Freeware

WEB BROWSER
Firefox 3 – If you are still using Internet Explorer, give it up and make the switch. I did it and haven’t looked back. Using Firefox 3 as a browser makes browsing the web fun and safe.

DESKTOP LAUNCHER
RocketDock – This is great eye candy and a useful utility that docks icons (similiar to the quick launch bar on your desktop) for quick launching.

ANTI-VIRUS
Avira Personal – Until recently I was using the popular AVG 8. After getting a virus from a file sharing event, I was a little agitated AVG didn’t rescue me. After this event with the virus and a lot of help from my favorite security tech guru Bill Mullins, he got me set up with Avira and life is much better. My favorite thing about Avira is it’s low key and doesn’t use a fraction of the system resources AVG does.

SPYWARE / MALWARE DEFENSE
Spyware Terminator – I used Spybot Search and Destroy for years. Once again, when my episode with the virus came, it didn’t step up to the plate to defend me. Also, Spybot SD is a HUGE system resource hog. Spyware Terminator is in touch with your computer and works hard to protect you. It plays well with Avira also.

PROGRAM STARTUP MONITOR
WinPatrol | Startup Monitor | Startup Control Panel – If something by chance manages to get by Avira and Spyware Terminator, you have two more lines of defense to prevent nasty .exe files from launching. WinPatrol is somewhat of a combination of Startup Monitor and Startup Control Panel. I like both because each offer something a little different and both are very light on system resources.

SYSTEM UTILITIES
Autoruns – This nifty program is brought to you by Microsoft. Autoruns shows you every program that runs in the foreground and background when you boot Windows. Very handy if you have a program you don’t want running at startup. I recently used it on a new Dell Laptop that is loaded with typical Dell bloatware. Since my laptop is company issued, I didn’t want to remove the bloatware but simply disable it. For those of you who don’t own a Dell, they don’t make it easy to disable their bloatware. Autoruns steps up to the plate here. Autoruns is a good security utility too because if for some reason you get a virus that loads a .dll or .exe or system file that you can’t seem to disable, Autoruns is a good place to start. Use this program with caution because you can really mess up your system if you get uncheck happy.

Ccleaner – Cleans your registry, temp files, cache, and has a program remover as well.

Revo Uninstaller – Uninstalls and completely removes unwanted programs. Very thorough.

JK Defrag – Excellent defragment utility. Light on system resources compared to the Windows defragger.

Tweak UI – Another great Microsoft product for tweaking your system. My favorite “tweaks” with this program are getting rid of the arrow on shortcuts and disabling balloon popups.

WINDOWS SEARCH ENGINE
Locate 32 – Super dooper fast windows search engine to search you hard drive for files. Highly recommend.

FILE COMPRESSION / EXTRACTOR
7zip – Compresses and extracts a variety of formats including Zip, Rar, and others. If you have ever noticed when you want to email a file folder, Outlook won’t let you. You can get around this by compressing (zipping) the folder and then emailing.

FILE ENCRYPTION
AxCrypt – Encrypts and password protects individual folders and files. I’ve tried several programs and this one is very user friendly and works well.

IMAGE VIEWER
Picasa3 Image Viewer – Since I use Picasa3 to organize all of my digital photos, the latest release of Picasa now incorporates a nice snappy (quick) image viewer which was not available in Picasa2. Highly recommend.

XNview – Over the past year I’ve been trying them all. My criteria for viewing images is simple. The program needs to open fast, zoom up and down with my mouse wheel, and do simple editing. XNview is a very close second to Picasa3 and I still recommend it.

PHOTO COLLECTION ORGANIZER
Picasa3 – Once again, over the past year I’ve tried them all and Picasa3 does a great job.

GRAPHICS EDITOR / MANIPULATION
Gimp - I’ve been going back and forth between Gimp and Paint.Net and I’ve finally decided Gimp is the winner. Gimp is by far a more powerful program than Paint.Net but that is also one of it’s weak points if you just want to make your life simple. I’m a former Photoshop user so Gimp is not difficult for me but if you don’t have any Photoshop experience, Gimp may be a bit much. If so, don’t hesitate to use Paint.Net. Both are excellent programs.

FILE TAGGER
The Rename – Renames and tags batch files. When I get lazy and don’t tag my photo collection for awhile, I bring out The Rename to take care of it.

MEDIA PLAYER
Gom Player – I have used Windows Media Player for many years now and I ran into some roadblocks while trying to play different file formats. Since I was unable to make the codecs work for these particular files, I downloaded Gom Player which will view any type of video file that I have come across.

Foobar 2000 – Since I roundfiled Windows Media Player, I no longer had a good audio player. Foobar 2000 is awesome and doesn’t take near the system resources that WMP took.

CD RIPPER
FreeRIP – Rips songs from cd’s to mp3 and other formats.

MP3 TAGGER
mp3tag – mp3 tag editor. I’ve tried them all and this one is my favorite.

iPOD MEDIA ORGANIZER
Sharepod – Finally a simple program to replace “iTunes”. iTunes used to be the only thing that worked well for the ipod but the program is bloated and annoying. Sharepod is very simple and straight forward to use. Dear iTunes, take a hint that your UI sucks.

iPOD VIDEO CONVERTER
Jodix iPOD Converter - Converts most video formats to iPod format. Highly Recommend.

DVD RIPPER / DECRYPTION
DVD Decryptor – Bye Bye copyright. I use this program to rip and strip any copyright stuff prior to loading to the iPod.

MEDIA FILE CONVERTER
MediaCoder – Converts and encodes almost every kind of media file known. This particular program has somewhat of a steep learning curve but is very powerful once mastered. This program will also convert to ipod format although Videora is more straight forward and user friendly.

Xrecode – Converts audio files. Has a much simpler user interface than mediacoder and it works well for recoding audio files of any type. This program excels at splitting (for instance) a single file album into single songs. In my case, I downloaded a single .ape file that had a whole album. I used Xrecode to split it into single songs. Highly recommend.

CD/DVD/HD DVD/BLU-RAY BURNER
ImgBurn – Lightweight burner program that works awesome. I replaced Nero with this nice little program.

DVD AUTHORING
DVD Flick – This is a nice tool for creating dvd video that will play in dvd players to watch on TV. The previously mentioned ImgBurn is great for simple burning but does little to help you create a watchable dvd unless you are ripping from a dvd movie for instance. DVD Flick will take almost any video format (mpeg, mpg, wma, avi, etc) and convert it into the necessary VOB, BUP, and IFO files that your home dvd player wants to see. The only thing that annoys me and this is typical of all video burning and encoding is IT TAKES FOREVER!!

AUDIO EDITOR
Audacity – I mostly use this program to make mp3 ringtones but you can do so much more. Very powerful program and fun for the kids.

PDF VIEWER
Adolix Split and Merge PDF – After several discussions with my favorite tech guru – Bill Mullins, I decided there must be a more secure and system resource friendly PDF software. I landed on a few of them and Adolix is the answer to splitting and merging pdf files.

PDF Creator – PDF Creator is a tool to print to PDF which I certainly do a lot of. It sets up as a printer which for example will print a word document to a PDF file.

Foxit Reader – To top off the complete PDF package, you need to be able to view the PDF. Foxit Reader does just that. If you are used to Adobe Reader, this is the system resource friendly version. Highly Recommend to replace Adobe Reader with this excellent open source freeware.