As the spring is approaching shortly, hopefully,  I have decided to start a round of spring cleaning on my computers.  Full data backup, restructure folders, delete unnecessary stuff off the laptop, defrag the harddrives, etc.  One of the things I do is to update all the open source / free tools I have on my computers.  Here is a list of tools I use these days:

• Pidgin – a nice all-in-one IM application supports popular networks, such as AIM, Google Talk, IRC, MSN, ICQ, Yahoo!, etc.
• KeePass Password Safe – easy to use password manager.  You can put it on a USB key without installation.
• Filezilla – This is probably the most stable FTP client I’ve ever use.
• VLC media player – cross-platform media player for Windows, Linux, Mac OS X.  It plays everything, no need to get separate codec updates ever again.
• ClamWin – Open source GPL virus scanner, its pretty darn good IMHO.  It gets the job done and not using a lot of RAM or CPU when scanning.
• TweetDeck – Allow you to twit on your computer, and it supports Mac OS X and Windows.  Its based on Adobe AIR.
• Browsers: Firefox, Chrome, Picasa, GIMP, etc. – no need for introduction eh?
• ZScreen – open-source screen capture program, which allows you to capture region/window/full-screen screenshots.

Updated: Forgot to mention about PortableApps, a useful way to carry some good tools around and get access whenever you can using a USB key.