Windows 7 - FREE Great Programs for Windows 7

Plus it's one of those listed on
OldVersion.com

If you like to get older smaller leaner less memory intensive versions with fewer features

BD Rebuilder

BD Rebuilder Beta - Bug Reports Only - Doom9's Forum

Be sure to download the recommended supporting software from the first post in the thread and follow the setup instructions. If it fails to encode the most common cause is an incorrect version of FFDShow or Matroska Splitter. Use the ones from the thread rather than the latest versions.

Zoner Photo Studio Free
Quite outstanding image/photo Manager, Viewer, Editor. Sort of like FastStone Viewer on steroids, mainly because the Editor is rather more powerful. This is slick, full featured, runs on 32/64 and has so many features in a well designed interface that you will be shocked and delighted. It will need a few days for you to get accustomed.

If you are using FastStone Viewer, XnView or that dinosaur Irfan View then give yourself a break. If you use Picasa it won't upload to Picasa Web Albums, but it will upload to Faceboook and Flickr.

Frankly if you are using Bridge or even Lightroom as a manager/Library this is still worth a try for its speed and small footprint.I paid for the full version, but really this isn't crippled or lacking in any of the important features at all (excepting one - it won't do RAW).Web/Download

Zoner Photo Studio Free: This software gets a lot of mixed reviews but the basics of the reviews are: Not so great editor and a so-so viewer. Missing many features on both sides. But for an ok editor and ok viewer it is all in one. Most photo professionals or home photo fanatics will use two different software. One for editing and another for viewing.

@WindowsStar Reviews come and go. I'm an actual user. IMO FastStone is a better viewer, but only just, I like the way it is always full screen and I like the way it zooms. F11 makes Zoner Viewer full screen but it's zoom is not as straightforward. The Picasa viewer (not the actual program) is a beautiful implementation of a windowless viewer but has no options to allow control over your preferences. Xn is fine. None of the MS versions do it for me.
As far as editing goes - there are nearly as many editors as there are users. I use Photoshop heavily but for a quick crop, a built in quick fix, working with levels or curves, changing image and canvas sizes, clone stamp etc etc there is no advantage of moving over to Photoshop. Most of the freebies won't do all these (for me) everyday things, or at least wont do them as well. FastStone comes close, Irfan can do some but is clunky, Xn is a mess, and a whole lot of others I've tried just don't have the right combination of tools or are badly implemented.
When you add the excellent manager with its uploading, contact sheet, web gallery, full tagging, search and filter, batch anything and everything powers, pdf, HDR, burn, make dvd - AND it is all easy to use and fast, Zoner starts to come into its own.
I know it is not on everyone's tongues, but then no one used FastStone Viewer which is terrific either (let alone FastStone Capture which is way better than most offerings out there) - and I'm sure it is worth a try.

looks wicked kewl 2 me

Right now I use Lightroom/Photoshop for seriouis work and Picasa for quick fixes. Would you say this was better than Picasa.?
Thanks for the post Charles, haven't seen you in a while, J

Thank you for the detailed review!

I did another version of my TicTac program. This one I call TicTac Lite. It doesn't even use a Tray Icon. Also I coded it in vc++ as a win32 app with no resources to make it small. You can download from this page:

Hotkeys

See the readme for usage. Or just run it and press Alt-F1 for an about box.

edit: just to update.. I changed the default margin from edge of desktop work area to 0. Most users probably have newer monitors than I use. If you wish to have a pixel margin just put a number from 0 to 12 on the command line, or make a shortcut with that number. I like 4 so my shortcut would have a target of:

c:\utils\TicTacLite 4

If there's an error making a number from the command line arg, it just reverts to zero, meaning flush to the edge.

After a long search for suitable podcast manager I finally decided to stick with gPodder. It provides audio and video podcast download from RSS feeds, YouTube films download, mobile device (e.g. iPod) sync, podcast directory. Actively in development so you might encounter some bugs or broken features; however runs flawlessly on my Windows 7 installation (x86). Simple, without playback features (I've got other stuff to take care of this anyway).

Seems to me it has two slight drawbacks. Firstly, its UI might feel uncomfortable or odd to regular Win users as it's build with GTK. Secondly, Win binaries are updated with considerable delay; however, you can download the source and compile it yourself then.

Oh, and it's in several languages. My screens show the Polish translation, so don't freak out