Between helping people repair their computers and spending time every day browsing and searching, I’ve come up with some good programs that people might be interested in. Most of these are open source; all of them are free.<\/p>\n
1) Firefox<\/a> Web Browser 2) Open Office<\/a> Office Suite 3) AVG<\/a> Anti-Virus Software 4) Thunderbird<\/a> Email Client 5) ZoneAlarm<\/a> Firewall 6) Spybot<\/a> and AdAware<\/a> 7) Gaim<\/a> Instant Messaging 8) GimpShop<\/a> Image Editing 9) Filezilla<\/a> FTP Client 10) MyACDSee<\/a> Image Browser and Viewer 11) LogMeIn<\/a> Remote Control 12) FoxIt<\/a> PDF Reader 13) 7-Zip<\/a> File Archiver and Compression Manager I could list more, such as CWShredder<\/a> (for removing the Cool Web Search family of hijackers) or HijackThis<\/a> (for viewing and removing IE add-ins, including malicious ones). Azureus <\/a>is a good bit-torrent client, and Free Agent<\/a> is a pretty good News Reader. Angry IPScanner<\/a> is good for viewing all the connections on your network. If you know what “Grep” means, you might want to try Agent Ransack<\/a>. <\/p>\n These are some of the main free-ware programs I use.<\/p>\n Anybody else have any favorites?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Between helping people repair their computers and spending time every day browsing and searching, I’ve come up with some good programs that people might be interested in. Most of these are open source; all of them are free. 1) Firefox Web Browser Much better for web browsing than Internet Explorer, and much less likely to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/daryllafferty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/daryllafferty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/daryllafferty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daryllafferty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daryllafferty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/daryllafferty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/daryllafferty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daryllafferty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daryllafferty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nMuch better for web browsing than Internet Explorer, and much less likely to provide a pathway for spyware to enter your computer. Tabbed browsing and easy-to-add extensions such as AdBlock make browsing easier, less irritating and safer.<\/p>\n
\nA very good full-featured replacement for the Microsoft Office Suite. Although it is very similar to MS Office and most people will pick it up with no problem, there may be a short learning curve for some of the more complex operations.<\/p>\n
\nBackground scanning of all file operations, daily updates and daily full system scans. AVG has served me well for the last two or three years.<\/p>\n
\nAn excellent replacement for Outlook Express. It has built-in “Bayesian” spam filtering which is the best spam filtering I’ve seen or used. Unfortunately it’s on the client, so the spam still gets downloaded, but 99% of it gets moved to the spam folder before I even see it. Thunderbird also has some security advantages over Outlook Express, such as not displaying images from unknown sources unless you OK them. It’s not a complete replacement for Outlook, since it doesn’t have a calendar or task manager, and won’t sync with a handheld.<\/p>\n
\nPerhaps the best Firewall on the market, and it’s free. No broadband connection should be without a firewall of some sort. Most broadband routers have hardware firewalls built in, which do a pretty good job of protecting you from the outside, but ZoneAlarm also prevents malicious programs that have snuck onto your system from connecting out. <\/p>\n
\nThese two programs do a pretty good job of removing spyware and adware. Currently I think Spybot (version 1.4) is a little better, though next month AdAware may leapfrog it again. For the harder jobs I sometimes have to resort to Spy Sweeper<\/a>, a commercial program. You can download a two-week trial and clean out your system, but if you want to keep it you have to pay.<\/p>\n
\nThis program is compatible with ICQ, AIM, MSN-IM and several others. No ads, just simple instant-messaging. It seems to lose it’s connection once in a while and doesn’t always reconnect automatically, but it’s easy to reconnect manually. All in all I like it better than the alternatives.<\/p>\n
\nThis is a very full featured image editing program. This version is a “skin” for the original “The Gimp” to make it more of a PhotoShop clone. I’m more used to Paint Shop Pro, and both PhotoShop and GimpShop handle some things differently, so I’m not completely at home using this. I can’t really personally comment on it’s stability or effectiveness, but I’ve read a lot of enthusiastic reviews. I’m trying to learn it now.<\/p>\n
\nA very nice full-featured FTP program<\/p>\n
\nIf you already have the “real” ACDSee, there’s no reason to switch, but this is a pretty good free clone. <\/p>\n
\nNot really a program, but a free service. The best remote control software I’ve seen, and all you need on the controlling end is a web browser. You can view the screen and control the mouse and keyboard of the host machine. Very fast screen updates, very responsive.<\/p>\n
\nI like this much better than Adobe Acrobat. It loads much faster, and doesn’t have to install lots of pieces all through the registry. So far I’ve found it completely compatible and just lots nicer to use.<\/p>\n
\nA good replacement for WinZip. Seems fully compatible, and with more compression modes.<\/p>\n