Looking for free Windows software? We have compiled a list of links to several sites that have recently reviewed and recommended free Windows downloads. The lists include prominent and essential apps that aid in Windows productivity, security, and performance. We think that these lists are extremely helpful and will save you time in looking for useful free Windows tools and apps for your PC.

32 Free Essential Apps for Windows

This list of free and essential Windows PC apps comes from MaximumPC. It lists 32 free Windows applications that every new PC should have. While it might be a stretch to say that all of the apps are essential, it is a great list of productivity and system administration tools. Not all recommendations on this list are free but most are and many we had never heard of but we will be definitely looking at for our own PCs.

Lifehacker Free Windows Downloads

Lifehacker also has a great list of free and essential Windows downloads many of which also appear on MaximumPC’s list including the FoxIT PDF reader. There is also a great list of free security software which we will augment in a our own post of free security software.

Gizmo Best Freeware ListA

Gizmo Freeware is a massive directory of freeware applications available on the Internet. Here is their Editors’ picks for the best PC Freeware apps. It is a recently updated list so it is worthwhile reviewing.

This poll is for TV links sites are filled with links to classic and current TV shows, comedies, dramas, cartoons, documentaries, and news. wiitV is know for its comprehensive international TV links list. OVGuide and FreeOnlineTV have probably the most comprehensive lists for TV shows in the U.S. If you know of any other great Free TV Links sites that should be on this list, let us know. Now, vote for the one that you like the best! You can vote for more than one link.

UPDATE (10-20-09): We added ChannelChooser and ChooseandWatch to our poll. Please let us know of any other Free TV Links sites that you would like us to add to this poll.

UPDATE (10-20-09): We added Disney Channel to our poll based upon visitor recomendations. Thanks!

Free T.V Online is about as misleading as a site as you can possible have found.  There are in fact, no T.V links that are actually free on this site. What this site actually does is link you to pages where you may be able to buy the show on DVD such amazon or other suppliers or when you do click on the link to watch you are merely forwarded to a page that says click here to download in DVD quality. However, upon clicking the link it asks you to install the “Graboid” video client which itself is only free for 30 days and seems to be just another P2P client.

#9. Project Free T.V:

Project Free T.V is an interesting site. While it doesn’t host any content itself and states that the site’s users are the primary uploaders, it does embed a large majority of its content so that you never have to leave the page and it also has pretty much every T.V show link I was able to think of. I was able to find recent favorites including “Scrubs”, “24″, “Weeds”, and “Entourage” to early 90’s obscurities such as “Are You Afraid of the Dark?”, “Mister T” the cartoon show, even a reality show based on Lindsay Lohan’s mother and sister entitled “Living Lohan” which I had never even heard of (it aired for a single season).  However, some of these embedded videos linked me to sites that seemed rather malicious and gave my pop-up blocker quite a run for its money, something that visitors should be heedful of. Also, to my surprise, considering that it was the top search result on Google for free T.V shows I was not expecting to find links to movies currently in theaters (”Angels and Demons”, “UP”, “Drag Me to Hell” to name a few).  While the quality of current theatrical releases was shoddy at best, the fact that these vidoes were even being hosted sent up some red flags about the site. So, while the site does have a large collection of full television episodes, and I was not infected by any maliciouss software, I would definately advise that you browse at your own risk.

#8. TV Duck:

If YouTube and Project Free T.V mated T.V Duck would be its offspring.  A hybrid mix of YouTube brand homemade videos and a repository of links to free T.V shows is what makes up T.V Duck.  While there are plenty of free episodes to watch it definitely takes some effort to actually view them. Once you decide on the show you must search through a list of episodes and titles and then find a good link to said episode. These links are often unreliable with the first few always having a link to net flix that asks you to sign up for a free trail or some other nonsense. When you do click on a link that will actually show you the video you will have to wait for a counter to tick down before it redirects you to a lackluster quality video stream and many will redirect you to strange adult friend finding websites, strange news articles and a mess of other random garbage. My pop-up blocker also had a rough time with this one.

#7. Vids.tv:

Vids.TV is a pretty nice repository and while the interface may not look all that nice, in fact its rather plain, the fact is that most of the links are pretty reliable with the exception of the “Free T.V Online” source which has a link on every episode of every show and it merely transfers you to a site requiring you to download a third party client which I’m never a fan of. Their selection of T.V shows and movies is also quite large  I just wish it was easier to browse through.

#6. Watch Movies Links:

Watch Movies Links is exactly as it sounds. A repository of links to streaming movies and while several links for each of the movies are kind of slow or or buggy there is a nice working/non-working rating that users are able to give as to the functionality of each link. There is quite a large selection of movies and while the  few that I had viewed on the site had mediocre audio and visual qualities its pretty much what you would expect from a site such as this.

#5. Now Movies:

A good site that’s pretty user friendly with a large selection of movies.  Now Movies is a pretty standard repository of links to streams or embedded movies with a pretty quick load time. However, as it is a repository it still seems to have the same flaky links and sub-par audio and visual quality that many sites of similar set-ups suffer from. Link quality aside its still a much better site then most of the other two-bit clones offered on the net especially considering that when you get a good link the buffering speed is pretty quick.

#4. AOL Television:

AOL Television is obviously a partner of America Online. While the selection of free T.V show episodes is large and varied the amount of full episodes per show is decidedly slim on several shows (5 Full Episodes of ‘24′ which has run onto its seventh season?). The site definitely seems to have made its roots within the celebrity gossip articles and has most likely started to branch out into hosting full episodes recently. As such I hope that they are able to fully expand this site to hold more episodes and especially those more recent.

#3. T.V Shack:

T.V Shack is a pretty decent site that offers plenty of selection when it comes to T.V shows and movies.  While they could have made the site a bit more user friendly for those just browsing for something to watch there is a search feature and most of the videos work properly.  My major gripe with the site though, is how long it takes for the videos to buffer and several times I found myself having to restart the buffering because it had lagged up or stopped half way through. but if you’re looking to watch a longer T.V show and cue it up before going to make lunch or dinner then it should be ready to go by the time you’re done.

#2. Fancast:

Fancast has quite a selection of content from full T.V shows, clips, trailers, and full public domain movies. The site itself has an easy to navigate interface, and their usage of commercials to maintain the cost of the site and ensure it remains free for the public is barely a nuisance when considering the amount of free content. However, I found the sound and video quality to be noticeably inferior to sites such as Hulu.  Fancast has several other useful features outside of the streaming video section such as up-to-date local T.V listings and sorting by air date functions that are useful for watching dramas and other shows where subsequent viewing may be required.

#1. Hulu:

Hulu is by far one of my favorite sites for viewing full episodes of T.V shows. Co-owned by NBC Universal, News Corp. and Providence Equity Partners you know that its all legit.  Featuring everything from full T.V episodes, clip compilations, movie trailers, and even full public domain movies.  Every video gives you some very neat options such as a pop-out function which opens the video in a separate window, full screen mode, and sharing and embedding capabilities. All this for the paltry sacrifice of watching several 15 or 30 second commercials during the program. Add that to their ever expanding catalog of television shows and movies, reviews and forums on the same page as your current video, some videos in high resolution (480P resolution), and upcoming developments for widgets and desktop players, means Hulu still manages to remain at the top of my list.

Hulu Free Online Streaming TV

Here is chance for you to vote for the sites that deliver the best free online streaming TV shows straight over the Internet. Many of the shows have recent airings. Hulu and TV.com are the biggest sites but Joost, Fancast, In2TV, Veoh, and ITV all have large fan bases so give these a try. You can vote for multiple sites if you wish.

Update (10-23-09): Added AOL Slash Control.

Now is your chance to vote for the tech bargain sites that you like the most. Leave a comment about your experiences. Let us know if there is another site that should be on this poll.

The game picks up with two young hoodlums escaping to Los Angeles after a failed robbery. Immediately, they hook up with the gang scene in an attempt to make some cash and launch new careers as LA-style gangsters. You are P. Thug (ugh), one of the two aforementioned hoodlums. And before this adventure ends, you will be experiencing the highs of screaming through LA in a hot sports car with a zillion dollars in the bank and the lows of a prison yard brawl.

Gameloft makes no excuses about following the GTA template from top to bottom. Every feature you would expect, from carjacking to gun shops to running over civilians to make cash, is in here. However, Gangstar is definitely more story-centric than the GTA games. That’s not to say that GTA titles don’t feature good narratives, but Gangstar relies heavily on the story to guide the player through the game. The city is open for exploration, but you are constantly being shuffled forward through the game by events and story-related missions. You just will not blow hours of your life just driving around taking side missions or soaking up the sights. These features have been effectively minimized in Gangstar because money is often no object. At no point did I chew my nails over running out of cash.

The missions in Gangstar are garden-variety thuglife episodes, from killing targets to races to shuttling around people. Occasionally, Gangstar steps outside these conventions with missions like carefully driving a sex limo through traffic or the jailhouse scenes, which are a welcome respite from the LA scenery. Gameloft was very smart to make these missions short. Not because they are boring, but because that works for just hopping in and out of a game during stolen moments. Plus, there is none of the frustration of blowing a 30-minute mission at the last minute like you find in the GTA games.

The police are ever-present in Gangstar. Mercifully, they are not overpowering, which is good because the controls are not overly great, but that also strips away some challenge. It is too easy to mow down incoming cops once you have some decent weapons. Plus, you can bribe them from a menu, which also removes some of the danger from the game.

Naturally, one of the biggest concerns gamers will have with Gangstar are the controls. Without physical sticks and buttons, you must rely on virtual inputs. Gameloft’s virtual controls been among the best, but Gangstar just is not as tight as other games like Hero of Sparta and Assassin’s Creed. Running on-foot is fine, but combine that with shooting and the game is tripped up. There is a slight snap to aiming, but it’s just not intuitive to run with the stick with tapping a fire button to shoot and tapping the screen to change targets. At first, I found this distressingly clumsy. But over time, I got better at it. Gameloft offers multiple options for driving controls. The virtual wheel and pedals are pointless. There is an interesting scheme where you sliding your finger back and forth across a bar to steer left and right, which works a bit better. Tilt steering is the best of the three. However, at high speeds, none of them work as well as you need. Tight turns are just not on the menu. At least you can run through things like telephone poles without being stopped, otherwise, I would have tossed the game aside hours ago.

Gameloft’s attention to detail stands out again in Gangstar, from the great texture work on the cars to the film grain added over the jail scenes. The reconstruction of LA hits the high points with recognizable scenery for the different neighborhoods. The menu system is intelligent and easy to use. The character models are pretty nice, too. Gangstar often moves along at a good clip, although there are some chugging moments where the game seems like it is struggling to keep up. (I played the game on an iPhone 3G.)

No GTA clone would be complete without radio stations and Gangstar does not disappoint here. The music in Gangstar is uniformly excellent across several stations. Although you can listen to your own music, there is likely a station here you find amenable.

For the amount of game packed into Gangstar — over 50 missions will take you around 7 or 8 hours, plus any exploration you decide to do — Gameloft is giving it away at just $5.99. The controls were a real source of consternation at first. They get better over time as you understand the nuances of the game, but it made for an off-putting first impression. The game is also entirely too easy. Gangstar does not promote side missions at all to scrap for resources and at no point did I ever really feel like P. Thug was in danger. But as a GTA clone on the App Store, Gangstar has no equal and I suspect that fans of Rockstar’s open world epics could overlook some of the smaller issues in exchange for having a real hardcore game on their iPhones.

Strangely, running around town brandishing an automatic weapon is not against the law.

Kill some thugs or go to an amusement park; the choice is yours.

There goes my insurance premiums...

The controls are nicely assembled, save for one little thing. Movement is handled with a virtual pad on the left side of the screen. Swiveling your cockpit to look and change direction is assigned to a pad on the right. The catch is that when you tap the right pad, you fire in addition looking. There is no ammo limit per se, so this does not become a supply issue. However, unloading my machine guns or flamethrower just to turn only draws attention to my mech. Stealth isn’t a part of the game, but survival is. Keeping back when another player obviously doesn’t see you is a real strategy in death match games like this.

The screen is not cluttered with too many buttons and meters. Off to the left, you have an energy gauge and shield gauge. To the right are gauges that help you judge when to release a charged-up weapon, like the lasers. There is a chat icon nearby that lets you pick from generalized phrases, although in the heat of a match, I did not want to good with chat too much. My thumbs were a bit busier laying waste to incoming mechs.

The game uses multiple servers, grouped by territory, to cut down on potential lag. During my play time, I sweated it out on the west coast server. There were rare instances of lag. For the most part, the game worked exactly as promised — seven other players and I ripped each other to shreds. The only thing that could have made it better was if I could have actually talked some smack through voice chat.

Flying Dino should be very proud of delivering an immensely playable eight-person deathmatch with iMech. This is hardcore online action for hardcore gamers. No other game on the App Store right now delivers a multiplayer experience like this. Right now, the game is just $.99  (an introductory sale), which is a total steal. Grab it and get online.

Lasers, flamethrowers, and machine guns... oh my!

It's about to get a lot hotter in here...

I suppose cows are useful for things other than milk.

The story is very unremarkable. Toy Bot has been kidnapped by the always pesky Thief Bot and it’s up to you to steal him back. That’s it. The developer hasn’t concerned itself with storytelling, but that doesn’t mean Chronicles is light on presentation, because it isn’t. The game sparkles with vibrant, fluid hand-drawn 2D backdrops that span four unique themes and scores of stages, characters animate smoothly, explosions and lightning bolts come to life with adequate particle systems, and more. As far as platformers on iPhone go, you’re not going to find many competitors where style and polish are concerned.

Rather than relying on the accelerometer for tilt-based movement, the developer has instead created a touch-screen interface — a mock left/right digital pad on the lower left and a jump button on the lower right. This is, of course, the common workaround that iPhone game creators take so that they might recreate traditional experiences for the platform. I don’t take any issue with that. In fact, Chronicles’ scheme usually feels very good, both responsive and speedy, necessities for any good platformer. I also really like the character’s projectile system — you simply touch the area of the screen you want to shoot and he’ll zap away. There’s also an enjoyable hacking component.However as with any other title that uses a mock directional pad, supposing you’re not always attentive, your thumbs will inevitably slide further out of place as you go until, at last, your inputs are no longer recognized during clutch gameplay situations. Suddenly, your Spy Bot, who behaved so admirably moments before, has fallen to his death, not because you didn’t react quickly enough, but because your touch inputs went unrecognized by the game.

The weird thing is, these control inconsistencies are oftentimes frustrating, but in my experience ultimately forgivable. I simply kept coming back to the experience again and again despite any hiccups I might’ve encountered with the touch interface. I came back because the game is charming, sure, but the biggest draw is Spy Bot’s great level designs. It’s clear, as it was in the Toy Bot series, that the developer knows how to create fun and engaging stages, ones filled with smart platforming challenges and puzzles.

I’ll be honest, I like the Toy Bot series better because the control scheme seems more ideally suited to Apple’s handheld. Spy Bot arrives with some control inconsistencies that I feel are at least partly to blame on the mock touch-pad controls. Expect some frustrations as a result, but once you come to grip with the setup and remain attentive of your thumb placement, all of which comes with a little practice, you will soon discover another fun, charming platforming from IUGO Mobile. At $3.99, it costs the same as any single Toy Boy entry, and content wise it’s about the size of two games in the previous series.

The environments look both inventive and and well constructed.

Gears... a platform hero's worst enemy.

Touch anywhere on screen to fire your laser and fry some baddies.

Duke Nukem 3D offers two control schemes. There is a traditional analog-style control that places two circles in the lower corners of the screen. Pushing your thumbs around these virtual pads moves Duke and looks around. Not a fan. Far better is the control bar setup that places four bars on the screen (that you can move as well as adjust their transparency). I have a much easier time moving and looking with these, especially with the tap-to-shoot mechanic. I find it much easier after tapping an alien to death to place my thumb back on a specific part of the control bars than a mushy circle and move exactly where I want to go.

However, Duke Nukem 3D uses a series of additional virtual buttons for additional moves like crouching and jumping. Yes, you can set the transparency of these buttons, too, but the screen is just a tad cluttered. Having to move your thumb around all these extra buttons actually reminds you that no matter how hard a developer works to replicate a traditional FPS set-up, the iPhone remains somewhat hostile.

As mentioned, Duke Nukem 3D includes all three episodes of the game: LA Meltdown, Lunar Apocalypse, and Shrapnel City. That’s quite a bit of game. If you are familiar with the PC originals, you will be pleased with the fidelity of MachineWorks’ port. Everything is exactly where you remember it, from the placement of weapons and health packs to aliens and secret areas. Duke still has his Evil Dead-inspired one-liners, too.

However, Machineworks has updated the visuals. Instead of aliens turning in fields of huge blocks when you get close for the boot-kicking kill, they are now smoothed out. Everything appears sharper, from Duke’s hands when he reloads a gun to the texture work on buildings. And if you crank up the movement speed, Duke really screams through stages. It’s quite impressive how fast the game moves. There is some slowdown here and there, though.

MachineWorks has also retained the four difficulty levels for Duke Nukem 3D. Unlike many other games, these difficulty levels actually mean something. The ‘piece of cake’ setting is perfect for gamers that need a few minutes to get used to the control schemes MachineWorks offers. Once you’re ready, definitely juice the game up to ‘come get some’ to get a real challenge. There are more aliens everywhere, and if you are not mindful of your shots, you will run out of ammo.

Unfortunately, there is no multiplayer here, which is a loss. Multiplayer was such a big part of the Duke Nukem 3D experience and MachineWorks was even able to get it up and running on their mobile port of the game. Hopefully, it will come along in an update to the game because I foresee a lot of Duke players being disappointed when they realize deathmatch is just not part of the equation. But $2.99 for a classic first person shooter isn’t much to ask especially for fans of the age old series.