AFTER A STRESSFUL 2022, during which almost everything became more expensive, most of us will be watching our finances carefully this year. When the cost of basic items, such as fuel, food, and household bills, keeps going up, spending even a few dollars on a program, mobile app, or book can seem an extravagant and unnecessary luxury, even though in the past you may have splashed out without a second thought.
There’s always been plenty of free software around, but with developers increasingly limiting useful options to paid-for versions or scrapping their free programs altogether even this is becoming more scarce.
However, it’s not all doom and gloom, and there is still lots of great stuff you can get for free, provided you know where to look. Here, we recommend the best software and apps you should download, both to replace popular tools that will disappear soon and to try exciting new features before everyone else. We also reveal where to find other fantastic freebies, including ebooks, audiobooks, films, games, and much more.
All of our recommendations will have special relevance and usefulness in 2023, and will hopefully make the next year cheaper and easier than the last.
FIVE NEW FREE PROGRAMS YOU MUST DOWNLOAD
1. Microsoft PC Manager
Microsoft caused a stir in October 2022, when it quietly released a new PC clean-up tool called PC Manager through a Chinese website. The free app has since been added to the Microsoft Store (though its page is currently hidden) and now has an English-language website (pcmanager-en.microsoft.com), and we expect it to be officially launched in the first half of the year. Although PC Manager is still at the ‘public beta’ stage, it already provides a fast and effective way to clean and speed up your computer. You can remove junk files and space hogs, disable unwanted startup items and background processes, and scan your PC for threats and driver updates.
The app is easy to use and integrates seamlessly with Windows 10 and 11 to perform clean-up tasks with a single click and reveal useful information about your system. This includes your current memory usage ( in our screenshot below left), how much storage you have available and how long your PC takes to start . PC Cleaner is worth downloading now to try a simpler, if less sophisticated, alternative to CCleaner and BleachBit. You
