Here are 5 Free software programs to help you work smarter, not harder, in your home business.

There are a lot of programs out there that can really shorten and improve your working experience, especially if you are working on your own from home.

Time freedom is one of the main reasons people set up a home business.

These 5 free programs will not only improve the quality of your output but also help make things faster & easier for you.

There are a lot more than 5 that I could suggest & I will continue to update with new programs regularly.

1. Ditto

* Ditto is for copying & pasting & lets you keep a vault of items in your clipboard & even store your list on several different machines.

If you repeatedly copy & paste the same item for work - like in Article marketing or setting up your ads, you may find Ditto indispensable.

2. Sandboxie

* Sandboxie is very useful if you're constantly downloading things. The program will build a virtual sandbox for you to put your downloaded files & run your apps, like your web browser in.

The interface can be confusing if you're not used to sandboxes though and you'll still need an antivirus program.

However, if you're constantly stepping into uncharted territory on the internet, then Sanboxie can be very useful.

3. Xobni

* Xobni is an Outlook add-on that scours your emails to generate what its developers have termed an "automatic address book".

It will show the conversation threads & attachments you've shared with every person you've had contact with.

Xobni actually goes as far as building a mini profile of each person and includes all the contact details, phone numbers, Facebook accounts (where possible & this means that photos show up so you might suddenly get to see what someone looks like!).

With Xobni you can also see all your conversations with a person on one window as you can on your smartphone. You can do this without having to search your emails.

The result is a far faster way to follow conversations, check someone's contact details and you can rely less on maintaining your Outlook contact list.

The free version is limited to one pst file but you can try it out first and see if you need an upgrade.

4. Mediacoder

* Mediacoder is an excellent video and audio transcoder that can perform batch video conversions to & from just about any codec (including Linux).

If you're getting into video marketing then it can be a great tool to have in your arsenal.

It can resize & resample videos & has very good support for multi-core processors. It's also an excellent tool for converting your .flv files to .avi & .mp4 but it doesn't have an built in video editor so you'll need something like VirtualDub for that.

5. Camstudio

* Ever wondered how people put those great "how to" video clips on Youtube where you can see what they're doing on their computer screen?

There's a good chance they are using Camstudio.

If you're wanting to create video tutorials for your team or your marketing campaign then Camstudio is an absolutely essential and very useful free tool.

The software produces AVI files as well as more web friendly SWFs.

Camstudio also lets you add captions and a picture-in-picture video of yourself using a webcam. Clever, hey?

These 5 Free software programs to help you work smarter, not harder, in your home business will assist you to immediately increase your productivity and make your working life much easier. Watch out for updates of other Free software to help you make the most of your time.