5 Essential Free Applications For Windows 7

For those looking to open Adobe PDF files, you can always use Foxit reader rather than Adobe's own Acrobat reader. Not only is Foxitreader around one tenth of the size of Acrobat reader, it also way faster and can run from a memory card (or removable storage).

There's also the possibility to read PDF documents in a tab mode (like in a browser) and Foxit even allows users to annotate on a PDF document seamlessly as well as exporting a whole PDF document as a text file.

Irfanview does for photos what VLC does for videos. Irfanview is yet another excellent piece of software that has been around for ages and has helped millions manipulate their photo collections more easily.

You can even open and apply a number of transformations on pictures either on their own or in batch mode. Irfan Skiljan, who developed the application, also added the capability of adding plugins to augment its feature list.

Spotify makes it up in that list if you want to get free music but don't want to go down the illegal route. With a deceptively simple user interface - a la iTunes, this application provides the user access to millions of songs, with adverts paying the bills.

Spotify is one of the little pleasures of life and should be one of the first applications you download (and run) when you have just received your brand new OS. Spotify (free version) is invite only for the time being but you can get invites from Ebay for as little as £1.