Best FREE Software That Does What Windows Can’t

You’ll wonder how you coped without these programs

On the surface Windows 10 looks like a brand new operating system, full of clean lines, polished icons and neat apps. Look closer though and you’ll see tools and menus that can be traced back to Windows 7 or 8. Some even hark back to Windows XP and before.

In many cases, Microsoft has replaced old tools with seemingly new ones that aren’t that different. The Windows 10 Settings app is a good example. It takes most of the old Control Panel elements and reorganises them within a cleaner interface. Microsoft made much of this new Settings app, but still didn’t have the confidence to abandon Control Panel altogether (click Start, type control panel and press Enter to see it).

In other instances Microsoft has left its old tools completely intact. Compare the bolder, sharper layout of File Explorer in Windows 10 with the softer layout of 7’s Windows Explorer, for example. No new features have been added to these tools in years, yet here they stand, apparently fit for purpose.

We don’t agree. In this feature we’ll reveal how some of Windows’ longeststanding tools are starting to show their age (and limitations), and reveal the free alternatives you should be using instead.

Then there are the features that really should be part of Windows but, for reasons that leave us scratching our heads, are not. In some cases these are features that used to exist in previous versions of Windows, but were then later removed – Windows Media Player being a good example. And in others these are features that Microsoft has simply refused to embrace – virtualisation, password management and file shredders all being prime examples. We’ll tell you which tools to install so you can unleash Windows 10’s potential yourself. After all, who’s got time to wait for Microsoft?