WEBSITES: [Editor's note: Due to IE
security issues, the following websites have not been linked
here, but have been within the article. We apologize for
any inconvenience.]
http://free.grisoft.com - AVG Free Products
http://www.comodo.com – Comodo Free products
http://www.comodoantispam.com
http://www.avast.com/eng/avast_4_home.html
http://www.safer-networking.org - Spybot
http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/software -
Windows Defender
http://www.zonealarm.com/store/content/company/products/znalm/freeDownload.jsp
http://www.iobit.com
http://www.cutepdf.com
http://www.openoffice.org
Computers and internet access can be
very expensive. Commercial software for our computers can also
be very expensive, but fortunately there are alternatives that
can save us a lot of money. There are thousands of free software
products available, many of which are qualitatively competitive
with their expensive commercial counterparts. In this column I
will look at but a few of the high quality free software
programs available, several of which I personally use.
Our
online security and safety must be a paramount concern. While
there are many fine commercial security utilities available,
there are also several excellent and free utilities that we can
use to secure our computers. We all need security software on
our computers, and the free alternatives to commercial software
may do a very adequate job in protecting us. At a minimum, we
all need antivirus, anti-spyware, and firewall software to
provide the protection we need. The most popular free antivirus
program is AVG AntiVirus Free Edition, with over 50
million registered users. AVG AntiVirus, and its
companion free products, AVG AntiSpyware Free Edition,
and AVG Anti-Rootkit Free, are available for download at
free.grisoft.com.
Another enormously popular free
antivirus program is avast! 4 Home Edition, from alwil
Software, (EDITOR: the “a” in avast! and alwil are lower case)
available for download from
www.avast.com/eng/avast_4_home.html . This avast! software
has proven itself, and has an excellent reputation, as it has
won several awards and recognitions, including the VirusBulletin
100 Award (detected 100% of viruses when tested in August),
WestCoast Labs Checkmark award for quality, and is ICSA Labs
certified for antivirus protection.
Some
people prefer integrated internet security suites; commercial
internet security suites often sell for premium prices. At least
one company, Comodo (www.comodo.com),
a well known publisher of commercial and corporate security
products, offers a family of free integrated personal computer
security products, including an antivirus, firewall, anti-malware
(anti-spyware), website authentication (anti-phishing, internet
fraud, and identity theft protection), and anti-spam utilities.
For those who want an integrated suite, or just individual
components, Comodo offers users that excellent option.
Spyware has become a greater threat
to our computing safety and security than computer viruses. Two
free standing products can provide substantial protection
against spyware and many other forms of malware; these two
products are Spybot Search & Destroy, and Microsoft’s Windows
Defender. Personally, I have been using Spybot for many years,
and can recommend it. Spybot, now in version 1.5, offers
frequent updates, excellent detection and removal of spyware,
and some real time protection using its “Immunize” function.
Spybot (
www.safer-networking.org ) also offer a series of
performance enhancement tools including an excellent startup
manager when in its “advanced” mode. To no one’s surprise,
Microsoft has been sliding into the personal computer security
business by offering a commercial security product, and a full
featured freeware anti-spyware product, Windows Defender. This
product offers real time protection as well as detection and
removal of almost all known spyware threats, and offers frequent
updates. It would be a generally good practice not to run two or
more anti-spyware products at the same time. It should be noted
that there are some documented software conflicts with both of
these products and some of the commercial internet security
suites; at least one major commercial suite detects and
uninstalls Windows Defender to minimize conflicts. The Spybot
“Immunize” function has been shown to degrade the performance of
at least one commercial security suite, and should be turned off
if performance appears to slow.
The
function of a firewall is to restrict illicit online access to
the computer from outside sources, and to prevent programs
installed on the computer from sending data from the computer to
the internet, without the express approval of the user. A
firewall is a very necessary item to have installed and running,
especially if on a broadband connection. There are several free
firewalls available, such as the Comodo firewall mentioned
above, but there is one free firewall that dwarfs all others in
popularity. CheckPoint’s Zone Alarm Free Edition is by
far the most widely used free firewall in the world. As an
example of its popularity, the site
Download.com currently shows that over 43 million copies of
the free version of the Zone Alarm firewall have been
downloaded. For those who do not have a firewall but need one
(it is a necessity!), the Zone Alarm Free Firewall would be a
solid choice.
With use, our computers lose much of
the performance they had when new. A company, IOBIT, offers
several free (and several commercial) products for download at
www.iobit.com . Two of their very popular products are
IOBIT’s “Advanced Windows Care Personal Edition”, and
“SmartDefrag”. With over 6 million copies downloaded,
Advanced Windows Care Personal Edition is a utility that offers
an excellent registry cleaner, and a one-click feature that can
detect common computer software problems and repair them. A
companion free product, SmartDefrag, can reorganize and optimize
the data on a hard drive which will improve the read and write
speed and performance of the hard drive. Together, these
products can provide significant performance improvements of the
PC.
Sometimes we may want to save a document or website such that
we, or anyone else, can see exactly what we see. The universally
accessible and popular format “PDF” (portable document format)
was originally created by Adobe, which publishes an excellent,
but expensive PDF writing utility (PDF readers from Adobe and
others are usually free). I save a lot of web pages and other
documents and use a free alternative PDF writer, CutePDF Writer
(Freeware). Available for download from
www.cutepdf.com , CutePDF
Writer (Freeware) was rated as one of the 50 best freeware
downloads by Computer Shopper magazine. Many users who download
CutePDF Writer (Freeware) will also need to download the free
GPLGS converter from the CutePDF website. Converting a document
to PDF format is a fast and simple process. CutePDF Writer is
actually installed as a printer driver, and by simply selecting
“print” from the menu, CutePDF is selected as the printer.
Rather than printing to paper, CutePDF simply saves the PDF file
that it creates to the hard drive or other storage media. It is
really that quick and simple. I use CutePDF several times a day,
mostly to save web pages that appear unchanged when viewed in a
PDF reader.
Almost everyone could sometimes use a good word processor,
spreadsheet, and presentation program. Microsoft Office, and
Corel Office Suite X3, are expensive, but offer a full featured
office suite. For those who want a freeware alternative,
OpenOffice (
www.openoffice.org ) is a full featured, free, and
powerful office suite that can read and write Microsoft Office
files, including Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. The OpenOffice
suite, which has over a hundred million users worldwide,
consists of a full featured word processor, spreadsheet,
database program, multimedia presentation program, formula
writer, and an integrated drawing and graphic arts program
(competitive to Microsoft Publisher). OpenOffice also includes
an integral PDF writer to create PDF files from any of its
components by simply printing to PDF. OpenOffice has been
adopted by major universities, government agencies, public
school systems, private businesses and corporations, and
countless individuals as their primary office suite. OpenOffice
is free for both personal and corporate use, and offers an
excellent alternative to the expensive commercial office suites.
There is a lot of free software available, and much of it is of
a quality competitive with its expensive commercial competitors.
If you find free software with legitimate good ratings, then you
are generally safe to download it and try it. If you like it,
that is great. If you do not like it, then uninstall it, and
other than a few minutes of time you have lost nothing. Quality
free software should be strongly considered by everyone. This is
one case where the old cliché “You get what you pay for” does
not apply.
This article has been provided personally by the
author solely for publication by APCUG member groups. All other uses
require the permission of the author (see e-mail address above).
