Remember the times when you had to carry a case full of floppy disks to carry your digital documents and files? I do. Portable media storage devices like the zip drive were already available at that time but they were quite expensive and not everyone could afford them. Technology has vastly improved and gone a long way since then. Portable media storage devices like the USB flash drive or thumb drive are becoming smaller, cheaper and have more storage capacity. They are now a common sight and you see a lot of people bring it with them to school, in the office or anywhere they go.

I recently purchased a 4 GB Sandisk Micro Cruzer. I bought this USB flash drive because it was on sale for cheap from Amazon.com and because I needed something that can store important files, portable programs and installers for different programs like office productivity software, data recovery, anti-virus, anti-spyware, firewall, web browser, cd/dvd burning software and other useful utility software. I bring it with me anywhere I go because it can come in handy in certain situations.

Anyways, while I was sorting the stuff in my USB flash drive, I thought of blogging about it, share with you what I have on inside it and at the same time ask you guys what you have on your USB drives? This is quite a long list and it should’ve been more if I had extra space on my USB flash drive. Btw, all of the programs/installers in this list are freeware or open source.

Programs Installed:

• ClamWin Portable
• Firefox Portable
• GIMP Portable
• Notepad++ Portable
• Pidgin Portable
• VLC Portable

Misc Files:

• Select mp3s
• Videos
• Documents

Software Installers:

Data/System Recovery

• Avira UnErase Personal
• FreeUndelete
• PhotoRec
• Recover My Files
• Recuva
• Restoration

File Encryption

• AxCrypt
• dsCrypt
• TrueCrypt

File Manager

• Free Commander
• Xplorer2

CD/DVD Burning Software

• Ashampoo Burning Studio 6
• Avi2DVD
• CDBurnerXP
• DVD Shrink
• HandBrake
• ImgBurn
• InfraRecorder

Instant Messaging

• Digsby
• Miranda IM
• Pidgin
• Trillian Astra Basic
• Windows Live Messenger
• Yahoo Messenger

Image Viewer/Editor

• FastStone Image Viewer
• GIMP
• IrfanView
• LightBox Free
• Paint.NET
• PhotoScape
• Picasa

CD/DVD Emulation

• Daemon Tools Lite
• GizmoDrive

Media File Converters

• AnyVideoConverter
• Format Factory
• MediaCoder
• VioVideoConverter

Media Players

• Applian FLV Player
• DivX
• Foobar2000
• iTunes
• JetAudio Basic
• KM Player
• MediaMonkey
• Media Player Classic
• Miro HD Video Player
• QuickTime
• Songbird
• VLC Media Player

Office Productivity

• Abiword
• OpenOffice
• Mozilla Thunderbird

PDF Tools

• CuteWriter
• Foxit Reader
• PDFill Free Writer

Other Installers

• 7zip
• Adobe AIR
• Adobe Flash Player
• AMP Font Viewer
• Audacity
• Download Accelerator Plus
• EphPod
• FileZilla
• Google Earth
• KLite Code Full
• OperaTor
• PeaZip
• Microsoft Silverlight
• UltraVNC
• uTorrent

Portable Apps

• BPBible Portable
• ClamWin Portable
• Cornice Image Viewer Portable
• Firefox Portable
• GIMP Portable
• Notepad++ Portable
• Pidgin Portable
• Portable Apps Suite
• VLC Portable
• XAMPP Portable

Programming

• Notepad++
• NVU
• Zoundry Raven WYSIWYG Editor

Security/Privacy

• Ad-Aware Anniversary Edition
• a-squared Free
• Avast Home Edition
• AVG Free
• Avira Personal
• CCleaner
• Comodo Internet Security
• Comodo Firewall
• Malwarebytes Anti-Malware
• Outpost Firewall Free
• PC Tools ThreatFire
• Spybot Search & Destroy
• ZoneAlarm Free

System Tools

• Absolute File Shredder
• Comodo BO Cleaner
• CPU-Z
• EASEUS Partition Manager Home Edition
• Eraser File Shredder
• HijackThis
• jDiskReport
• MyUninstaller
• PC Decrapifier
• Revo Uninstaller
• SIW (System Information for Windows)
• WinAudit

Video Editors

• VirtualDub
• Avidemux

Web Browsers

• Flock
• Google Chrome
• Mozilla Firefox
• Opera
• Safari

Another reason why I carry all these installers on my USB drive is because I’m frequently asked by family and friends to check out their computers for problems and fix it. Most of the time, when I check their computers they don’t have an antivirus or the license is already expired. There are also times when they complain that their computers have become sluggish or very slow (common symptom of malware or spyware infection) so I install an antispyware or anti-malware on their computers and run a thorough scan. Anyways, you get the idea.

How about you guys, what’s on your USB drive? Do you know of other useful programs/installers that are not included in the list? Please share it with us.

I’ve made a compilation of available free antivirus software or programs that you can install and use to protect your computers. Among the antivirus software listed below, the ones I’ve tried and used are AVG Free Edition and Avast! Home Edition (currently installed on my laptops).

DISCLAIMER: This list is intended to provide users with alternative free antivirus software. I’m not endorsing these products and I haven’t tried all of them. INSTALL AT YOUR OWN RISK.

A-Squared Free – scans your computer for malicious software (Malware), including Trojan Horses, Dialers, Worms, Spyware, and Adware. A-squared Free is specialized in finding and removing them securely. The disk scan checks all files on your system disks for Malware. The scanner scans for Spyware Traces. Currently more than 1.2 million different types of Malware may be detected and removed.Free daily online updates provides the best protection.
Platform: Windows
Homepage / Download

Avira AntiVir Personal – Free Antivirus – is a reliable free antivirus solution, that constantly and rapidly scans your computer for malicious programs such as viruses, Trojans, backdoor programs, hoaxes, worms, dialers etc. Monitors every action executed by the user or the operating system and reacts promptly when a malicious program is detected. Avira AntiVir Personal is a comprehensive, easy to use antivirus program, designed to offer reliable free of charge virus protection to home-users, for personal use only, and is not for business or commercial use.
Platform: Windows, UNIX
Notes: Nagware*, home use only
Homepage / Download

AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition – is a well-known anti-virus protection tool. AVG Free is available free-of-charge to home users for the life of the product! Rapid virus database updates are available for the lifetime of the product, thereby providing the high-level of detection capability that millions of users around the world trust to protect their computers. AVG Free is easy-to-use and will not slow your system down (low system resource requirements).
Platform: Windows, Linux
Notes: Nagware*, Registerware*
Homepage / Download

avast! Home Edition – is a complete ICSA & Checkmark certified antivirus, Checkmark certified anti-spyware & anti-rootkit package. Avast includes the following components: On demand scanner with skinnable simple interface, just select what do you want to scan in which way and press the Play button; On access scanner, special providers to protect the most of available e-mail clients; Instant messaging–ICQ, Miranda; Network traffic–intrusion detection, lightweight firewall; P2P protection for Kazaa, BitTorrent; Web shield–monitors and filters all HTTP traffic; NNTP scanner–scans all Usenet Newsgroup traffic and all operations with files on PC; Boot time scanner–scans disks in the same way and in the same time as Windows CHKDSK does.
Platform: Windows, Linux
Notes: Registerware*, home use only
Homepage / Download

BitDefender Free Edition – designed with a centralized management console, which allows protection options configuration for all BitDefender modules. It is enough to open the management console in order to have access to all modules: Virus Scan, Scheduler, Live! Update, Quarantine, Reports. On demand scanning – Powerful scan engines ensure detection and removal of all viruses in the wild every time you need it. You can schedule the checking of your system at any time, periodically, without any other intervention. With just a right click you can check your files and folders. Automatic and manual update are available. Intelligent update of antivirus protection, without your intervention. The update can be done from the network over the Internet, directly or through a Proxy Server. There are over 90,000 Virus Definitions.
Platform: Windows

Notes: No on-access real-time scanner
Homepage / Download

ClamAV – is an open source (GPL) anti-virus toolkit for UNIX, designed especially for e-mail scanning on mail gateways. It provides a number of utilities including a flexible and scalable multi-threaded daemon, a command line scanner and advanced tool for automatic database updates. The core of the package is an anti-virus engine available in a form of shared library.
Platform: UNIX
Homepage / Download

ClamWin – is a free, open source antivirus software for Microsoft Windows. It provides a graphical user interface to the ClamAV (Clam AntiVirus) engine.
Platform: Windows
Notes: No on-access real-time scanner
Homepage / Download

Comodo AntiVirus – is a comprehensive, freeware virus scanning, detection and removal application for Windows 2000 and XP with an exceptionally easy-to-follow user interface. It supports real-time monitoring, user-defined scanning tasks, on-demand scanning, email scanning with certification (inbound and outbound), suspect file submission, scheduling and automated updates. Although a very new application, it includes an extensive definition database which is updated very frequently (typically updated daily.)
Platform: Windows
Homepage / Download

DriveSentry – free next generation protection for your system/data. DriveSentry takes a new approach to traditional security software providing unobtrusive, zero-day protection from the latest threats. DriveSentry uses whitelisting technology, combined with one of the largest blacklists of known viruses and realtime program advice from DriveSentry Advisor Community to provide up-to-the-second protection where traditional security software fails. Version 3.1.2 may include unspecified updates, enhancements, and bug fixes.
Platform: Windows
Homepage / Download

Graugon AntiVirus is a spyware, adware and virus scanner and remover. With an up-to-date virus database, Graugon AntiVirus is able to search for and remove all viruses and malware on your computer. Graugon AntiVirus will neatly list all malware detected on your system and remove them with ease. With the removal of all malware from your computer Graugon AntiVirus is therefore able to boost system performance and efficiency.
Platform: Windows
Homepage / Download

Malwarebytes Anti-Malware – is an anti-malware application that can thoroughly remove even the most advanced malware. It includes a number of features, including a built in protection monitor that blocks malicious processes before they even start.
Platform: Windows
Notes: free on-demand scanner; one-time fee for real-time protection
Homepage / Download

PC Tools AntiVirus Free Edition – protects you against the most nefarious cyber-threats attempting to gain access to your PC and personal details. Going online without protection against the latest fast-spreading viruses, worms and Trojans can result in infections within minutes. Once infected, the virus will usually attempt to spread itself to your friends, family and associates by accessing your e-mail contacts and networked PCs. The infection may also allow hackers to access files on your PC, use it to launch attacks against other computers and Websites or to send mass spam email. That’s why PC Tools AntiVirus Free Edition provides protection, with rapid database updates, IntelliGuard real-time file, Internet & e-mail protection and comprehensive system scanning to ensure your system remains safe and virus free. Version 5 features new improved scan engine, smaller memory footprint, and much improved system performance.
Platform: Windows
Homepage / Download

Rising Antivirus – protects your computer(s) against all types of viruses, spywares, trojans, worms, rootkits, and other malicious programs. With it’s ease of use, Active Defense technology, Patented Unknown Virus Scan&Clean technology and Patented Smart update technology make Rising Antivirus your ‘install-and-forget’ product that lets you focus on what you really want to do. Key features: proactive defense technology, patented scanning technology for unknown viruses, patented fully automatic smart update, smart virtual machine with behavior and packing pattern recognition, application protection, self protection, application access control, program startup control, malicious behavior detection, hidden process detection, computer security check, security tool integration platform.
Platform: Windows
Homepage / Download

If you know of any other free antivirus software or program that’s not on the list, please share it with us so it can be added it to the list.

*Nagware is a type of shareware that reminds (or nags) the user to register it by paying a fee.
*Registerware requires the user to give personal information through registration in order to download or use the program.

Arachnophilia
Arachnophilia is a popular text-based HTML editor written in Java by Paul Lutus. It is known to be a successor to another HTML editor WebThing. The program is licensed as a Careware[1] type of software. The program’s name comes from the term meaning “love of spiders.”
OS support: Mac OS / Unix / Linux / Windows
Homepage

BDV Notepad
It is comfortable text editor, Windows Notepad replacement. In this program are combined: extended functionality, comfortable interface, flexible adjustment and all of this is absolutely free-of-charge! Program can work with files of any size, supports shortcuts, multilevel Undo/Redo, autosaving, URL-autodetection and start. It has customizable multilanguage interface, improved printing engine and many additional opportunities.
OS support: Windows
Homepage

ConTEXT
ConTEXT is a closed-source freeware text editor for Microsoft Windows, aimed at software developers. It can open and edit very large files, while requiring only modest amounts of RAM and hard drive space to run.
OS support: Windows
Homepage

Eddie
Eddie is a text editor which was first released in 1997 for BeOS, and later ported to Linux and Mac OS X. It was written by Pavel Císler, formerly a senior developer at Be, who later worked for Eazel and currently works for Apple and continues to develop Eddie as his pet project, now on Mac OS X. Inspired by the classic Macintosh’ Macintosh Programmer’s Workshop editor, it is primarily intended for working with C and C++ development. However, Eddie supports syntax colouring for HTML, JavaScript, .kon/.widget, Perl, and many other formats. Eddie supports a Worksheet — provides a well-appointed shell that enables the power of bash and the convenience of editing in a normal text window mode.
OS support: BeOS / Mac OS / Linux
Homepage

EDXOR
EDXOR is a versatile, convenient and optimal text editor and file processor that far surpasses the capabilities of other Notepad-like applications. It offers innovative clipboard handling, cryptographic options and logic text conversions, great for education, fun, or privacy. EDXOR is small, self-contained, dependency-free and very fast. It provides over 90 menu items, including many unique functions and options, for diverse applications.
OS support: Windows
Homepage

EditPad Lite
EditPad Lite is a general-purpose text editor, designed to be small and compact, yet offer all the functionality you expect from a basic text editor. EditPad Lite works with Windows NT4, 98, 2000, ME, XP and Vista.
OS support: Windows
Homepage

EmEditor Free
EmEditor text dditor is a lightweight yet extendable, easy-to-use text editor for Windows. EmEditor is very customizable, and it supports Unicode and powerful macros. EmEditor is designed for Windows XP, and certified for Windows Vista.
OS support: Windows
Homepage

Editor²
Editor² is a really small (57KB download) notepad replacement, yet packed with useful features for productive everyday use. Both ANSI/Unix and Unicode text files are supported. It features powerful search and replace commands, Hex and RTF viewer, dual font/color selection, URL autodetection, lots of keyboard shortcuts plus loads of handy bits for programmers (brace matching, autoIndent, etc). The unique AutoText feature makes inserting HTML open/closing tags a breeze. Editor is one of the richest feature-to-size packages in its class.
OS support: Windows
Homepage

GridinSoft Notepad Lite
GridinSoft Notepad Lite is a powerful text editor for Microsoft® Windows® operating systems with code highlighting, supports HTML, PHP, JavaScript, Java, Perl, XML and others. Has a built-in HEX editor that allows you to truncate files, to replace, insert and remove bytes from any files – just open them in a built-in HEX editor.
OS support: Windows
Homepage

HAPedit
HAPedit is an acronym for Html Asp Php editor; a win32 text-mode editor useful for all developers of dynamic web pages. Its main features are: syntax highlighting for html/php, html/asp, html, JavaScript, CSS and SQL; page preview in browser; project manager; php code “compilation”; edit html tags; code completion; preview images; SQL console; FTP Manager; Code Explorer and more.
OS support: Windows
Homepage

Komodo Edit
Komodo Edit is a free Komodo-based text editor for dynamic languages published by software firm ActiveState. It inherits many features of Komodo IDE, like the full range of supported languages (Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, Tcl) and platforms (Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows ). And like Komodo IDE, Komodo Edit also supports browser-side languages like JavaScript, CSS, HTML, and XML. It was developed for programmers who need a multi-language editor with broad functionality, but not the features of an IDE, like debugging, DOM viewer, interactive shells, and source code control integration.
OS support: Mac OS / Unix / Linux / Windows
Homepage

MAX’s HTML Beauty++
MAX’s HTML Beauty++ 2004 is advanced HTML editor that can edit as many files at a time as you want, plus it has advanced customizable syntax highlighting, undo / redo, drag & drop editing, right-click tag editing, extended find & replace, template support, project management, auto updating code snippets, code library, tag case changing capability, spelling & grammar check and more… There are also 28 Tag Designers for almost every HTML tag, a Power Toolbar that contains almost all HTML tags, Built-In Image Browser / Viewer with GIF Optimize function and ability to convert images to WBMP image format which is used by WAP-compatible mobile phones, Built-In JavaScript Beauty Scripts (rollovers, slideshows, etc.), Built-In Support for HTML TIDY, Internal Preview using Internet Explorer and Mozilla and much more.
OS support: Windows
Homepage

Metapad
Metapad is a small, fast (and completely free) text editor for Windows 9x/NT/XP with similar features to Microsoft Notepad but with many extra (and rather useful) features. It was designed to completely replace Notepad since it includes all of Notepad’s features and much, much more.
OS support: Windows
Homepage

Notepad+
Notepad+ is a text editor for Windows PC systems intended as a replacement for the default Notepad editor. It was developed by Rogier Meurs of RogSoft and first released in 1996. At that time Notepad on Windows 95 was very limited in its facilities and could only open files up to 64 kibibytes. Notepad+ removed that limitation and added many new features.

Notepad+ received many awards and significant coverage in many computer magazines, but as it was popular relatively early in the development of the web many of the pages about it no longer exist today. The program has not been developed since v1.11 in 1996 but it still has many users who prefer its simple interface over many of the other Notepad alternatives which have since appeared.
OS support: Windows
Homepage

NoteTab Lite
NoteTab is a freeware/shareware text editor for Windows. It was developed by Eric Fookes of Fookes Software, Charmey (Gruyère), Switzerland. The program’s name refers to the fact that it was apparently one of the earliest text-editors capable of editing several open documents on different tabs (tabbed document interface). The first version of NoteTab, known as Mini NoteTab, was launched in 1995; version is 5 was introduced in 2006 with current version 5.3 released in July of 2007.
OS support: Windows
Homepage

Q10
Q10 is a powerful and simple text editor built and designed with writers in mind.
OS support: Windows
Homepage

Programmer’s File Editor
Programmer’s File Editor is a freeware text editor targeted particularly to the needs of software programmers. It was written by Alan Phillips of Lancaster University in the north of England.The program includes some macro capabilities. It also supports using batch files to perform compilation tasks from within the editor. Development of Programmer’s File Editor ceased in 1999, but the program is still in use by some programmers.
OS support: Windows
Homepage

PSPad
PSPad editor is a freeware text editor and source editor for the Windows platform. It was first released in 2001, this software is produced by the single developer Jan Fiala. PSPad is designed as the universal GUI for editing many languages including PHP, Perl, HTML, and Java. It integrates the use of many project formats for handling and saving multiple files. Other features include autocompletion, tab, FTP client and find/replace using regular expressions.

PSPad interface is based on the MDI with tabs for editing multiple files and better open document manipulation. This software doesn’t need an installation and is semi-portable.
OS support: Windows
Homepage

roPEdit
roPEdit is a rich featured multifunctional Text and HTML Editor with Syntaxhighligthing, Codelists, Codefolding and Functions for Programming.
OS support: Windows
Homepage

Subpad
Subpad is a lightweight notepad clone with all of the features of Windows notepad, with just a few extras added. The main purpose was to make something close to notepad.exe, but with faster find/replace, MRU documents, and syntax highlighting. Subpad’s find/replace routine is perhaps one of the fastest out there.
OS support: Windows
Homepage

Syn Text Editor
Syn is an Open Source Text and Programming Editor with Syntaxhighlight for many Languages, and some IDE Features, like starting a program (e.g. Compiler) and capture the output, support for Projects etc. Syn is written in Delphi (Version 5, Updatepack 1) for maximum performance, stability and filesize, hence it doesn’t require any bulky VC++/VB Runtime or MFC libraries!
OS support: Windows
Homepage

TED Notepad
TED Notepad is a freeware text editor for Microsoft Windows. The software has been developed by Juraj Simlovic since 2001, originally as a school project. It has a similar cosmetic look to Notepad, but provides more features, especially for advanced plain-text editing. The application is portable and fits on a USB flash drive and does not require an installation. You can find several innovative features too, like a second search or a line completion.
OS support: Windows
Homepage

TeXShop
TeXShop is a TeX previewer for Mac OS X, written in Cocoa. Since pdf is a native file format on OS X, TeXShop uses “pdftex” and “pdflatex” rather than “tex” and “latex” to typeset; these programs in the standard teTeX distribution of TeX produce pdf output instead of dvi output.

TeXShop uses TeX Live, a standard distribution of Tex programs maintained by the TeX Users Group (TUG) for Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, and various other Unix machines. The distribution includes tex, latex, dvips, tex fonts, cyrillic fonts, and virtually all other programs and supporting files commonly used in the TeX world. The most recent version of this distribution is maintained for the Mac by the MacTeX TeXnical Working Group of the TeX Users Group and available undering the “Obtaining” tab.
OS support: Mac
Homepage

TextWrangler
TextWrangler is a popular text editor for Mac OS X from Bare Bones Software. It was originally a commercial product, but (beginning with version 2.0) has become the freeware alternative to their flagship editor, BBEdit, and the successor to their previous freeware editor, BBEdit Lite.

TextWrangler is intended for use by programmers, web designers, and others who spend time reading and writing source code.
OS support: Mac
Homepage

Win32Pad
Win32Pad is a feature filled text editor that is written with a programmer in mind. Its main purpose is to provide enough functionality that is missing from notepad without sacrificing file size and performance. It’s very fast and powerful. This editor is written so that you can install it and start using it. The features are added to make your experience better, easier and more efficient.
OS support: Windows
Homepage

WhizNote
WhizNote has a separate text file editor that allows you to customize its right-click menu to insert custom text with sophisticated template features. This can be used to make your own HTML templates. When editing HTML files, you can test all those HREF links by simple double-clicks and can test your web page in a browser even with local web sites using a personal web server.
OS support: Windows
Homepage

Please let me know if there any errors especially with the urls. Thank you!

When I blogged about my new toy the Sony DCR-DVD 105, I didn’t expect the post to be a support forum of sorts for this device. Visitors have posted comments and asked different questions regarding this camcorder and other video related stuff. Recently, one of the visitors asked me about video editors or video editing software. So I decided to do some research and put up a list of free video editing software or what people usually refer to as free video editors for Windows.

Here’s the list in alphabetical order:

Avedit
It is a great tool to work with .AVI files. Regardless of small executable size, this avi editor offers you unlimited power of digital video processing. Some high-tech tricks included into AVIedit allows you to perform with ease and fun the many interesting things, like video warping, color restore, noise reduction and so on…
Homepage

Avid Free DV
Avid Free DV is feature-streamlined, standalone software which includes basic video and audio editing capabilities, up to two streams of real-time effects and support for both Windows XP and Macintosh OS X platforms.
Homepage

Avidemux
Avidemux is a free video editor designed for simple cutting, filtering and encoding tasks. It supports many file types, including AVI, DVD compatible MPEG files, MP4 and ASF, using a variety of codecs. Tasks can be automated using projects, job queue and powerful scripting capabilities.
Homepage

Chopper XP
Chopper XP is a tool that lets you extract a part of any DVD easily. It is a Vob cutting program with a video display and a great interface. You just need to scroll to a location and select mark in and out points. The program also lets you set any priority of extraction and displays the estimated time left for extraction.
Homepage

DDClip Free 2.23
Homepage

FFMpeg
FFmpeg is a collection of free software that can record, convert and stream digital audio and video. It includes libavcodec (a leading audio/video codec library), and libavformat (a leading audio/video container mux and demux library). FFmpeg is developed under Linux, but it can be compiled under most operating systems, including Windows. The project was started by Gerard Lantau, a pseudonym of Fabrice Bellard, and is now maintained by Michael Niedermayer. It is notable that most FFmpeg developers are also part of the MPlayer project, the VLC/VideoLAN project, plus one member of the xine project, and that FFmpeg is hosted at the MPlayer project server.
Homepage

Jahshaka
Jahshaka is the worlds first OpenSource Realtime Editing and Effects System. Jahshaka takes advantage of the power of OpenGL and OpenML to give its users exceptional levels of performance. We currently support Linux, OsX, Irix and Windows, and Solaris is on the way! Jahshaka is licenced to the public under the GNU GPL agreement.
Homepage

SolveigMM AVI Trimmer
SolveigMM AVI Trimmer is a free video editor to allow you to AVI movie cut extremely fast and lossless. This freeware AVI editor software is small, smart, easy to use and involves no encoding/decoding processes. Video enthusiasts use AVI Trimmer to cut commercials, cut video files or edit video for YouTube. AVI Trimmer solves annoying out of sync problem. It operates with all known types of AVI including DV AVI type 1 and 2.
Homepage

WAX
Wax is a high performance and flexible video compositing and special effects software. The idea for Wax is to be very general purpose and flexible in video compositing and effects, so that you can compose your dream video sequence with ease everytime.

Wax can create 2D & 3D special effects and can work in two modes – as a standalone application which would appeal for home users/beginners, and as a “plug-in” to video editors/NLEs which would be more useful for professional editors. Currently Wax can work as a plug-in with Sony Vegas, Pure Motion EditStudio and Adobe Premiere and work for integrating with various other NLEs is in progress.
Homepage

Windows Movie Maker
Windows Movie Maker is a video editing software that is included in recent versions of the Microsoft Windows operating system. It contains features such as effects, transitions, titles/credits, audio track, timeline narration, and Auto Movie. New effects and transitions can be made and existing ones can be modified using XML code.
Homepage

Virtual Dub
VirtualDub is a video capture/processing utility for 32-bit Windows platforms (95/98/ME/NT4/2000/XP), licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL). It lacks the editing power of a general-purpose editor such as Adobe Premiere, but is streamlined for fast linear operations over video. It has batch-processing capabilities for processing large numbers of files and can be extended with third-party video filters. VirtualDub is mainly geared toward processing AVI files, although it can read (not write) MPEG-1 and also handle sets of BMP images.
Homepage

Virtual Edit
Virtual Edit is a semi-professional software video editing package aimed at ambitious content creators to video novices, who want to produce material with a slick and professional look, on a limited budget. Virtual Edit has been written by experts with experience in the Television and Broadcasting industries, which has been encapsulated in this simple software package.
Homepage

Zwei-Stein
Zwei-Stein 3.01 is a freeware non-linear, non-destructive video compositing and editing system which offers many advanced features unavailable elsewhere. With Zwei-Stein you can edit up to 256 video, audio and still image clips, each with up to 64 effects chained serially. Cropping, panning and custom effects are easy with automatic key frames.
Homepage

Let me know if there are other free video software that I missed so I could add it to this list. Next, I’ll come up with a list of free video editing software for Macs so stay tuned!