LINKS

I'm suprised at how many people believe that they have to buy software in order to get a "good" program. The truth is, there are literally THOUSANDS of great programs available on the internet for FREE!! Here is a list of a few of my favorites:

Anti-virus/Anti-spyware

AVG Antivirus - This is a free anti-virus program that has worked wonders for me and my customers over the past 7 years.

Ad-Aware - This is a free anti-spyware tool that scans your computer for troublesome spyware.

Spybot Search & Destroy - This is another free anti-spyware tool that scans your computer for troublesome spyware.

Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware - Yet another free anti-spyware tool that scans your computer for troublesome spyware.

Web Browsers and Email Clients

Mozilla Firefox & Thunderbird - These are my preferred web browser and email client. They are full of great features, but can be customized even further through free add-ons.

Opera - This is another free web browser with an email client built-in.

Pictures and Graphics

Picasa - This is a great, easy-to-use photo organizer with some built-in editing capabilities (remove red-eye, adjust brightness and colors, etc...).

Irfanview - This is a free graphics viewer/editor that can open MANY different graphics formats (bmp, jpg, gif, tiff, psd, eps, png... to name a few). I also use it to acquire images from my scanner.

The Gimp - The "GNU Image Manipulation Program" or GIMP, is a free alternative to the popular Adobe Photoshop.