Did you know you can use authentic Microsoft Office programs for free online?  The programs include web versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and more!

Tired of opening a browser window?  Download the web-apps as native-style programs that you can pin to the taskbar or place shortcuts on the desktop!  Download the web-app package below (Utilizes a portable version of Google Chrome).

NOTE:  You must have a free Microsoft account (Outlook, Hotmail, Live) and an active internet connection to use the office web-apps.  Also you must use either OneDrive or DropBox storage to access and save files.

BONUS: Get the Photoshop-style web-app (Pixlr) included in the download!

Finally a Photoshop alternative that is better than GIMP!  Krita is an Open Source FREE software with many advanced features.  Features of Krita that make it one of the best alternatives to photoshop include:

Layer Styles (Drop Shadow, Bevel, Glow etc.) YES!
Touch-friendly input for painting on tablets and touch enabled screens
Brushes (Import and create)
Import AND Save Adobe Photoshop files! (.PSD)
Vector layers, Text Layers, Vector Selection
Free scaling/transform selection & layers
Group Layers
Layer Masks
Save TIFF, PNG, JPG, and more popular graphics file-formats
CMYK Support
Adjustments (Color Balance, HSV, Levels)
Filters and Effects

Krita has many more features, and it's user interface is close enough that Photoshop users should feel fairly comfortable getting around and figuring out the differences here and there.  This is an amazing find for those looking for a powerful alternative for Photoshop.  Though it was originally designed for digital painting, it has become quite a robust piece of graphics software, and best of all, it's FREE!

Versions for Windows (32bit/64bit), Mac OSX, and Linux are available for download on the website.


https://krita.org/download/krita-desktop/

Shotcut is a free, open-source video editing program.  Don't let the simplistic interface fool you, this editor has a lot of great features tucked away behind the scenes, so to speak.  With support for a variety of formats, this editor sits among the very few free alternatives to programs such as Adobe Premier or Final Cut.

A list of features from the developer's website are listed below:

• Supports oodles of audio and video formats
• Supports many image formats such as BMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG, SVG, TGA, TIFF
• Frame-accurate seeking for many formats
• Multi-format timeline: mix and match resolutions and frame rates within a project
• Audio signal level meter & Volume control
• Scrubbing and transport control
• Flexible UI through dock-able panels
• Encode/transcode to a variety of formats
• OpenGL GPU-based image processing
• Video filters: Blur, Color Grading, Crop, Glow, Invert Colors, Mirror, Rotate, Saturation, Sepia Tone, Sharpen, Stabilize, White Balance
• Audio filters: Balance, Copy Channel, Downmix, Normlize, Gain, Pan, Swap Channels
• 3-way color wheels for color correction and grading
• Control video zoom in the player: fit viewable area (default), 50%, original (100%), and 200%
• Multitrack timeline with thumbnails and waveforms
• Audio mixing across all tracks
• External monitoring on an extra system display/monitor
• Cross-fade audio and video dissolve transitions easily by overlapping shots
• Video wipe transitions: bar, barn door, box, clock (radial), diagonal, iris, matrix, and custom gradient image

Open Office has become the free standard for Office software.  With a familiar layout and feel, Open Office provides a quality, free alternative to Microsoft Office. Open Office will also open, edit, and save in file formats compatible with MS Office!

More details from the OpenOffice.org website are listed below:

• Writer a word processor you can use for anything from writing a quick letter to producing an entire book.
• Calc a powerful spreadsheet with all the tools you need to calculate, analyze, and present your data in numerical reports or sizzling graphics.
• Impress the fastest, most powerful way to create effective multimedia presentations.
• Draw lets you produce everything from simple diagrams to dynamic 3D illustrations.
• Base lets you manipulate databases seamlessly. Create and modify tables, forms, queries, and reports, all from within Apache OpenOffice.
• Math lets you create mathematical equations with a graphic user interface or by directly typing your formulas into the equation editor.

Paint.net is a photo and graphics editing tool that has much of the same main functionality, tools, and effects that Adobe Photoshop has.  The program is fast, and quite stable.  With plugins available and support for brushes, layers, and more, this FREE software is a great alternative to Photoshop for those wanting Photoshop-style editing ability without the price-tag.
More from the GetPaint.net website:
Paint.NET is free image and photo editing software for PCs that run Windows. It features an intuitive and innovative user interface with support for layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools. An active and growing online community provides friendly help, tutorials, and plugins. It started development as an undergraduate college senior design project mentored by Microsoft, and is currently being maintained by some of the alumni that originally worked on it. Originally intended as a free replacement for the Microsoft Paint software that comes with Windows, it has grown into a powerful yet simple image and photo editor tool. It has been compared to other digital photo editing software packages such as Adobe® Photoshop®, Corel® Paint Shop Pro®, Microsoft Photo Editor, and The GIMP.

MiniTool Partition Wizard is a great free-for-personal-use hard disk partition utility for windows.  Delete, combine, format, and re-size partitions with this easy-to-use software.  More from the developers website is listed below:

"MiniTool Partition Wizard Home Edition is a free partition manager software designed by MiniTool Solution Ltd. Our partition manager supports 32/64 bit Windows Operating System including Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8. Home users can perform complicated partition operations by using this powerful yet free partition manager to manage their hard disk. Functions include: Resizing partitions, Copying partitions, Create partition, Extend Partition, Split Partition, Delete partition, Format partition, Convert partition, Explore partition, Hide partition, Change drive letter, Set active partition, Partition Recovery.
MiniTool Partition Wizard Home Edition is designated for home user only, to use MiniTool Partition Wizard in a business environment, MiniTool Partition Wizard Professional Edition is required."

Images from http://www.partitionwizard.com/free-partition-manager.html

CDBurnerXP is a great no-hassle CD burning software that will help you create a variety of different discs.  Supporting Data, video DVD, Audio, ISO images, and more, this FREE software is a great way to simplify your burning process. 

Don't let the "XP" in the title fool you though.  This software has worked in every version of windows I've tried, and if anything, the "XP" may only refer to its older style interface. 

All in all, though the interface may remind you of the long past XP days, if you need an easy, reliable, and FREE CD burning package, CDBurnerXP might be just what you are looking for!

This program's title is deceptive.  It is SO much more that a batch photo resizer!  It capabilities include a wide array of image adjustments including, color/hue, brightness, contrast, dpi, size, and more!  Add multiple borders with different colors, shadows, watermarks, and best of all, you can process all of these effects on a huge batch of photos all at once!

If you find yourself editing images one at a time, or want some of the benefits of a commercial image processing program like Adobe Lightroom, you might give this freebie a try!

With this handy tool, Windows users can easily re-size one or more photos right from the folder they are in through the right-click menu!  Just select one or more images and right-click. Select "Resize Pictures" off the menu and select one of the preset sizes, or create a custom size.  Works great to quickly re-size images for email or web applications.  If you work with images often, or find yourself spending hours loading your graphics or photo programs to re-size photos individually, this program will be a huge time-saver!