In May I put together a short list of useful Windows programs that you can get for free and that I consider "must haves". At the time I was running both XP at NeoHQ and Windows 7 RC1 32bit, Vista and XP at home.

Well now I'm running Windows 7 Professional 64bit at home and NeoHQ and I've also added a few more programs to the list.

I'm currently using these apps in Windows 7 64bit without problems so they should work fine for you too (not all apps play nice with Windows 7 and not all in 64bit Windows). If you're running an old copy of a Windows program that no longer works properly in Windows 7 (eg Nero, ACDSee, Paint Shop Pro etc) it might be worth checking out these free Apps rather than paying for an upgrade to the latest version of those software.

• ImgBurn - completely free burning software. It burns ISOs and other image files. It also burns MP3's, FLAC's, WMA, and AAC (Apple's Ipod format). Also burns HD-DVD's and Blu-Ray. Sweet.
• SpeedFan - a great utility to control fans, and check out CPU and motherboard temps in your system. It also lets you look at the SMART info of your HDD's so you can look at their health (and potentially spot dieing hard drives). In Vista/Windows 7 you should start the program as an Administrator in order to access the SMART info.
• Digsby - alternative to Trillian that has a cleaner interface and is 100% free. Since there's no "Pro" vs Free version you get 100% of the functionality right away. It lets you combine your MSN, AIM, Yahoo, Google chat, and other IM accounts into one application and also supports social sites like Facebook/Myspace and Twitter. I have it connected to my email as well.
• 7-zip - a completely free and open source archive utility that handles zip, gz, rar, and many more. Windows 7 already supports Zip files natively, but RAR files are not recognized. Tip: To associate 7-zip with RAR files make sure you start it as an administrator first, otherwise it won't save your settings.
• Sumatra PDF - chautemoc recommended this lightweight PDF reader in my last article and I've been using it in my new Windows 7 install. So far it works FASTER than my previous favourite, Foxit Reader, and is even more minimalist and nagfree. I'm switching to using this as my main PDF reader until further notice.
• Screenshot Captor - This is a SUPER handy screenshot utility that can capture your entire screen, just the current active application, or a user selected area of the screen. It "freezes" your screen when you activate it so that if are hovering over something or have certain menus open these items do not close and disappear when you select the portion to capture. It also has automatic options to capture in different formats and save the file location to your clipboard so you can cut and past the file into a web upload form. It is donationware but you can definitely get a free license if you so wish.
• CPU and Memory Meter Gadget - this is a desktop gadget that supports Quad, Eight, Triple, and Duo core systems. It shows real time CPU usage plus Memory usage. More of a "power toy" than an app but I find it useful.
• Paint.NET - I used to use GIMP, one of the defacto free and open source graphics apps, but I never got used to its UI and found it relatively slow for what I needed it to do. I've since switched to Paint.NET, a lightweight yet powerful tool that is perfect for the simple things I do (cropping, colour tweaks, minor corrections, etc). Paint.Net loads up incredibly fast compared to GIMP and it feels alot more native to Windows because its UI is using compatible with the Aero theme. The icons they use for various things like crop, select, eraser, eye dropper, etc are also more intuitive and familiar to anyone who has used Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro (my former favourite).

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