I thought it would be a good idea to get a list of useful programs that we could keep here. If a mod comes across this - could you sticky it please. It would be quite helpful. I'm bound to have missed some programs, so if there is some that you think should be on this list - post here or PM me and I'll add them to the list.

With all these programs, there is no right or wrong one to use. Many of these programs are free or at least will offer evaluation periods. Try a few of them and see which one you like the best.

Virus Scanners

If you don't have a virus scanner on your PC - get one and fast. New viruses are released every week and some scan spread all around the world in a matter of hours. The news nowadays is constantly filled with talks of new viruses trying to do this and that. The best way of putting a stop to them is to have a virus checker constantly running on your PC. Here are a few to select from:

Norton Antivirus - One of the most popular virus scanners out there. My personal choice.
McAfee VirusScan - Also another of the more popular virus scanners out there.
Eset Nod32 Antivirus
Kaspersky Antivirus
Kaspersky Online virus checker - Kaspersky also offer a free, online virus check for those who don't want to buy a virus scanner (tisk tisk).
AVG Antivirus


Firewalls

Firewalls are another great way to stop many threats out there on the internet today. A firewall will only let programs send/receive if you say it can. This way you can make sure that your internet browser can access the internet, but any nasty spyware that sneaks in won't be able to. Windows XP comes with a built in firewall but if you don't have XP, or want more control, consider the following.

ZoneAlarm - Very user friendly but still powerful. Comes in several version - including a free one
McAfee Personal Firewall
Norton Personal Firewall
Sygate Personal Firewall - Free for personal use


Spyware Removal Tools

Do you keep getting annoying adverts popping up while surfing the internet? Does your browser keep setting your homepage to some rubbish? Well then you have some spyware on your PC my friend. Try downloading one of these bad boys to get rid of it,

Adaware - Along with Spyware: S&D, a must have on your PC. Looks good, updated regularly.
Spyware: Search & Destroy - Another great spyware removal tool.

Combined with Adaware, your PC should be adware free.

Also check out the sites for McAfee, Symantec (Norton) etc. for Spyware removal tools as well. You will have to pay for these ones I'm afraid though.

Internet Browsers

Firefox - Unless you have been hiding under a rock somewhere, you should have heard of Firefox. It's a free internet browser that is rapidly taking away market share from IE. It's faster, safer and has a number of nice extras like themes and extensions.
Internet Explorer - Out of fairness I put this here. I think Firefox is much better but IE is still the most widely used.
Opera - Another alternative to IE.
Avant Browser - Before Firefox, this was my browser of choice. It is actually just a wrapper round IE adding some extra features to it like tabbed browsing.

Email Clients

Fed up with Outlook Express? Well why not try on one of these email clients for size.

Mozilla Thunderbird - Firefox's sister program. Lovely email client with tonnes of features. Like Firefox you can download extra themes and extensions to make the app even more appealling,
Pegasus Mail - Some nice features like allowing you to OK attachments before they are downloaded from your email server.



I'll add some more useful programs on here later, but for now - this will do. Some linux programs may also follow I guess. Finally, sorry for being so bias towards Firefox/Thunderbird. As you can tell I'm not Microsoft's biggest fan.

Curlyben

Nez, as I mentioned I also exclusively use FF with Adblock and admuncher still picks up adverts

There is a very easy way around the one month thing, just reinstall

Wendy225

Other useful programs I use for different things.
For Bit torrent downloads I have found ABC downloader as a solid and easy to use program

For Building web pages, I always use Ms Frontpage, its easy to use and as long as your webhost allows Frontpage access, then your set.

Wallpaper Master, a free and a pay version
Aymail is an excellent mass emailing program
your uninstaller is the best uninstalling program, I have found,the only one that uninstalls while in safe mode if you have a problem program.

And just for playing music with a small simple excellent program, Winamp 2.81 was voted on the net as the best Music player around, you can find version 2.81 for free download.

A for your backup program, I like GEnie backup, so easy to use.

thats it for now.

_keith_

Wendy,
I've installed PCcillin 2006 and have two free AVG's 7.1-375a690 & 7.1-375a691. The 690 is 21Meg and the 691 is 15Meg. Which one would be more appropriate to run with PCcillin, which do you advise, or dosen't it matter. AND

Which do you think is the better firewall PCcillin or Zone?

Keith

Wendy225

ZoneAlarm is better than Pc cillin, I have used and tested both, cillin came with my motherboard, I never really liked it at all.

Right now after years of using a firewall, I reformatted and went without one, and just use a number of Anti Virus and Spyware protections and so far after 3 months, no problems from not using a firewall, but either AVG should work.

I think the best anti virus programs are Ewido, Nod32and Kaspersky.

Also their onlin scans along with Panda and Trend, free scans online should be periodically used.

thebriggsdude

fredg mentioned it once, but recently switched to avast antivirus, has a nice look to it and has a good record of catching viruses.
http://www.avast.com/

Wendy225

check it out at the virusbulletin website, avast is not all that good, maybe as a 2nd line of defense but not as your no.1

Tommyp!972

i know people will argue with me but its not a good idea to have multiple programs doing the same job running at the same time...there will be people that swear they dont have a problem but from experience 1 works better for me..IMO...i run Zonealarm security Suite 6 but i turn off the spyware and virus scanners and i use spyware sweeper and avg to take care of them..they have never ever let a virus or spyware program install yet

Ernest carr

This is not a download program but it has save some friends. Back up your register manualy by going to regedit make sure you are at top of register go to file / export and save file ( I like something like regrestore(datesaved) to restore m but it has save some friends. Back up your register manualy by going to regedit make sure you are at top of register go to use file / import. It has worked when reg restore failed.

RickJ

Free remote computer access: www.logmein.com
(they have a paid service, but the freebie works wonderfully)

tpeters

I'm also a big fan of a productivity tool called Rainlendar. If you don't have access to a calendar/appointment/diary program like what's in Outlook, Rainlendar is way cool. I love setting it up to show this month, last month, about 25% transparent (on WinXP), opaque on mouseover, and to pop up reminders for events I have to remember. It works great standalone, but there's also a server piece (I'm running that part on a Linux machine) that you can use to make all the Rainlendars on all your machines show shared events.

I have access to Outlook calendar, but I have rainlendar configured to go into the appropriate Outlook profile and pull events there into Rainlendar. Works great.

Rainlendar is localized, unicode aware, and there's Windows and Linux versions.

http://www.rainlendar.net/cms/index.php