This is all FREE software that is tested and has been reliable.
Internet and Online Security Software
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Download Firefox or one of the alternatives below, install it, and use it as your default web browser. There are a lot of nice plug-ins that you can download to add a wide array of useful features to Firefox. Look in the Tools/Add-ons menu.
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Opera is another good alternative to Internet Explorer. It's stable,
good, and free. If you have a web-enabled mobile device, you should also check out the download for Opera Mini. |
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If you use web-based e-mail, don't worry. If you use Microsoft Outlook,
download Thunderbird and use it instead. It's good, reliable, and it
works pretty much the same as Outlook. |
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POP Peeper lets you screen your incoming e-mail messages before you
even download them into your usual e-mail program. ("POP" is "Post
Office Protocol", which is how many e-mail messages are received on the
Internet.) Turn off automatic timed retrieval of your e-mail and use the POP Peeper. Delete unwanted stuff before it even fully gets to you. |
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If an anti-virus program came with your computer, it was probably a
90-day trial. If you don't pay the annual fee for updating the virus
data, your anti-virus program becomes more and more useless. If you
aren't subscribing to an anti-virus program, uninstall what you have
and install the free AVG Anti-Virus program. Use it. It has automatic
updates. It may not be the "best" one out there, but it's far better
than anything that isn't consistently updated. |
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You need a firewall. A firewall prevents unwanted information from traveling in OR
out. Some firewalls block unwanted incoming messages only. But with the
amount of spyware and adware out there, you also have to block outgoing
messages from programs that you might not know you have running on your
computer! Zone Alarm does this. Download and install the free version
(Follow the "Zone Alarm" links. "Zone Alarm Pro" is the pay version.)
Use it! |
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Here are two free anti-spyware/adware programs. Spybot and Ad-Aware
do about the same thing. They each attempt to remove known spyware and
adware from your computer. They each succeed about 80% of the time.
Each one catches a few things the other might miss, so installing and
using them both is best. Unlike AVG and ZoneAlarm which run
automatically whenever you use your computer, you have to remember to
run each of these two programs occasionally to clean up your computer. |
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For the nasty stuff that Spybot and Ad-Aware don't catch, HijackThis
will help. Unlike all the rest of the programs above, this one takes a
little work. Don't be randomly clicking and deleting things when you
run this program. HijackThis gives you a list of everything (good and
bad) that's running on your computer. Then Google becomes your friend,
as you check each thing in the list to see if it's good or bad. When
you do find a virus or spyware, there are a lot of good "white hat"
discussion boards that will usually tell you how to get rid of it.
Often they will ask you to post a log from HijackThis so they can help.
WARNING: do not be deceived if you come across websites that tell you
to download and run a special program to delete spyware! Many of those
programs are spyware themselves! Be cautious! |
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If you have to use FTP to transfer files on the Internet, Filezilla is
one of the best programs for doing so. |
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Automatically keep your PC time correct by synchronizing it to the
world time server. Lots of other goodies available at this website, too. |
Office Applications
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Word processing, spreadsheet, database, and presentation software, all
compatible with files from Microsoft Office. This one is a few hundred
dollars less expensive... it's free and open source. Also includes math
and drawing modules. This is a large download. |
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If you don't need the entire office suite, AbiWord is an excellent word
processor that's compatible with Microsoft Word and it is much smaller
than Open Office. |
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Install this software and you can output PDF files from any Windows
application that can print. You can also merge multiple files into one
longer PDF file. |
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This is a nice freeform personal data manager. The "Lite" version is
free. |
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This is not a link to one program. The website contains versions of
many of the programs listed on these pages, but specifically versions
that can be run from a USB flash drive with no further installation
needed on a host computer. Just plug your flash drive into any computer
running Windows and you can run your own applications, such as
OpenOffice, AbiWord, Firefox, or Thunderbird. |
Media Player
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There are all kinds of dueling media players out there, from Windows
Media Player to Apple Quicktime to Real Networks, with plenty in
between. They all seem to gag on various files because of "missing
codecs" (compression/decompression
software) and similar issues. The one that seems to work best across
the board is this nice little open-source project. Try it. Be happy. |
Photo Editing and Graphics
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This is a nice little photo editor from France that does all the
essentials very well. |
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Paint dot net adds the capability of using layers to the above. It
loses a little in simplicity, but the benefit is some extra
functionality. Between this and Photofiltre you'll have most of the
features that most people ever use in this type of software. All for
free. Warning: When last visited, their site contained misleading
ads with "Download" banners. These ads are for other software. Read carefully
as you navigate this site! |
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There are several commercial programs that
"stitch" together overlapping digital photos into one seamless image.
I've tried them all. They are each fussy in their own way, often
require some manual manipulation, and they take a while to "think".
This one doesn't have a slick interface. It doesn't need it. Pick 2
image files that overlap. Or pick 30 that overlap in whatever irregular
fashion you might have used without a tripod. This program matches them
up, bends, warps, and stretches to fit, and pops out a finished image
in a fraction of the time that the best commercial software takes. |
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Andrea Mosaic lets you create a "photomosaic": what appears from a
distance to be one photo is actually made up of many little photos when
you inspect it up close. Create a directory and load it up with your
mosaic tile images. Then give the program the image that you want to
create, and it will piece together the tiles you provided to produce
the larger photomosaic. Pretty cool. |
Audio
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This is a multitrack audio editor that includes lots of standard studio
effects. You can use this for a multitude of sound recording and mixing
projects, even for multitracking your own music. |
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Take an MP3 file and chop it into smaller sections by viewing and
marking the waveform. This is great for things like recording an album
side and chopping it into individual MP3 tracks. |
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Did you ever notice how you frequently have to adjust volume while listening to MP3 files? That's because they're all recorded at different volumes, even sometimes when you copy them right from a CD. This program "normalizes" a set of MP3 files. It adjusts the volume on the files so that the peak volume is all within the same range. |
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This program is great for a quick trim and adjust of an MP3 recording.
You can fade in or fade out at the trim points. |
Utilities and Other Stuff
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This one is more for programmers and people who edit PHP, C++, HTML,
CSS, XML, and other acronyms. Notepad++ is a fancy text editor that
autoformats and color codes your code in most of the languages that it
recognizes. |
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Let's you create a virtual disk drive that is
encrypted and password protected. |
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A protected database to hold your passwords. |
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If you don't already have good CD/DVD burning software that lets you
create data or audio disks and control the recording speed, this is a
good one. |
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