| Anti-Virus
- It's hard to say what the best anti-virus
program because that changes almost weekly but
these are the top rated:
Microsoft Security Essentials
(virus & spayware
protection).
Click here.
I like this product for it's ease of use, simple interface and how
little resources it uses. This has no email
scanner but if you get a virus in your email it
will still remove it when you try and open it.
AVG Free (virus & spyware protection plus link
scanner, email scanner, phishing protection,
search shield, ant-rootkit protection).
Click here.
I recommend this for computers that children
will be using, especially teens as it adds the
link and search protection as well as an email
scanner. It will slow your computer down a
little but it's a fair trade for the extra
protection.
Avira (virus
&spyware protection plus anti-rootkit,
anti-phishing and anti-dialer)
Click here.
This is very much the same as AVG Free. It
runs a little faster and doesn't slow down your
computer as much but it also has a few less
features.
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| Spyware/Malware/Spam
Protection
SPAMfighter
(Spam blocker for Outlook, Outlook Express, Windows Mail and servers).
Click here.
The idea with SPAMfighter is to get people
worldwide to report the spam they get quickly
and easily with a single click. When enough
users have blocked a spam mail, it will be
automatically placed in the SPAMfighter folder
for all other SPAMfighter users. Right now
5,775,120 people all over the world helping to
make SPAMfighter almost scarily effective.
Spybot-Search&Destroy
(Spyware and malicious software scanner. The
paid version offers real time protection).
Click here.
For free this offers a very good scanner with
free updates, the only drawback is that you have
to update and scan manually. If you choose to
pay you get real time protection along with
scheduled update and scanning options.
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System Monitors CPUZ (system information).
Click
here.
CPU-Z is a freeware that gathers information
on some of the main devices of your system.
CPU Name and number. Core stepping and
process. Package. Core voltage. Internal and
external clocks, clock multiplier. Supported
instructions sets. Cache information.
Mainboard Vendor, model and revision. BIOS
model and date. Chipset (northbridge and
southbridge) and sensor. Graphic interface.
Memory Frequency and timings. Module(s)
specification using SPD (Serial Presence Detect)
: vendor, serial number, timings table.
System Windows and DirectX
version. SpeedFan (system monitor).
Click here.
SpeedFan is a program that monitors voltages,
fan speeds and temperatures in computers with
hardware monitor chips. SpeedFan can even access
S.M.A.R.T. info and show hard disk temperatures.
SpeedFan supports SCSI disks too. |
| File
maintenance, repair, care, etc..:
TrueCrypt (File
encryption).
Click here.
Encrypts your sensitive data. You can
encrypt a folder that will mount as a removable
drive called a container or you can encrypt an
entire drive.
FileRenamer
(Rename Files).
Click here.
Allows you to rename many files at once with
many perimeters. I use this regularly, nice program.
JkDefrag (Disk
defragmenter).
Click here.
This will defreagment your drives faster and
more efficient than the built in defragmenter
that comes with windows.
FilePhile (file
sharing/transfering over the internet).
Click here.
FilePhile is a peer-to-peer, multi-platform
app for getting files of unlimited size between
yourself and anyone else.
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| Music (for music the best
software is the free software, written by people
that wanted it done right and were sick of
programs like MusicMatch):
MKW Audio
Compression Tool (Convert .mp3 to .wav to
.shn and so on).
Click here.
This is one of the best converters out there.
Exact Audio Copy
(extract audio from CD's).
Click here.
This is the best program for taking music
from a CD and putting it on your hard drive,
converting to .mp3's or just copying CD's.
Flac Frontend
(Lossless audio compression).
Click here.
This will greatly compress music for storage
and file sharing with no loss at all (.mp3's
lose quality during compression that you can't
get back), the only one I use.
WinAmp (Music
player, great for .mp3's, flac and many more
formats).
Click here.
This was meant for .mp3's when I first
started using it back in 1995 but now it plays
pretty much any media file including videos. In
my opinion this is the nicest player there is, I
use it all the time for music.
Windows Media Encoder
(convert audio into Windows media (.vma)).
Click here.
Use this to reduce the size of waves making
them easy to email and share with others.
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| Chat/Instant Message:
Digsby (Instant
message with YahooIM, AOL instant messenger,
MSN, Google talk and more).
Click here.
This one program can connect to all the
popular instant messengers at once, Yahoo, MSN,
Google, ICQ, AOL, etc.. I use this every day.
Trillian (works
with all the IM chats like Digsby).
Click here.
There is a pay and a free version of this, I
used the free version for years until Digsby
came out. For me I like Digsby but they both
have their good points.
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| Photo & Video
VLC Media player
(media player like Windows media player).
Click here.
VCL Media player uses less memory than other
media player yet it plays almost all types of
video: MPEG, AVI, ASF, WMV, WMA, MP4, MOV (quicktime),
3GP, OGG, OGM, MKV, Realplayer, WAV, AAC, AC3,
FLAC, FLV, DVD and more.
Gimp (photo editor
like Photoshop).
Click here.
This photo editor will do just about
everything Adobe Photoshop will do, many pros
use this and it's free.
DVD Shrink (copy,
shrink, edit menus from DVD's)
Click here.
This program allows you to remove menu items,
compress parts or the whole DVD to fit dual
layer DVD's on one DVD or it can split it into
two
so you can keep the full quality and just burn
it to two discs.
DVD Decrypter (copy
DVD's).
Click here.
This is one of the best programs for ripping
DVD's to your hard drive. Then you can edit or
burn another copy.
Windows Media Encoder
(convert videos into Windows media (.vmv)).
Click here.
Use this to reduce the size of videos making
them easy to email and share with others.
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Office - documents,
spreadsheets, power point, faxing and more.
OpenOffice (An alternative to Microsoft Office).
Click here.
Most of the features of MS Office and
compatible.Google Docs (documents and spreadsheets).
Click here.
Google Docs allows you to make documents and
spreadsheets that are compatible with Microsoft
Office.
Faxing (send).
Click here.
This service allows you to send faxes for
free. You can make .pdf files (see CutePDF
below) with images and
text to be uploaded and faxed or you can type or
past text into a text box and send that as a
fax.
Faxing (recieve).
Click here.
efax allows you to have a free account and
phone number for receiving faxes. You have to
pay for the ability to send faxes but for that
you can use the service mentioned above. You
have to install their program to view the faxes
and they will send you stuff (spam) from time to
time but for the service they offer it's worth
it.
CutePDF (create and
.pdf files).
Click
here.
This free program is for creating pdf
documents that can be viewed it programs such as
Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader.
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| Web Browsers and Browsing
Utilities Firefox
(Web Browser).
Click here.
At the time this is the best web browser.
It's much safer than Internet Explorer that
comes with Windows. There are many add-ons so
you can customize many thing as well as themes
to change the look.
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