The software industry wants you to subscribe to everything. But for most tasks, genuinely excellent free software exists. Here's what we actually install on computers across Melbourne.
Security
Malwarebytes Free — The best on-demand malware scanner. Finds and removes things other antivirus misses. Run it quarterly even if you have other antivirus. The free version doesn't have real-time protection but is excellent for manual scans.
Bitwarden — A fully-featured, open-source password manager with browser extension and mobile apps. Genuinely free for individuals, not a stripped-down trial.
Office and Documents
LibreOffice — A complete Microsoft Office replacement (Writer, Calc, Impress). Opens and edits Word, Excel and PowerPoint files. Free and open source. If you don't have Microsoft 365, this is the answer.
Notepad++ — An excellent text editor for any non-formatted text. Better than the built-in Notepad in every way.
Media
VLC Media Player — Plays every video and audio format that exists, with no codec packs required. Indispensable.
Audacity — Professional-grade audio recording and editing, completely free.
Browsers
Firefox — A privacy-respecting browser that doesn't feed your browsing history to Google. With the uBlock Origin extension installed, it's excellent.
Utilities
7-Zip — Opens and creates ZIP, RAR and every other archive format. No ads, no installers, no nonsense.
CrystalDiskInfo — Shows the health status of your hard drives and SSDs. Know when a drive is starting to fail before it takes your data.
CPU-Z / GPU-Z — Shows detailed specifications of your processor and graphics card. Useful for checking what's actually in a second-hand computer.
PDF Tools
PDF24 — Merge, split, convert, compress PDFs. All features free, works offline, no file uploads to their server required (unlike many PDF tools).
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