Fifteen Freeware Programs that Will Change Your Life

First off let me start out by saying I love freeware. I think I paid quite enough for all my hardware to even start thinking about paying for software. The average user now has about 50 programs on their computer. If you figure the average price of each piece of software at thirty dollars each, thats a total of $1500,00. Fifteen hundred dollars is about twice as much as my computer cost. So you can see why I started searching for freeware. Lucky for me a lot of people on the internet have the same idea and it was not hard to find a large selection of freeware to do a variety of jobs needing to be done. I will share the best I have found with you today.

Firefox has got to be the best web browser in the world right now. It runs faster than the bloated internet explorer, has more useful plugins, and is much more security conscious. If your still using internet explorer you need to get this piece of software now. Stick with Firefox 2 until the official version of 3.0 has been out a couple months and the addon makers have updated their addons for it. You can find Firefox 2.0 here:

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/

The next piece of software is not really a separate program, its a addon for Firefox. If you use Firefox already you probably know that some web pages do not display correctly. The addon for Firefox called IE Tab solves that problem by allowing you to open a page using the Internet Explorer engine inside of the Firefox browser. This is a must have addition to your software collection if your going to be visiting sites that only display properly in Internet Explorer. You can find IE tab at:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1419

The best freeware email program out there is called Thunderbird. Thunderbird also contains a Usenet reader for those who still use it. It has just about all the features that outlook has with all the appeal freeware can offer. You can find Thunderbird at:

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird

In my opinion the best image viewing freeware out there is a program called Xnview. Xnview is everything I love about a piece of software. Its lightning last, read most formats, exports to many formats, has basic image editing abilities, supports filters, slide show, batch command support, etc. It also sports support of 44 languages. You can find Xnview here:

http://www.filehippo.com/download_xnview

The best freeware antivirus software out there is AVG free version. AVG does have an upgraded paid version but the free version works well for most people. It may not be the best solution for you if your visiting some of the sites known for infecting pcs such as torrents, warezs, and porn sites because these guys test their kits against AVG before releasing them. If you do use AVG I strongly suggest you use some supporting security software as well. You will achieve better detection rates that way. You can find AVG at:

http://free.grisoft.com

The best freeware firewall at the time of this writing that is compatible with Vista is Zonealarm. Many people don't like Zonealarm because the freeware version has some holes in it but its better than nothing. Combined with other security programs its works decently for me. The pro version is available through a trial pay system where you try out a product or service and Zonealarm will give you their pay version as a reward due to the affiliate payments they get from your trial pay purchase. Its a good way to get a commercial firewall for free if you find a product you need. And the commercial version of Zonealarm seems to be a much better product than the free version. You can find Zonealarm at:

http://www.zonealarm.com/store/content/company/products/znalm/freeDownload.jsp

Do you forget things? I certainly do. Well with Evernote you'll have a handy program to help you remember all the things you need to remember. Evennote is not a reminder program. It is a notes program with a surprisingly robust group of features. Its also has a web based version sort of like Google notes that you can access from any computer you happen to be using. You can find Evernote at:

http://www.evernote.com/about/download/#a-macwin

You have probably encountered spyware on the web by now. Most AV products do not catch this type of attack very well but there is a freeware program called Spyware Terminator that does a decent job at preventing this garbage from getting on your PC. You can find Spyware Terminator at:

http://dnl.spywareterminator.com/Dnl/config/284/SpywareTerminatorSetup.exe

If your concerned about the build up of web garbage on your PC the best freeware program you can get is called CCleaner. Or as we used to call it Crap Cleaner. Its almost automated and completely customizable so feel free to use it. It can also erase that web stuff securely by overwriting the files several times if you wish. You can find CCleaner at:

http://www.ccleaner.com/download

If your looking for a freeware rootkit detector the best I can suggest to you is A-Squared. This product does well but again this is one of the products hackers use to test their kits on so you may be infected until A-squared gets a signature developed for your particular infection. However its a great deal better than not having one at all. You can get A-squared at:

http://www.emsisoft.com/en/software/free/

The best desktop publishing program I have been able to find is called Scribus. A true desktop publishing program that is completely free. Most programs of this type start at around $200 but not this one. Its a real treasure to use as well. You can find Scribus at:

http://www.scribus.net/?q=node/133

The best freeware compression program would have to be seven zip in my opinion. You can find seven zip at:

http://www.7-zip.org/download.html

The best paint freeware paint program I have ever used is called The Gimp. The Gimp is as close to Photoshop your ever going to get for free. Maybe I'm biased due to its freeness but I actually like it better than Photoshop. You can find The Gimp at:

http://www.gimp.org/downloads

Best freeware office suite would almost certainly be Open office. Open office is a treasure of a program to find and use. Its easy to learn and very powerful. In fact I do all my writing inside of the Open office environment and I love it. You can find Open office at:

http://www.openoffice.org/

The fastest freeware torrent downloaded is called Bittyrant. Its advanced designed should improve your download speeds somewhat. You can find Bittyrant at:

bittyrant.cs.washington.edu/#downloads

Those are the best of the best I have been able to find on the internet that I have personal experience with and find very useful. There are tons of freeware out there that I have not covered and will probably do so in the future. This is enough to cover some of your needs and if your really needing something you didn't find here, goggle freeware and what your wanting to do and you might get lucky.