Microsoft is the most powerful and rich IT company in the world, mainly because it has almost a monopoly on the operating systems and office programs market. Windows and Office are paid products that almost everyone in the world has. But all those who hate Microsoft for the money it makes, may be surprised to find out the amount of programs that are distributed for free to everyone, without limitations.
In this almost corporate-style article (I certainly don't work for Microsoft ...), we see the best programs and free applications that you can download and install for free on your computer Windows 7 and Windows 10 . It is mostly a summary of programs already described in other articles, all collected together on this page. It is impossible to consider the entire Microsoft software fleet, but this list, including work and leisure programs, for a total of 50 applications, are all free and will surely make the computer more efficient, safe and fun.
The best Microsoft PC programs are :
READ ALSO: The best Microsoft apps for Android phones
1) Microsoft Office Online, to use the entire Office suite with Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote for free, via the internet, without installing anything.
2) Onenote for PC and Mac is free and downloadable as a single program without needing to have Office.
3) Media Creation Tool, the program to download and install Windows 10 on every PC, for free
4) Outlook.com is Microsoft's inbox that competes with Yahoo and Gmail for the palm of the best.
5) Microsoft Office Free Templates is the website where you can download templates and templates for any type of Office, Word, Excel or Powerpoint document.
6) Office Starter 2010, free and simplified version of Office included in Windows 7 Starter.
7) pptPlex allows you to zoom in and out on PowerPoint slides, creating video presentations with zoom jumps instead of scrolling (see article Presentations and slideshows with zoom on Powerpoint).
8) Forgotten Attachment Detector is a plugin for Microsoft Outlook that allows you to remind the user to insert attachments in email messages.
9) Free images and clip-art
See the list of the best sites to download Clipart
10) Noreplyall for Outlook is a plugin that allows you to prevent the recipient of email messages from replying to everyone.
11) Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack allows Office 2000, XP and 2003 users to open, edit and save documents in the new Word 2007, Excel 2007 and PowerPoint 2007 formats.
Read also how to open Microsoft Office 2007 docx, xlsx and pptx files.
12) Excel Viewer allows you to open and print Office documents from your computer without having Word Excel, Access and Powerpoint installed on your computer.
14) DreamSpark is the section dedicated to students who can download some paid Microsoft programs for free.
15) IEToys allows you to add other functions to Internet Explorer. Hide images from a web page, search for words in an online dictionary, correct invalid web links and many other things. IEToys automatically optimizes Internet Explorer to take advantage of fast broadband connections when downloading files.
16) Desktops enables virtual desktops on Windows useful for working with many programs and many windows together.
17) PageDefrag allows to defragment the paging file created by the system.
19) Internet Explorer 11 the latest version of the Microsoft browser to browse the internet for Windows 7.
20) Microsoft Fix It Center is a collection of tools for quickly correcting Windows 7 problems and errors.
Read also about solutions to Windows problems with Microsoft Fix It.
21) Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer verifies that your computer is safe from network intrusions.
22) RichCopy is the Windows tool to speed up the transfer of large files over the network, favoring the copying of multiple files at one time.
23) AutoRuns allows you to disable programs that start together with your computer and is an indispensable tool.
24) Skype needs no introduction, it is the program for making VOIP calls and chatting
25) Windows Live Writer is the program to write on a blog from the computer
26) Windows Live Movie Maker allows you to create videos from a collection of photos and to manipulate videos recorded with the camera.
27) Kodu Game is the free video game development platform dedicated to beginners and also to children.
28) EMET, anti-exploit against unknown program security holes .
29) Windows Live Photo Gallery is a photo management program that also offers numerous easy but powerful tools for photo editing.
30) Microsoft Image Composite Editor (ICE) allows you to create panoramic images and photos on your computer.
31) Microsoft Silverlight is the plugin for the web browser to watch live streaming video. It is used by the RAI website.
32) Bing Maps 3D is Microsoft's answer to Google Maps with road maps from around the world and 3D satellite view.
33) WorldWide Telescope contains the best images taken by terrestrial and space telescopes.
34) Powertoys for Windows 10 is an official tool for adding new functions to Windows 10.
35) Microsoft Photo Story 3 will be old but still remains among the best and easiest programs to create videos with photos and music.
36) Virtual PC 2007 is a program to virtualize other operating systems on the same computer, which can only be installed on Windows XP and Windows Vista. You must have an original copy of Windows to use it.
37) Insomnia is a small tool to prevent Windows from putting your computer to sleep or from turning itself off automatically.
38) Onedrive provides 5 GB of free space for storing files on the internet. It is designed to integrate with other Windows Live services and 5GB can be dedicated to synchronization on multiple computers, that is, to have the same files both on various PCs and on the Internet.
39) Family Safety is the free tool that allows you to monitor what you do on your computer. It is practically the control and authorization tool for a family computer so that children cannot run online dangers and risks of falling into bad sites.
40) Windows Live Mesh was the program to synchronize multiple computers so that they always have the same files, today replaced by Onedrive.
41) JouleMeter allows you to calculate how much electricity your computer consumes.
42) SyncToy is used to synchronize multiple folders on the same computer so that they always have the same updated content.
43) Windows Easy Transfer allows you to transfer settings, files and documents from the old computer to the new one.
44) ScreenRecorder is used to capture screenshots on the screen and record what you see on the desktop.
45) Windows Memory Diagnostic is a diagnostic tool for examining whether RAM is broken.
46) Microsoft Expression Encoder 4 program for web developers for creating videos in Silverlight which also has very powerful video editing functions.
47) Microsoft Security Essentials is the free antivirus program for Windows.
48) Microsoft Mathematics is a math expressions and functions solver.
49) MSE Antivirus Microsoft Security Essentials
50) RamMap to know in detail how RAM is used in the PC.
I advise not to try to install all the programs on this list in one go, otherwise you will bring your computer to its knees. Instead, it is better to choose the tools that are deemed most useful, also by checking the attached explanations.
