uses less resources than Internet Explorer. Need I say more?

AdBlock Plus (Any system that runs Firefox)
Along with Firefox, make sure to install the handy AdBlock Plus add-on. It prevents Firefox from loading or displaying most of those annoying, flashing, bandwidth-steeling ads.

Foxit Reader (Windows, Linux)
Adobe Reader (former Acrobat Reader) was meant to be a simple, ubiquitous tool for displaying PDF files. But somehow Adobe has managed to bloat it out into a slow-loading resource hog with a myriad of bugs and security holes. Why? What else is it supposed to do? I don't know, but I know what Foxit Reader does: It just displays PDFs quickly and flawlessly.

PDFCreator (Windows)
Capping off the other end of the PDF world is PDFCreator, which installs a virtual printer that creates a PDF file from any program that prints to it.

VLC Media Player (Windows, OSX, Linux)
Tired of the bloated monsters that media players have become these days? And the worst part is that most of the big name players dont' play all the formats, so you have to install them all. Lame! Enter VLC Media Player - lightweight, quick to load, plays practically every video format there is. The default user interface is a bit sparse though, so I recomend also installing one of the optional skins.

CCleaner (Windows)
A very good maintanance tool for Windows. Cleans out the left over temp files, tidies up the registry... You'll be amazed at how much performance / stability you can regain by running this.

UPDATE! I forgot one other must have piece of free software. I use it so much I didn't even think about it...

Picasa (Windows, Linux)
An excellent photo management and simple editing tool from Google. It's super easy to use and works with your previous photo organization scheme instead of forcing you to reorganize all your photos for it like some other popular photo organization tools.