Own a Mac? Here are eight essential free applications that you should know about.

Newsfire (http://www.newsfirerss.com/) - Newsfire is a free RSS reader for Mac users that like to be on top of every news item, podcast, or video that hits the web. There are numerous features that make Newsfire stand out from the rest of the competition including search, grouping, and del.icio.us integration. And if podcasts are your thing, Newsfire has a built in audio plugin that allows for easy export to iTunes.

Adium (http://www.adiumx.com/) - Access all of your instant messenger accounts from one sleek program with the help of Adium. For recent adopters of Apple PC's that may have used Trillian on their Windows PC will make great use of this app. Gtalk, AIM, MSN, and more can all be accessed from one account. No more logging in and out of a program for each IM client.

Temperature Monitor (http://www.freemacware.com/temperature-monitor/) - At the very least, this application is straight up cool. This application makes use of the built in temperature sensors found in most Mac's these days. Find out which parts are overheating from Temperature Monitors clean interface, making it easier to identify performance problems.

TinkerTool (http://www.bresink.com/osx/TinkerTool.html) - TinkerTool opens up preference settings that were once hidden in OS X. Nearly anything you've wanted to customize, but couldn't find the preference settings, are now available to mess around with. If you ever decide you want to go back to factory settings, you're only a few clicks away.

Smultron (http://smultron.sourceforge.net/) - Smultron is essential for code monkeys. Smultron is a text editor with great features such as text coloring that makes coding far easier to write and even easier to decipher once written. If you find yourself lost in line after line of code, Smultron is for you.

ClamXav (http://www.clamxav.com/) - Viruses are far and few between for Mac users, but they do happen! Keep your system protected from those viruses that you haven't had to put up with since you were running Windows.

Perian (http://perian.org/) - I think we can all agree that Quicktime does have its downfalls. The most annoying being codec support. If you are tired of having to hunt down a new codec every time a video fails to play, than Perian is for you. Perian will keep your system updated with all the popular codecs available on the web.

NeoOffice (http://www.neooffice.org/neojava/en/index.php) - OpenOffice, an open source application that rivals the functionality of Windows Office is an amazing program. There's only one problem. OpenOffice can't run on Mac OS X without the help of X11. This is where NeoOffice comes in. NeoOffice is a direct port of OpenOffice, but Mac OSX compatible. Until OpenOffice 3.0 (currently in beta) is released with Mac compatibility, NeoOffice is your best bet.