I've recently discovered PSPad, which is a great free editor. It has a ton of features, like syntax highlighting, built-in FTP, regular expression searching, and whole crapload more. Check it out.

Because Internet Explorer and Outlook Express are so devastatingly expensive...

:)

Or maybe because they're unmitigated piles of kludge...

For old school gamers, I have two recommendations. The first is Ur-Quan Masters. It takes the DOS version of Star Control 2 and the 3DO version and combines the best features of both. Seriously good stuff. The second recommendation is DOSBox. It's a DOS emulator, so you can play all those old DOS games you have kicking around on floppies on your XP box. It emulates support for Soundblaster, MIDI or Adlib sound and interfaces with DirectInput, so you can use your USB mouse or joystick too. Both of these programs are freeware.

Other than that, the GPL is our friend.

heh.. I know this is partially just a playful stab/flamebait.. and you've caught two of us so far.. but I can't resist ;)

If your system gets screwed or accessed because of one of the many, many, many exploits that are out there for those two products, then yeah.. could cost you a lot. While FF/TB have the same risk, there's not as many exploits out for them.

Also, the continually having to patch/reboot/etc stuff is also costly in time ;)

Bill Gates can suck my cock. He has enough damn money.

I love freeware. Thanks for the list.

Try this site for some more free apps.

no cuz they suck ballz! honestly tell me anyone who used firefox and went back to IE? no one. it's such a great program! plus, it might be fixed but i remember a few years back when i used IE, all i heard was :"update man! update!! SECURITY HOLES!!"

microsoft sucks. freeware rules!

me. I didn't like firefox. Why? Because it would cause me to do MORE work, since I have at least 5 machines that I use on a regular basis, in order to have same experience and functionality on all machines, I'd have to install it on all of them.

Why don't you then?

By the time I've installed functional versions of:

- firewall
- anti-virus/anti-malware
- text editor
- graphics editor
- telnet/ssh/scp/ftp clients
- cd ripper/burner
- media player
- registry editor
- debugging tools
...ad nauseum... all after 469 reboots for critical post-SP2 MS updates...

Firefox is gravy. Very tasty gravy. Really, it doesn't even need to be installed. Just drag copy one of the read-only versions, add your links for del.icio.us, and have at 'em.

This site offers some pretty nice, free softwares:
The 46 Best Free Software Utilities

What I love is when MS advertises their future IE (On vista I think) with "great new features" like Tabbed Browsing :hmm:

Great site, thanks!!

hydrairc another good windows irc client (back when i ran windows)
I also prefer Opera over firefox because it has all the things i want built in rather than extensions as well as it just feels faster.
CDex is a good free ripper as well.

When I do fresh format/renistall i usually hit up all the windows patches, get microsoft baseline security analizer. get all it's recommeneded patchs, then install all software WITHOUT rebooting until everytihng is installed if possible. I've never had problems needing to reinstall. Then again if you run an apple or *nix you don't need to reboot unless it's an os update.

I've also put up a freeware list here http://digitalmeltd0wn.org/freeware.html Excuse the crappy layout. Most of these were posted on neowin for those of you who are familiar with it.

digitalmeltd0wn dot com