Here is the descriptive list of popular software which are offered by developers free of charge. Many of them are alternative to equivalent paid software. I shall try to update the list in future to include more useful free software which deserves a promotion.
Adobe Reader
Adobe Reader is basically developed to read PDF format files created with Adobe Acrobat or any other PDF creator software. Adobe Systems is the founder of this universal document file format. Today, PDF format is widely used to compile all kinds of documents including highly classified official documents, freely available ebooks, products manuals etc.
Apache OpenOffice
Apache OpenOffice is an open source easy to use office suite designed to be a freeware alternative to Microsoft Office. It can read all types of documents created with other office suites, can create the documents the way Microsoft Office does. Best for the people who can not afford expensive paid Office suites. Equally beneficial for commercial, educational and residential purposes.
Avast Free Antivirus
Avast Free Antivirus is a well developed freeware antivirus software to cope with computer threats. Even though it lacks many paid features but still offers an acceptable level of defense against computer viruses, trojan horses, spyware etc.
Avira Free Antivirus
Avira is also doing a decent job in Antivirus industry. They are also offering a freeware version of their product among with paid ones. In fact, Avira is doing this for years to offer a free antivirus to users. Few useful features included in this product are Real-time protection, Anti ad/Spyware, browser tracking blocker etc.
AVG Antivirus Free
AVG is an antivirus developing company which develops different types of good quality security suites. AVG Antivirus Free gives a slight touch of paid versions with few useful features. It manages to deal with certain types of computer threats. Choose your version of antivirus based upon the x86 or x64 architecture of your windows.
BitTorrent
BitTorrent is a popular torrent client used to download and seed torrents. These days, torrent is widely used platform to receive certain types of files from internet or share yours with people. Torrents offer the level of data integrity which direct downloads can not offer.
CPU-Z
CPU-Z gathers and display information of hardware and components installed in a computer. The information it is able to reveal is related to CPU, motherboard, RAM, graphics and operating system. It is a simple and easy to use tool offered free of charge by the developers.
Daemon Tools lite
A simple tool to create disc images and emulate virtual CD/DVD drives. It is able to mount a long list of images to virtual drive to access their stored data directly without extracting them. It can create images in few popular file formats and also able to create up to 4 virtual drives. This software also has many other useful features including in it.
EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard
EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard can be utilized to recover deleted files from computer. Files which have not yet got overwritten can be successfully recovered using this tool. For overwritten files recovery or data recovery from damaged hard driver or SSD drive, one has to seek the help of professionals to recover the data.
EaseUS Partition Master (Home Edition)
An easy to use free partition recovery software to recover deleted or lost partitions. It offers the especially useful feature of resizing or merging the partitions, and also some other useful features. Pro Edition and Server edition are also available for advanced or commercial use.
Firefox
Firefox does not demand any formal introduction. It is the most popular web browser used worldwide today. Also, it is considered more secure than many other rival web browsers. Mozilla strives to bring best product in the market and Firefox is the result of that struggle.
Freegate
Freegate is an anti-censorship portal which helps users to bypass internet censorship and access the blocked websites. It helps to maintain anonymity and security over internet to a fair extent. The good thing is, it does not allow access to x-rated websites. Therefore, it is a best choice for morally conscience people.
Glary utilities
An all-in-one utility to cleaning up Windows PC. Available are more than 20 tools designed for separate purposes to fix certain malfunctioning areas of Windows, wipe off the hectic useless files to make the PC performance better.
Google Chrome
Google Chrome is not a very old product but it has gain much popularity in very short period of time. It is now a rival to Firefox and quite much has surpassed it. Chrome handles the websites very well. Also it is very lighter on system resources. New versions are coming out after every few days to improve quality of the web browser.
K-lite Mega Codec Pack
A universal codec pack packed with almost all types of codecs to make Windows PC support any type of media file format ever developed. Due to the seamless integration with Windows Media Player and availability of separate “Media Player Classic” Player, it is the best codec pack available in the market today. This codec pack eliminates the hassle of installing different players for playing different media formats.
K9 Web Protection (Parental Control)
K9 Web Protection is a web filter to stop inappropriate internet contents from viewership. It offers a wide variety of features to customize and filter out internet as required. The filter is designed to make it quite difficult to breach the wall of defense and pass the restriction.
LibreOffice
LibreOffice is an open source alternative to paid office suites designed for Windows, Linux and Macintosh platforms. It is fully compatible with major office suites. The program is able to do word processing, make spreadsheets, slideshows, diagrams and compose math formulae.
LinuxLive USB Creator
It is an open source software to help people discover Linux OS. It can create portable, bootable and virtualized flash drive to run Linux directly from USB. With carrying files of Linux OS, USB stick can also be used as a regular flash drive to port files.
Media Coder
MediaCoder is a universal transcoder software designed for various media files. Carries the program a cutting edge technology with extensive adjustable parameters to allow users make output of their own desire. It allows inter conversion of popular audio and video formats.
Microsoft Security Essential
It is a small antivirus utility to protect against viruses, spywares and malicious programs. It is a low resources consuming addon provided to Windows users. Not as good as other antivirus suites offered by famous companies, still it manages to offer a fair level of defense against computer threats
My Phone Explorer
My Phone Explorer can be used to synchronize phone with computer. It is basically designed to explore the mobile phone over computer. Previously, the software used to work with Sony Ericsson phones only but now it also supports Android phones. Connection to this software is possible over USB cable, WIFI or bluetooth. Infrared connection for old phones is also supported.
Nero (free)
Nero in a nutshell is all-in-one suite designed to create media, media discs and to burn any type of files to computer discs. Its freeware version which is quite old now offers few useful tools to work around with media files and disc images and burn them to CDs or DVDs.
Norton Safety Minder
Norton Safety Minder is a parental control offered free of charge by Symantec. It can be utilized to filter out unnecessary inappropriate contents from internet. This parental control service works well and is pretty handy and useful for parents and people of all ages.
Opera Web Browser
Opera Software has a long history of creating useful web browsers. Opera, despite of an excellent web browser, it is not used as much as other web browsers like Internet Explorer, Firefox and Google Chrome are used. The good thing is, it is supported by every website. Any type of website can be accessed using this web browser.
PC Wizard
It is an advanced system information program available free of charge which explores hardware of a computer. Additionally, it has a very useful benchmarking feature to analyse the performance of processor, memory, computer graphics, HDD or SSD etc.
Real Player
Real Player is a video player plus download manager for media files. It supports almost all popular audio and video file formats and let users download videos from online video sharing sites. Also allows to convert videos to other media formats.
Skype
Skype is an over internet voice calling service now owned by Microsoft. Skype to Skype call is totally free. But if someone wants to call to mobile phone or landline numbers, he has to buy the balance for that purpose. Skype can also be utilized to send messages and media files to other people.
SnapPea
Designed for android phones, SnapPea is an excellent tool to explore android smartphones over computer. It is one of the best free software which let users to install applications, send messages and manage contacts, pictures, videos and audios all directly from the computer. It is able to connect over WiFi and USB. WiFi connectivity is also super fast.
Subtitle Workshop
It is a freeware subtitle editing tool. Supports a long list of subtitle formats and carries all the features to edit or fix the subtitles or inter convert the subtitles formats. Subtitle Workshop is an easy to use software designed for variety of users including beginners and professionals.
Team Viewer
TeamViewer can be utilized to remotely access other computers over internet to deal with technical issues, offer support to friends and family members without personally visiting them and doing everything from your own computer. You get a secondary display of other connected computer and you can use that like your own computer after deliberate access offered to you by the owner of that other computer.
Universal USB Installer
Universal USB Installer (also known as UUI) is an easy to use software intended to create portable Linux OS installation inside a flash drive. Just choose a Linux distribution ISO image file, flash drive and within few minutes, you will get a ready to use bootable USB flash drive with installed Linux operating system on it.
Uxtheme Multi-Patcher
This tool patches Windows theme engine files allowing user to use 3rd party visual styles. It is designed to work for Windows XP up to Windows 7. It is a stable patch and does not harm the operating system. Also offers to restore the original theme engine.
VirtualBox
VirtualBox is a virtual machine developed to run operating systems inside another operating system. It is most commonly used by software developers to test newly written software on different operating systems, used by professionals and home users who want to try a product without installing it on their actual computer OS. VirtualBox supports almost all Windows operating systems, Linux, Solaris etc.
VLC Media Player
VLC is freeware multimedia player developed by VideoLAN organisation. It helps to get rid of mess of software to run different formats. VLC Media Player is able to play almost all popular audio and video formats, DVDs, VCDs, Audio CDs and much more.
Windows 7 / 8 Bootable USB Tool
If you own an ISO image file of Windows 7 or Windows 8 setup and want to install Windows without burning image file to DVD, all you need is a flash drive and this USB tool. It will convert flash drive into bootable media disc which can then be used to install these operating systems. The tool works well for both Windows 7 and Windows 8 ISO setup images.
Windows 8 Transformation Pack
This pack is designed to transform Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 into Windows 8. It is best suited for those Windows users who want to have Windows 8 look without buying or installing original Windows 8. Try it if you are sure what you are doing.
Windows 8 UX Pack
Windows 8 UX Pack gives Windows 8 user interface without affecting system files. The pack contains Windows 8 themes and applications to make Windows 7 look and feel like Windows 8. Since this UX pack does not touch original system files, it is safe to use it without harming the computer.