The first program that is super useful is Winzip. This is a compression program which reduces the file size of your documents. A 5 MB Word document can be easily compress into, say, 2 MB. This is very useful is you intend to send out documents over email. Winzip is freeware, but there is an evaluation screen you need to click past whenever you launch the program. Download it here.

I love to organize my personal information. An information manager program is very useful for organize chunks of thoughts, ideas and information you might have. One such program is TreePad Lite, which does a very good job of this. It is basically a treelist, with “nodes” for storing information. The program is very light and clean and is a perfect information manager. Download and try it out here.

The next best freeware program in my list is Adobe Acrobat Reader. This is again a must-have freeware program for reading ebooks that you download off the Internet. It has a ton of nice features, including the ability to read ebooks aloud using your laptop’s sound system. In fact, I sometimes find Adobe Acrobat Reader so useful that I’d recommend folks to upgrade it to the full version, Adobe Acrobat. This enables you to create PDF files, and also provides you another very useful function – the ability to print documents into PDF format. Get the program here.

The next freeware program is Mozilla Firefox. This is a great program compared to Microsoft Internet Explorer. There are ways to introduce free add-ons into the program to make your surfing experience better. The program is faster than Internet Explorer and I find it is also leaner and meaner. There might be competition coming up from Google’s new Chrome browser though – but in the meantime, Firefox is great for me. Download it here.

The last essential freeware out there? It’s got to be MSN Messenger. These days, everyone chats online and MSN Messenger has more or less become the default program people use. Watch out for viruses that can be spread through MSN Messenger – but otherwise it is the perfect tool for Web-based chat.