For those of you that participated in our last contest, you’ll be happy to know that we’re back with another. Only this time: Everyone wins.

That’s right, this wonderful software that is normally $49.95 is now free of charge, to pick up your copy of WinX HD Video Converter Deluxe, just head on over to the WinX HD Converter Homepage, and click on the download link. Hurry and get your copy because this special event is only running until March 15th.

WinX  HD  Video  Converter  Deluxe  is  the  first  video  converter  that  supports  converting multitrack HD Videos such as BDAV, M2TS, MKV, AVCHD, HDTV, MPEG-TS video movies to AVI,  MP4, H.264, MPEG, WMV, FLV, etc. It enables users to choose any audio language track and video track from multitrack videos.  It also allows users to convert videos among all popular formats without 3rd codecs. With Multi-Core and Hyper Threading supported, its conversion speed is increased dramatically, 5x – 15x real time converting speed.

The list is compiled from the CNET Top 5 Free Software video.

#5 – GIMP

GIMP running in Windows XP

GIMP (The GNU Image Manipulation Program) is a free software raster graphics editor. It is primarily employed as an image retouching and editing tool, as well as offering freeform drawing and retouching tools, GIMP can accomplish essential image workflow steps such as resizing, editing, and cropping photos, combining multiple images, and converting between different image formats.

GIMP can also be used to create basic animated images in the GIF format. At present GIMP is entirely suitable for amateur or professional work with images intended for viewing on monitors and printing on inkjet printers.

Download: http://www.gimp.org/downloads/

#4 -HandBrake

HandBrake 0.9.3 in Windows

HandBrake is a free open-source program designed to convert MPEG video (including DVD-Video) into a MPEG-4 video file in .mp4, .avi, .ogm, or .mkv containers. The program is used by many people to convert DVDs into other forms so they can be viewed on iPods, iPhones and with the Mac QuickTime Player.

Originally developed for BeOS, HandBrake is now cross-platform, and available for Linux, Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and Solaris. As it is released under the terms of the GNU General Public License, HandBrake is free software.

Download: http://handbrake.fr/downloads.php

#3 – Firefox

Firefox 3.5 in Vista

Mozilla Firefox is a free and open source web browser descended from the Mozilla Application Suite and managed by Mozilla Corporation. A Net Applications survey put Firefox at 24.07% of the recorded usage share of web browsers as of October 2009, making it the second most popular browser in terms of current use worldwide after Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.

Latest Firefox features include tabbed browsing, spell checking, incremental find, live bookmarking, a download manager, private browsing, location-aware browsing (aka “geolocation”) based exclusively on a Google service and an integrated search system that uses Google by default in most localizations. Functions can be added through add-ons, created by third-party developers, of which there is a wide selection, a feature that has attracted many of Firefox’s users.

Download: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/firefox.html

#2 – OpenOffice

OpenOffice.org Writer in XP

OpenOffice.org (OO.o or OOo), commonly known as OpenOffice, is an office application suite available for a number of different computer operating systems. It is distributed as free software and written using its own GUI toolkit. It supports the ISO/IEC standard OpenDocument Format (ODF) for data interchange as its default file format, as well as Microsoft Office formats among others. As of November 2009, OpenOffice supports over 110 languages.

Download: http://download.openoffice.org/

And finally… #1 – VLC Media Player

VLC in the new Windows 7

VLC media player is an open source, free software media player and multimedia framework written by the VideoLANproject.

VLC is a portable multimedia player, encoder, and streamer supporting many audio and video codecs and file formats as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It is able to stream over networks and to transcode multimedia files and save them into various formats. VLC used to stand for VideoLAN Client, but that meaning is nowdeprecated.

It is one of the most platform-independent players available, with versions for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux,BeOS, Syllable, BSD, MorphOS, Solaris and Sharp Zaurus, and is widely used with over 324,609,909 downloads for all versions as of 07 November 2009.

Download: http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

Just over three months after launching their browser, Google representatives have confirmed that Google Chrome  had a change of status Thursday. Google’s browser is now out of the beta stage and ready for action…for Windows users at least.

Chrome still lacks support for basic features like form autofill, RSS, extensions, and perhaps more crucially, has no official support for the Linux and Mac platforms, but I still suggest giving it a try if you have a Windows machine laying around your house.

If you want to download Chrome, you can get it directly from Google, or if you already have Chrome installed, you can update it by going to Chrome’s About page, and then forcing the update with the dialog box.

For me, being a Linux user, I will be sticking with Firefox until Google can come up with official support for a Linux version and at least implement extensions.

Google has just released their own open source in-development browser, dubbed Chrome, just a few hours ago.

While some of the reviews sound good, and the screenshots of the browser look good. I’ve not yet actually had a chance to try it, due to the fact that I run Linux, and Google has only released the browser for Windows for this beta, leaving Mac and Linux users out in the cold. This wouldn’t surprise me, except for the fact that it is an open source browser, so you would think if anything, Linux users would have first shot.

Google has said that they are working on Mac and Linux version, but have not set a release date, or any details about the Mac and Linux versions.

I might get a review in for it once it becomes available, but for now, the only way I’ve found to run Chrome would be to use a virtual machine to run Windows and run it inside of that, which isn’t plausible. I think that for now, I’ll be sticking with Firefox.