Quality Freeware and Opensource

This is a windows vista/windows 7 bootloader modification tool to use windows bootloader to boot Linux , BSD etc partitions. Its a good tool for those who want to stick to the windows bootloader (and not linux options like grub or lilo ) or perhaps those who have been overpowered by a windows installation to use a windows bootloader over the other options :)

7 stacks is a win 7/win XP/ Vista aplication allowing you to have mac like stacks on the desktop. The programs you use frequently can be combined into a single icon for a faster access through the stack. Its a good productivity tool too.

Its still my best tool for coding in HTML/Javascript/PHP/CSS.

Bluefish Editor (for Linux, FreeBSD, MacOS-X, OpenBSD and Solaris.) is a powerful text editing tool useful for web programmers and designers and provides support for various programming and markup languages. Makes the work of hard coding much organised and easy to comprehend.

Pidgin is an instant messaging tool that can log on to various messenger accounts like yahoo, AIM, MSN, google talk etc simultaneously. It offers a little less functionality than the original messengers by respective hosts but is simple and easier to use for messaging and other basic functions. Available for linux and windows

The unison file synchronisation offers much better interface and more control over synchronising files on two storage media so that you can keep your home and office work updated. Also suited to backup files in case you use a backup disk for safety from viruses. (I was using synctoy from microsoft but found this much better .. a little slow though)

One biggest thing that stopped me from using linux as operating system was how I would use my favourite applications from windows !! Well in the current scenario, a solution to this comes in form of "Wine" software for linux wherein you can run applications of windows in Linux environment. The advantage linux (ubuntu in my case) gives is that it take quarter the time to boot up and net is much much faster than windows. Plus its entirely free to use with great interface.