Ten Must-Have Software Programs for Your Mac and PC

It is a foregone conclusion that the best jobs are in the technology field. While getting ready for my program at one of the top online universities, I came up with a list of ten must-have software programs for one's PC and Mac. Some of these run only on Mac and some only on the PC. There are the top ten free applications with the greatest utility in terms of making your life a whole lot more productive.

1. Dropbox – First and foremost, the most convenient way to share files between your different devices from your home PC to your office desktop to your android phone to your iPad. Just download and install for each one of these platforms and all your files and folders will be automatically synchronized. This is also a great tool to share files and folders with your friends and colleagues.

2. Skype – A terrific tool to stay in touch with friends but also a great tool at home where you can instantly get your questions answered via typing or attend that winter meeting in Seattle via video-chat from the comfort of your home.

3. Gimp – Why pay hundreds of dollars for Photoshop when you can get most of those functions for free in this photo-editing software? It is also available for the Mac.

4. VLC player – can’t get that strange media file to play on Windows Media Player. Don’t fret, just get the free VLC player. This comes with the most codec support of any media player out there -also available for the Mac.

5. OpenOffice – this is a great piece of software to write documents, spreadsheets and presentations. It has pretty much all the features of Microsoft Office except it is free! You can even open all the MS Office files and save your work in Office formats - also available for Mac.

6. Revo uninstaller – the perfect uninstaller utility for you PC. Goes beyond your standard add/remove program.

7. CCleaner – this is a nifty utility for removing all the junk that builds up every time you use the internet. This will remove all the unwanted junk from every application in one shot. It is available for both the Mac and PC.

8. Recuva – Accidentally deleted a file, no problem – use Recuva.

9. Thunderbird – a very user-friendly mail utility for both Mac and PC.

10. Microsoft Security Essentials – best anti-virus suite that won’t cost you a red cent.

There you have it. Best of all they’re all free!