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.

Contest Now Closed.

Thanks to the fine folks over at Digiarty Software, I have been given 10 license keys to give away which will unlock the full version of WinX DVD Ripper Platinum [Normally a $29.95 value].

WinX DVD Ripper Platinum can rip the content of DVDs to all popular video formats such as AVI, MOV, FLV, WMV, MPEG, MP4, 3GP, etc. What’s more, it also owns the ability of ripping different DVDs (including encrypted DVDs) to Sony PSP, Apple iPhone, iPod, iTouch, Apple TV, Zune, Mobile phone, etc.

Read my review of WinX DVD Ripper here.

This contest will run until Monday, March 1st.

To enter: Simply leave a comment to this post including your name and email address. I will then use a random number generator to come up with 10 randomized numbers, and I will then match those numbers to the post numbers of the lucky winners.

Rules: You are only eligible to win one (1) license key. There is a limit of five (5) comments per person to keep things fair.

Winners:

• David
• Marc
• Julie D.
• Barbara W.
• Francesco
• Nikki
• Andrew G.
• Tracy H.
• Donna K.
• Christopher H.

Congratulations to them! And thanks to everyone who entered and helped support the contest. Watch in the near future for more great giveaways!

WinX DVD Ripper Platinum can rip the content of DVDs to all popular video formats such as AVI, MOV, FLV, WMV, MPEG, MP4, 3GP, etc. What’s more, it also owns the ability of ripping different DVDs (including encrypted DVDs) to Sony PSP, Apple iPhone, iPod, iTouch, Apple TV, Zune, Mobile phone, etc.

The idea behind this software is to enable you to transfer your DVDs to an electronic format to be played on other devices. I loaded up one of my favorite movies, Law Abiding Citizen, to test it out.

Upon starting up the program you’re greeted with a user-friendly, well-laid out interface; It includes options to convert your DVD to AVI, MP4, MPEG, WMV, FLV, MOV, etc., and even allows you to make a perfect 1:1 copy of the DVD in 5 minutes.

To begin, just insert the DVD you wish to copy/convert into your drive and the interface will take you to the selection box to choose what part of the DVD you want to copy. You will be allowed to select the Audio Language, Subtitle Language, and the Output Folder; You will also need to select the file format that you wish to rip the DVD to.

After that is done, simply click on the ‘Start’ button and wait for the DVD to be ripped.

The movie I choose to test, Law Abiding Citizen, is 1 hour 48 minutes long and took roughly an hour and a half to rip, which is decent considering the quality of the sound and video; And although the filesize came in at a whopping 1.24 GB, this can be adjusted through the options before ripping, which will limit the size.

Pros:

• Easy to use
• Inexpensive
• Plethora of output options
• Video/Audio quality is superb

Cons:

• Ripping process is slow
• Large output size (But can be adjusted)

Conclusion:

DVD Ripper is a great program for users who want a fast, effective, user-friendly DVD-ripping solution and includes a host of options to accommodate almost any playback device. It’s loaded with useful features and is a bargain at $29.95.

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/

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.