Simon’s Free and Essential Software List
When I got my new laptop last week the first thing I did was install all the software that over the years, I’d found to be essential to having a good, healthy and happy computer. So I’d thought I share my list of free and Essential software for a happy PC right here with you good readers.
The overall guiding rule here is that the software has to be free and still be actively developed by it’s makers and, or community in the case of open source software.
In many cases you’ll already have paid-for software on your system that does the same job, but if for example, you find paying $50 a year for virus protection a bit steep, I have here the answer to your woes.
- Browser – Firefox
Firefox is the most popular alternative to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, with 26% of the market share as supposed to Explorers 65%. That might sound a big difference but it used to be bigger, in 2004 Explorer had a 91% market share.
Explorer comes packaged with Windows when you get your nice new computer and most people use it without realizing there are alternatives.
Much better alternatives as it turns out, Firefox is faster, has better features (many of which Microsoft have copied and implemented in Explorer, such as tabbed browsing), and much more customization with easy to install plug-in, (I might list an essential list of those another time).
Most importantly though it’s free and open source.
Go and download it here.
You could also try Google’s new browser Chrome. It’s also free and open source. It doesn’t yet support plug-ins, but it will do soon. It may eventually become my browser of choice.
- Virus Protection – Avira
I used to pay $50-$70 a year for McAfee Virus Protection. I was great and I never had any trouble with viruses. When I needed to start saving the pennys though I looked for some free alternatives and found quite a few.
The most popular free anti-virus software is AVG, it does a great job and they’ve just released a new version which i haven’t tried yet, but my recommendation is Avira.
I’ve tried both and in one particular case had a virus that Avira picked up and AVG didn’t.
The one disadvantage to Avira is the annoying pop-up ads that appear every time it updates. These can be closes with just one click though and are a small price to pay for a good quality, and free product.
- System Optimization and Cleaning – CCleaner
If you’ve had your computer for a year or more and wonder why it doesn’t run as fast as it used to, takes about half an hour to boot up and maybe even crash once in a while. You probably need to give it a good spring clean.
I’ve seen ads on the TV for computer ‘experts’ that with make you system run like new again and charge you probably $200 for the favor. What they actually do is probably just run CCleaner.
Again its free, will delete all unnecessary internet files (left over from years of browsing) and clean-up the system registry of files that get left behind when you uninstall programs.
It’s quite painless to use and you should see a noticeable difference in you system speed (especially if you’ve had it a few years).
Spyware and Other Malicious Software Protection – Search and Destroy
The paid-for anti-virus software usually comes with this built in and for the free ones it’s usually the ‘paid’ feature. Luckily there are free and just as good alternatives.
Search and Destroy with do exactly what it says, search your system and destroy all dodgy spyware that will be on your system if you browse the net. If you’ve never checked for spyware on your system before check it now, you’ll be surprised by how much crap it finds.
So that’s my list of Essential stuff. I’ve enjoyed writing this so I might do another one soon with some more free software that’s not quite so essential, but just as useful.
