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So much free software is worthless junk slowing down your computer or even worse. What are the best free programs for Windows?  And how do you know you're not signing your whole life away when you tick that box agreeing to the End User Licence Agreement? Here's my top three free and open source programs that I use and I'll explain why I trust the programs enough to load them on my precious computer systems.

I much prefer Firefox to Internet Explorer. It seems snappier, cleaner and I can add modules to make it do new tricks. It's got a great zoom facility if you want a larger fonts. If you're using an old browser like IE6 to view AscotMatters, try Firefox. Its licence agreement is Mozilla, a well respected licence agreement.

I use PDFCreator every day to create PDF files from almost any program. It installs itself as a new printer: when you want to create a PDF, from any program, you print the document to this printer. Its licence agreement is GPL: GNU public licence. GPL is a good benchmark licence.

At telanova we use Joomla for web sites. We use it for our own website and for the new AscotMatters launch. Joomla's a powerful CMS (Content Management System). Although it's free under the GNU public licence, it's a heavyweight product and there's a lot to learn if you want to build your own. But we've tamed the Joomla beast. This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it for free advice if you want to use Joomla for your website for business, charity, school etc.