Everyone seems to have their list of free Windows applications they can't do without, and here's ours.  All of these are free for the download and their authors deserve a serious hat tip for all of their excellent work.  We list them in alphabetical order:

AutoHotkey
AutoHotkey is the quintessential keystroke and mouse automator that you really must try to see just how powerful it is.  You can automate almost any program by sending it keystrokes and mouse clicks.  You can remap keys on your keyboard or mouse.  One of our favourite features is that you may compile your finished script into a single EXE that may be run on any Windows computer.


ID3-TagIT 3
ID3-TagIT 3 is excellent software for bulk editing of ID3 tags in MP3 files.

Media Player Classic Home Cinema
This is our favourite media player.  It plays a wide variety of media formats, is simple to use, and best of all, it uses just a few megabytes of RAM.

Notepad++
Notepad++ is our favourite text editor.  It's fast, colour-codes many languages, supports collapsing of code, and has plenty of other very useful features.  Be sure to get the NppAutoIndent plugin.

PuTTY
PuTTY is an excellent Telnet/SSH client.  If you currently use the Windows Telnet program, you will no doubt consider PuTTY a breath of fresh air.

SUPER
SUPER provides an excellent user interface for popular audo/video converters.  Their developers state, "SUPER does for FREE what other encoders CAN'T do for money!"  This is absolutely correct.  There are no codecs to install because everything you need comes in a single EXE file.  Their website is very difficult to navigate, so here is a link to download the setup file.

SmartRipper
SmartRipper is an excellent tool for ripping MPEG video from DVDs.  We found it difficult to find a free program that would rip the original MPEG video into a single file without transcoding.  SmartRipper does.  Unfortunately, its author no longer offers it for download but it is easy to find with Google.

T.38 Plug-In for Microsoft Fax
Without a fax machine, and a phone line, and need to send a fax?  This plug-in is for you.  Get a Pay Per Call account from Callcentric and send faxes with the Microsoft Fax printer driver for just pennies per page.  (To clarify, the software is free; Callcentric charges a few cents per minute in termination fees.)

Windows Grep
Ever need to search through a large number of files for some specific text?  Windows has a built-in tool to do this...but it doesn't always work.  Enter Windows Grep, the Windows version of the popular Grep tool.  It even supports regular expressions.

WinSCP
WinSCP is a great companion to PuTTY and is the best FTP/SFTP client we've ever found.

XYNTService Project
With the XYNTService Project, you may start any program (including PHP or AutoHotkey scripts) as a Windows Service.  It has more features and is easier to use than srvany.exe!

Zoiper
The free version of this excellent softphone supports up to three SIP accounts.