I’ve recently come across 3 great pieces of software that you can download for free and are genuine improvements on what you are almost certainly currently using.

Firstly, for users of Outlook 2003/2007 there is Xobni which makes searching your emails so much easier than the Outlook search.

In a similar vein, Everything is a superb search utility .. if you are using Windows or Google’s Desktop search, try this, you won’t go back.

Finally, it’s a bit unfair to say it’s great improvement on the excellent VLC player, but I rather like The KMPlayer which plays just about any media you throw at it.