Gonz's Best Freeware for your PC

I run Windows XP on a Pentium III-500 using 450M of RAM and two 17GB HDDs, so the following list of freeware is a proven combination of software designed to run lean and mean.

K-Meleon
This browser is based on the Mozilla architecture but without the bloatware Firefox 3 has become. With all the flexibility of Firefox, extensions come in the form of macros.

Thunderbird
The e-mail client that is made to surpass Outlook, highly intuitive and customisable.

Photo Editor
This free Microsoft picture editor takes care of the most common things you want doen to your digital photos.

NotePad++
This powerful code editor will take care of anything from text to C++ including HTML, with sophisticated functions.

CoreFTP
Update your website content using this leading FTP client.

VLC Media Player
Nothing comes close to VLC for all-round capacity to play any media you throw at it.

Audacity
I use this to record, edit and mix my radio braodcast tracks with a dazzling array of tools and effects.

Spybot Search & Destroy
A proven long-running success with controlling any malware. Blacklists known dangers and disallows others.

Avast
Free and effective virus protection, free of nag screens.

CCleaner
A great general purpose registry, log amd cookies maintenance tool.

Miranda
After trying ICQ, MSN, Trillian and Pidgin, Miranda is truly the leanest, smoothest and fastest messaging client of the lot.

Mailwasher
Why download MBs of spam when you can have Mailwasher learn your filtering rules and keep spam from getting anywhere near your PC? Unwanted emails are deleted at the server to save you bandwidth and virus grief. It will even bounce spam emails for you.

Weather Stats
I keep an eye on the weather direct from my local meteorology site to my system tray.

UTorrent
The tiniest and most efficient file sharing client on the planet.
See how the Plip lives.