22 Most Useful Free Applications for your PC - Communication

Use your Computer, Not your Wallet

The recession is hitting everyone hard and money is tight. That doesn’t mean that can’t get the most out of your computer. There are so many great free applications that can help you do just about anything. I’m going to take a look at 22 applications that I use all the time with wonderful results.

I’m going to identify the free applications that I use in the following categories:

• Communication
• Internet
• Productivity
• Multimedia
• System Utilities

I have my personal favorites that I’m going to talk about, but those are not your only options. I’ll also list any other viable alternatives that I’m aware of for each category.

Communication

I’m a big fan of Microsoft Outlook, but I have been using Thunderbird on my computer for a while now. It’s not quite as good, but it’s constantly closing the gap. Here are some of my favorite ways to keep in touch for free.

Thunderbird - This is Mozilla’s open source answer to Microsoft Outlook. You can do Email, Contacts, and Calendaring very similarly to Outlook (minus some of the polish). It’s built using the same open, extensible platform as Firefox, so there is a steadily growing collection of extensions to augment it’s functionality. Turbocharge Thunderbird with these plug-ins. Alternatives: Gmail.

Digsby - Simply the best Instant Messenger tool available. You can connect to all of your IM networks (AOL, Yahoo, MSN, Google, ICQ, Jabber, and Facebook ) to let you chat with any of your contacts. That alone makes it valuable, but wait, there’s more: Get real-time updates on your social networks (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and LinkedIn). You can also get updates on your inbox for just about any email account (Gmail, Yahoo, MSN, plus any IMAP and POP3 accounts). Alternatives: If you’re looking for something almost as good, try Pidgin IM or Trillian with a bunch of plug-ins. Meebo (Web Based).