Windows 8.1 All-in-One For Dummies

Chapter 5: Best Free Windows Add-Ons

In This Chapter

Finding out which Windows add-ons you must have

Getting the lowdown on the best of the (free) rest

Figuring out what software you don’t need

Much as I love — and hate, and love to hate — Windows 8.1, it has a few glaring holes that can be fixed only by non-Microsoft software.

In this chapter, I step you through two different kinds of software. First come the (few) programs that you need to fix holes in Windows. Second is a much larger group of programs that just make Windows work better. Both of the collections have two things in common: They’re absolutely free for personal use, with one exception (which costs $5), and they all run on the desktop side of Windows 8.1.

As of this writing, Windows 8.1 Metro tiled apps are in their infancy. A year or two from now, I hope to include many of them in this Hall of Cheap Charlie Honor.

At the end of this chapter, I turn to one of my favorite topics: Software that you don’t need and should never pay one cent to acquire. There are a lot of snake oil salesmen out there. This chapter tells ...