E stands for EXCELLENCY.

The following is a list of the best (my favorite) free software for MS-Windows and where to find and download them.

Graphics

Viewers

IrfanView. Very useful image viewer that also includes a batch conversion. Accepts plug-ins. [homepage]

XNView. It's not only an image viewer, but a basic graphic editor as well. Flexible and feature rich. [homepage]

Editors

The GIMP. A full graphics editor package in the rank and rival of PhotoShop and similar competitors. Available for Windows, UNIX/Linux, and MacOS X.[homepage]

Vector graphics

EVE. Can you believe there is a 47 Kb vector graphics program? Well, it's true; and it's very workable and flexible. [homepage]

Utilities

CyberView Image. Preview the JPG compression to your JPG images before applying it. Can also read BMP files. The free version is hard to find, but it seems to be available somewhere. Today, most graphics editor are capable of showing a JPG compression preview when exporting to that format, but if you don't have one, CyberView could be of help. [homepage]

Icon Snatcher. If you need to extract icons from executables, this could be of great help. [homepage]

Gadwin PrintScreen. Capture screen shots of every single thing you want, any way you want to: from small sections to the whole desktop area; by using hot keys or user-defined automatic intervals. [homepage]

Communication

Browsers

Firefox. Based on the open source code of Mozilla.org, this is simply the best web browser out there right now. Small, simple, powerful, and have a lot of plug-ins. [homepage]

Internet Explorer. Possibly you already have a copy of IE. And finally (since v.6), it's pretty stable. [homepage]

Mozilla. Open Source alternative to IE and Netscape. Practically cloned by Netscape, but this one is better; also cramped with unnecessary stuff. If you don't need the extras, get Firefox instead (see above). [homepage]

Email

Pegasus. My favorite e-mail client for "centuries". The newest version handles HTML messages quite well, although still not perfect. [homepage]

Mozilla Thunderbird. The first runner up, pretty good. If you prefer a modern look (Pegasus looks a little old-fashioned), this is the one. [homepage]

Chat

Trillian. It's always convenient to have one of this communication tools around, and this one is pretty good. [homepage]

Newsgroups

Xnews. The best newsreader in the free block. Lots of features, including multiple servers support and filtering. [homepage]

FTP

BlazeFtp. Maybe it doesn't sport an easy interface, but does the job pretty nicely. [homepage]

P2P

Shareaza. Simply the best and spyware free Gnutella network pier-to-pier application. More efficient than all others I have tried, even surpasing LimeWire, my former favorite. [homepage]

Utilities

Zone Alarm. Protect your computer form malicious Internet intruders, even if you're a dial-up user. [homepage]

WebWasher. Fight advertisements and pop-up browser windows. You need to try WebWasher if you don't use FireFox. [homepage]

AdAware. Protect your PC from spyware, and eliminate those little pesky secret agents. [homepage]