As some free time has opened up, I’ve revisited the task of rebuilding the Winopso Free Software Directory. That extension to this site remains unfinished, but should be available sometime in the next few months. In anticipation of the rebirth of that pithy portion of what we do here, I’ve put together a short list of useful tools for your system. Without further adieu, here is a list of titles for your system that you may find immediately useful, in no particular order:

1. Mozilla Firefox: With a solid, speedy core and a plethora of add-ons to fine-tune how you work on the web, Firefox is the de facto standard today in web browsing. Chrome and Opera are both faster, but lack the vast library of add-ons available with Firefox – and in terms of speed, what we’re really talking about is a few milliseconds one way or another – I’ll take the functionality over the negligible speed gain. As with any other web browser, you’ll find some incompatibilities with certain sites – primarily in the area of government and corporate sites that are tuned for Internet Explorer. Why do Gov’t and Corporate sites like IE? Because it’s bloated, slow and tedious to use, in short – it’s familiar territory.

2. Paint.NET: Originally commissioned by Microsoft as a replacement for it’s dismal Paint image editor that ships stock with Windows, Paint.NET has developed into a legitimate contender in image editing. Granted, it isn’t geared towards “professional” image editing, however it can yield professional results. This program sports tabbed image editing, extensions, layers and many other features that allow anyone to manipulate images easily and intuitively. Why MS didn’t adopt this as their default editor is still a mystery.

3. FileZilla: Not a need for everyone out there, but for anyone that hosts a website or needs access to files on a remote server and have FTP access, Filezilla is the way to go. Fast, solid and reliable and appropriately visually unappealing, on par with a many other open source projects, but it works – so whatever.

4. DexPot: Dexpot allows you to create multiple workspaces that you can access with the click of a mouse. You can organize different desktops for different needs, or if in the office to switch between a game of solitaire and that spreadsheet you should be working on. of course, there are more practical uses for something like this, but we try to be realistic here…

5. CCleaner: Without rival, this is a must for any system. CCleaner allows you to clean up all the random detritus that tends to bog down a system over time in addition to boasting an excellent registry cleaner and program uninstaller. Very effective in erasing your tracks when you “accidentally” find yourself in one of those dark corners of the web. That’s it for now, but I’ll add some more later as I find things worthy of mention.