Free Software - Nothing Better Than Free...

In the original spirit of the Internet, when practically anything and everything was free, here's a small sampling of the free programs that I use that are available on the Internet (which I have ranked in perceived importance/necessity). Save yourself some money and use it on some good books instead!

 

Software
What It Does
Where to Get it:
Zone Alarm Firewall Secures your computer from hackers and worms. If you think you don't need a firewall, read this. Click on 'Home & Home Products' and click on simply 'Zone Alarm' Zonelabs.com
AVG Antivirus Scans your computer for any potential viruses, worms, or Trojan horses and eradicates them. Grisoft.com
Adaware Searches your computer for any spyware or malicious cookies and deletes them. Lavasoftusa.com
Mozilla Firefox w/ Google Toolbar

A much more secure browser than the much maligned Internet Explorer or Netscape; it's produced by a non-profit organization. Google Toolbar helps to simplify and unobtrusively make browsing even easier.

Open Office A free, open-source version of a Word processor which is fully compatible with MS Word. OpenOffice.org
Ubuntu Desktop Edition Tired of paying for Windows and its occasional crashes? Here's a full-fledged operating system for free (yes, you read that right) with thousands of free programs available too. More info on it is available. Ubuntu.com

 

 

Here again are my complete recommendations for building your own, Fast computer!

 

Next - Build a Fast PC - Help & Support »

 

Tip: I have extensively used each of these programs, and I have found all of them to be very useful. Howerver, you may be tempted to use Windows firewall. I suggest for you not to (read this short article for some info). To sum up the article, Zone Alarm gives you more freedom to customize the traffic which you allow in and out of your PC. The article even mentions that when Windows firewall was introduced, it caused even more people to begin using Zone Alarm.