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Essential PC Software
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Essential PC Software
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25-10-2006, 03:08 PM
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Never Running Idle
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Essential PC Software
Below is a list of the software myself and the other users here at PCReview think are the best of the bunch and worthy of a download, including Anti virus, Firewalls, spyware scanners and general applications, Enjoy.
The discussion thread for this is here if you wish to add any comments or suggestions. Any suggestions or additions are of course most welcome.  My thanks to all the members here at PCR for all their contributions so far.  Anti Virus *Any ONE Antivirus program is to be used on your PC at any one time. I personally use AntiVir. Some say AntiVir is the best others say AVG is, It’s personal preference to an extent, But the best free three are below. AntiVir http://www.free-av.com/ The best free AntiVirus software at the moment. Avira AntiVir PersonalEdition Classic reliably protects your private computer against dangerous viruses, worms, Trojans and costly dialer's. More than 15 million users worldwide trust in the reliable protection of Avira AntiVir. And this is no coincidence at all: Avira has gained several awards. The product combines first-class detection rates and ease of use with a top performance that protects your computer safely and hardly burdens older PCs. AVG Free http://free.grisoft.com/freeweb.php/doc/2/lng/us/tpl/v5 AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition is a free anti-virus protection tool developed by GRISOFT for home use. We invite you to join the millions of satisfied customers worldwide who have downloaded the software and now enjoy the benefits of AVG Anti-Virus Free. Avast http://www.avast.com/eng/avast_4_home.html avast! 4 Home Edition is a full-featured antivirus package designed exclusively for home users and non-commercial use. Both of these conditions should be met! Our company offers the Home Edition free of charge, since, in our opinion, it is possible to avoid global virus spreading by efficient prevention; however, many users are not able to or do not want to pay for antivirus software. This page will show you the most important features of this program. Audio Utilities Audacity http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ Audacity is free, open source software for recording and editing sounds. It is available for Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux, and other operating systems. Learn more about Audacity here. Exact Audio Copy http://www.exactaudiocopy.org/ As it says. For most exact copy of audio. Copying can be a lengthy process, but accurate. Benchmarking Futuremark 3DMark03 http://www.futuremark.com/download/3dmark03/ For low to medium spec systems. By combining full DirectX9.0b support with completely new tests and graphics, 3DMark03 continues the legacy of being industry standard benchmark. Futuremark 3DMark05 http://www.futuremark.com/download/3dmark05/ For medium to high spec systems. 3DMark05 is the latest and hottest version of the very popular 3DMark series. By combining full DirectX9.0c support with completely new tests and graphics, 3DMark05 continues the legacy of being industry standard benchmark. Futuremark 3DMark06 http://www.futuremark.com/download/3dmark06/ For high spec systems only. 3DMark06 is the latest and hottest version of the very popular 3DMark series. By combining full DirectX9.0c support including HDR, SM3.0, SM2.0, new CPU tests and more, 3DMark06 continues the legacy of being industry standard benchmark. Desktop search Google Desktop http://desktop.google.com/ Google Desktop is worth checking out, It not only searches your web history but offers an Outlook toolbar, integrated Gmail search and a novel desktop sidebar that allows personalized search, news, weather, photos and more. The Sidebar also includes a quite effective application launcher. Download Manager Free Download Manager http://www.freedownloadmanager.org/ Free Download Manager (FDM) is a full-featured download accelerator and manager. It is absolutely free! Using this software product you can easily download a list of files and whole web sites from any remote server via HTTP, HTTPS and FTP. With FDM the downloading process will be as easy as never before! Thunderbird http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/ Thunderbird is a free open source POP and IMAP email client developed by Mozilla, the same folks who brought you Firefox. Feature-wise it sits somewhere between Outlook Express and Outlook which means that it offers an upgrade to Express users and a downgrade to those who use the more advanced PIM features of Outlook. Windows XP does have Outlook Express built in but thunderbird is again the better option. Firewalls *Any ONE Firewall program is to be used on your PC at any one time. Comodo http://www.personalfirewall.comodo.com/ PC Magazine Online's Editor's Choice, Secures against internal and external attacks. Its free, has some minor quirks, is better than ZA free in Mucks' opinion. Kerio http://www.sunbelt-software.com/Kerio.cfm No other single product class seems to cause as much angst to average users in their installation and day-to-day use as Firewalls. For such users Kerio Personal Firewall is my top recommendation, as it seems to cause the fewest problems yet manages excellent protection as well. Note that the free and paid versions of Sunbelt Kerio are the same. If you don't buy the product some advanced features are automatically turned off after 30 days. ZoneAlarm http://www.zonelabs.com/store/conte...reeDownload.jsp An alternative product that's also reasonably easy to use is the latest free version of the ZoneAlarm firewall however I'm reluctant to give it my full recommendation. First, it can be a troublesome program on some PCs. Second, it's a very basic product compared to the commercial ZoneAlarm Pro version. The leak-test performance of the latest free version is in fact, quite poor while the Pro version is excellent. Google Tools Google Earth http://earth.google.com/ Want to know more about a specific location? Dive right in -- Google Earth combines satellite imagery, maps and the power of Google Search to put the world's geographic information at your fingertips. Google Desktop See Desktop search Google Toolbar See Pop Up Blockers Google Picasa See Photo Editor’s/Viewers Media players and Codecs FFDShow http://sourceforge.net/projects/ffdshow FFDShow is a DirectShow decoding filter for decompressing DivX, XviD, WMV, MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 movies. It uses libavcodec from ffmpeg project for video decompression, postprocessing code from mplayer to enhance visual quality of low bitrate movies, and is based on original DirectShow filter from XviD, which is GPL'ed educational implementation of MPEG4 encoder. Quicktime Alternative http://www.free-codecs.com/download...Alternative.htm QuickTime Alternative will allow you to play QuickTime files (.mov, .qt, .3gp and other extensions) without having to install the official QuickTime Player. It also supports QuickTime content that is embedded in webpages. Real Alternative http://www.free-codecs.com/download...Alternative.htm Real Alternative will allow you to play RealMedia files without having to install RealPlayer/RealOne Player. VLC Player http://www.videolan.org/vlc/ VLC media player is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, ...) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network. Windows Media Player http://www.microsoft.com/windows/wi...10/default.aspx Windows Media Player 10 gives you more music and more choices, and for the first time makes it possible to sync high-quality music, video, and photos to the latest portable devices. Winamp http://www.winamp.com/ Winamp is a multimedia player made by Nullsoft and eventually acquired by America Online. It is skinnable, multi-format freeware / shareware. Winamp was first released by Justin Frankel in 1997. It also now plays streamed video content, both live and recorded, authored worldwide. Office Open Office http://www.openoffice.org/ OpenOffice.org the product is a multi-platform office productivity suite. It includes the key desktop applications, such as a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation manager, and drawing program, with a user interface and feature set similar to other office suites. Sophisticated and flexible, OpenOffice.org also works transparently with a variety of file formats, including those of Microsoft Office, and the vendor-neutral OpenDocument standard from OASIS. Overclocking Tools **Keep in mind that overclocking may damage your system. Do it at your own risk and only if you know what you're doing!!** CPU Orthos http://www.sp2004.fre3.com/download.htm SP2004 with added dual core functionality in one instance. Best for Dual Core systems. A 12+ hour blend test is a good indication of a stable system. Super PI http://www.xtremesystems.com/pi/ CPU benchmark that can also be used for quick stability tests, however this does not grantee a stable system. ClockGen http://www.cpuid.com/clockgen.php ClockGen is an program dedicated to overclocking. Its main purpose is to change the system clocks on the fly: FSB (Front Side Bus) and GSB (Graphic Side Bus). ClockGen also provides some functions that allow you to improve and monitor your overclock. However overclocking in BIOS is recommended IMO. Graphics Cards ATITool http://www.techpowerup.com/atitool/ ATITool is an overclocking utility designed for ATI or Nvidia cards. Design target is to write a light-weight application for the enthusiast - so no questionable registry tweaks. CoolBits (Early Driver versions only, no good for the latest drivers. Use Ntune or better still Rivatuner) http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=815 Coolbits unleashes hidden function within ForceWare drivers, it enables several new Direct3d and OpenGL configuration tabs, and even more tweaking capability from the nVidia taskbar settings panel. EVGA Precision http://www.evga.com/precision/ EVGA, once again, sets itself apart from the rest with the EVGA Exclusive Precision Overclocking Utility. This program allows you to fine tune your EVGA graphics card for the maximum performance possible, with Core/Shader/Memory clock tuning, real time monitoring support including in-game, Logitech Keyboard LCD Display support, and compatibility with almost all EVGA graphics cards. Ntune http://www.nvidia.com/object/sysutility.html The NVIDIA nTune is the easiest, fastest, and safest performance optimization and monitoring application available for your PC. Incorporating more features than any other system tuning or monitoring product, NVIDIA nTune is the only performance tuning application designed exclusively for your NVIDIA nForce-based PC. With NVIDIA nTune your system can automatically adjust to maximum performance settings for intense gaming. This intelligent application offers the safest way to change bus speeds, memory timings, and even tweak voltages. Changes are made easily within a simple-to-use Windows interface--so you no longer need to make changes to the BIOS or reboot your system. RivaTuner http://www.guru3d.com/index.php?page=rivatuner RivaTuner is a complete powerful tweaking environment, providing you everything you may need to tune NVIDIA GPU based display adapters. The widest driver-level Direct3D/OpenGL and system tuning options, flexible profiling system allowing to make custom settings on per-application basis, both driver-level and low-level hardware access modes, unique diagnostic and realtime hardware monitoring features and exclusive power user oriented tools like built-in registry editor and patch script engine make RivaTuner's feature set absolutely unmatched. PDF Readers Adobe PDF Reader http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html For reading PDF documents. Foxit http://foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php Foxit Reader 2.0 is a free PDF document viewer and printer, with incredible small size (only 1.5 M download size), breezing-fast launch speed and amazingly rich feature set. Foxit Reader 2.0 supports Windows 98/Me/2000/XP/2003. Its core function is compatible with PDF Standard 1.6. Photo Editor’s/Viewers Irfanview http://www.irfanview.com/ First there's the classic IrfanView, It’s a first class product. It's an amazingly capable product CAVEAT: On the latest version, uncheck the two boxes installing an eBay toolbar and browser toolbar buttons — unless, of course, you want them!  The Gimp http://www.gimp.org/windows/ GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed program for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. I don’t use this one myself, but I hear both good and bad about it. Some find it hard to use, others find it easy and produce great results. Picasa http://picasa.google.com/ Google’s free offering, a very good product. When you first run Picasa it offers to scan your whole hard drive (or designated locations) for photos and videos. Scanning is surprisingly quick and when finished you’ll have all your shots neatly organized into folders on a time line basis. Now you can view you shots one at a time, in slideshow or traversing the time line. The editing features are limited compared to professional image editors yet they provide you with every function amateur photographers need including one click red eye reduction. Similarly adding labels to photos is a cinch while a simple but effective star rating system allows you to flag favourite snaps. Individual folders can also be password protected. Facilities are provided to import your images from your camera in multiple formats including RAW. You can send photos to your choice of web printing service, cut a CD, print to a local printer or share with others via your own blog or instant messaging. Pop up Blocker GoogleToolbar http://toolbar.google.com/ The obvious one here is the Google Toolbar. Can be used in firefox and in Internet Explorer. Rootkit Scanner/Removers Rootkits are a special kind of software tool used to hide trojans, viruses and other malware from your anti-virus scanner and other security products. Unfortunately, they are extremely effective which means that some of you reading this will be infected even though you believe your PC to be totally clean. Thankfully there is a new class of security product now available called rootkit detectors that use specialized techniques to detect these dangerous intruders. Blacklight http://www.f-secure.com/blacklight/ BlackLight will detect most rootkits missed by AV scanners but is can't provide perfect detection; no rootkit detector can. That's why its' advisable to use more than one product. BlackLight is currently available as a free beta from F-Secure. The beta will expire on the 1st of January 2007 but you can use it freely up to then. I suggest everyone download this product and scan their PC. The chances of you being infected are small but for five minutes work it's not worth taking the risk. RootkitRevealer http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/utilities/RootkitRevealer.mspx If you are an experienced user you should check out SysInternals RootkitRevealer. It uses a totally different technique to BlackLight so by using both products together you'll be getting excellent overall detection. RootkitRevealer is however, harder to use than BlackLight and is a bit prone to false positives so take care before deleting detected items. If in doubt, ask us. |
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25-10-2006, 07:23 PM
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#2 |
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Never Running Idle
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Spyware Scanners /Remover/Blockers
A-Squared Free http://www.emsisoft.com/en/software/free/ Security must not be a privilege. Under this motto, Emsi Software provides the Malware scanner a-squared Free completely free of charge for private use. But it is not a very limited version, it is a full tool to clean your computer from Malware. Not only Spywares, as detected by classic Anti-Spyware programs, but also especially Trojans, Backdoors, Worms, Dialers, Keyloggers and a lot of other destructive pests, which makes it dangerous to surf the web. Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php Have you ever considered what makes an anti-malware application effective? We at Malwarebytes have created an easy-to-use, simple, and effective anti-malware application. Whether you know it or not your computer is always at risk of becoming infected with viruses, worms, trojans, rootkits, dialers, spyware, and malware that are constantly evolving and becoming harder to detect and remove. Only the most sophisticated anti-malware techniques can detect and remove these malicious programs from your computer. Spysweeper http://www.webroot.com/uk/products/spysweeper/ This is a scanner, blocker and removal tool all in one however it’s not free. But it does get some of the highest ratings from well-known magazines and websites. Some regard it as the best Anti Spyware program on the market. Spysweeper can be bought and downloaded from the Webroot site or a boxed version from somewhere like www.Amazon.co.uk SpywareBlaster http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/spywareblaster.html (Alternative download site here http://majorgeeks.com/download2859.html as the main site is down at time of typing.) SpywareBlaster doesn't scan and clean for spyware - it prevents it from ever being installed. It changes some settings in your computer to help prevent an initial infection. It provides protection against thousands of malevolent products that use ActiveX based exploits, block hostile sites and discards unwanted cookies as well by setting 'kill bits' For a little over £5 why not show your appreciation for this excellent free program and get automatic updates for a year. More Here. *Cheers Mucks  Spybot – Search and Destroy http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html SpyBot provides some protection through its "immunization" feature and offers a tad more if you turn on the optional "TeaTimer" monitor though this will cost you a chunk of your processing power. SuperAntiSpyware http://www.superantispyware.com/index.html SUPERAntiSpyware is the most thorough scanner on the market. Our Multi-Dimensional Scanning and Process Interrogation Technology will detect spyware that other products miss! SUPERAntiSpyware will remove ALL the Spyware, NOT just the easy ones! Easily remove over 100,000 pests such as SmitFraud, Vundo, WinFixer, SpyAxe, SpyFalcon, WinAntiVirus, AntiVermins and thousands more! Supports Windows Vista. Windows Defender http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...&displaylang=en If you are using Windows XP SP2 (and you should be) my top recommendation is Microsoft's Windows Defender program. Defender is the latest re-incarnation of the excellent Giant Antispyware product that Microsoft purchased late in 2004. This is a scanner, blocker and removal tool. *There is also Ad-Aware, Bazooka and many others, but in my opinion the above are the best of the bunch. Ad-Aware was once good but it’s falling behind the pace now. System Information Belarc Advisor http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html The Belarc Advisor builds a detailed profile of your installed software and hardware, missing Microsoft hotfixes, anti-virus status, CIS (Center for Internet Security) benchmarks, and displays the results in your Web browser. All of your PC profile information is kept private on your PC and is not sent to any web server. Core Temp http://www.alcpu.com/CoreTemp/ Core Temp is a compact, no fuss, small footprint program to monitor CPU temperature. The uniqueness of it is that it shows the temperature of each individual core in a each processor in your system! You can see in real time how the CPU temperature varies when you load your CPU. CPU-Z http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php CPU-Z is a freeware that gathers information on some of the main devices of your system including CPU, RAM and Motherboard. Everest Home Edition http://www.majorgeeks.com/download4181.html Not in development anymore, so not as good as it could be. But still good if you need to check out your pc info like spec and speeds. GPU-Z http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/SysInfo/GPU-Z/ GPU-Z is a lightweight utility designed to give you all information about your video card and GPU. Intel Thermal Analysis Tool http://www.techpowerup.com/download...lysis_Tool.html Intels TAT is a temperature monitoring tool for Intel CPU's. It can also simulate a work load so you can accurately gauge load temperatures. Process Explorer http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sy...ssExplorer.mspx The one, the only. Better than task manager by miles. Ever wondered which program has a particular file or directory open? Now you can find out. Process Explorer shows you information about which handles and DLLs processes are opened or loaded. The window shows a list of the currently active processes, including the names of their owning accounts. Real Temp http://www.techpowerup.com/realtemp Real Temp is a temperature monitoring program designed for all Intel single Core, Dual Core, Quad Core and Core i7 processors. Each core on these processors has a digital thermal sensor (DTS) that reports temperature data relative to TJMax which is the safe maximum operating core temperature for the CPU. As your CPU heats up, your Distance to TJMax will decrease. If it reaches zero, your processor will start to thermal throttle or slow down so maximizing your distance away from TJMax will help your computer run at full speed and more reliably too. Sisoftware Sandra Lite http://www.sisoftware.co.uk/index.h...3264&langx=en&a A system information/Benckmarking tool. System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant is an information & diagnostic utility. It should provide most of the information (including undocumented) you need to know about your hardware, software and other devices whether hardware or software. It works along the lines of other Windows utilities, however it tries to go beyond them and show you more of what's really going on. Giving the user the ability to draw comparisons at both a high and low-level. You can get information about the CPU, chipset, video adapter, ports, printers, sound card, memory, network, Windows internals, AGP, PCI, PCIe, ODBC Connections, USB2, 1394/Firewire, etc. Speedfan http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php SpeedFan is a freeware program that monitors voltages, fan speeds and temperatures in computers with hardware monitor chips. SpeedFan can even access S.M.A.R.T. info for Hard Disks that support this feature and show hard disk temperatures and much more. System Tools Bart's PE bootable live windows CD/DVD http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/ Bart's PE Builder helps you build a "BartPE" (Bart Preinstalled Environment) bootable Windows CD-Rom or DVD from the original Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 installation/setup CD, very suitable for PC maintenance tasks. It will give you a complete Win32 environment with network support, a graphical user interface (800x600) and FAT/NTFS/CDFS filesystem support. Very handy for burn-in testing systems with no OS, rescuing files to a network share, virus scan and so on. This will replace any Dos bootdisk in no time! Bootdisks http://www.bootdisk.com/ Download bootdisks for just about everything, Including the one you need to have to flash a Bios. Ccleaner http://www.ccleaner.com/ CCleaner is a freeware system optimization and privacy tool. It removes unused files from your system - allowing Windows to run faster and freeing up valuable hard disk space. It also cleans traces of your online activities such as your Internet history. But the best part is that it's fast (normally taking less than a second to run) and contains NO Spyware or Adware! Note: During the install process you get the option to install the Yahoo Toolbar. Untick the box! Memtest http://www.memtest.org/ Based on the well-known original memtest86 written by Chris Brady, memtest86+ is a port by some members of the x86-secret team. Our goal is to provide an up-to-date and completly reliable version of this software tool aimed at memory failures detection. Runs from floppy, cd or usb drive Prime95 http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft.htm A CPU Stress test, ideal for checking if your overclock is stable. Ultimate Boot CD http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ Ultimate Boot CD consolidates as many diagnostic tools as possible into one bootable CD and is completely free for the download. Video Drivers Nvidia Drivers http://www.nvidia.com/content/drivers/drivers.asp For latest graphics drivers straight from the Nvidia website. ATI Drivers http://ati.amd.com/support/driver.html For latest graphics drivers straight from the ATI website. Omega Drivers http://www.omegadrivers.net/ The purpose of the Omega Drivers is to provide gamers with an alternate set of drivers, ones that have more options and features than the original sets. The drivers contain optimizations, extra features (like OC capabilities), more resolutions and internal tweaks that can give them the edge in a gaming environment over the normal drivers, which are often tailored for synthetic benchmarks. All Omega driver sets are tested (unless noted) by myself in my own pc or in an alternate PC (in the case of the Nvidia drivers) to ensure maximum compatibility and reliability. Note: Nvidia drivers on hold at time of typing Web Browsers Mozilla Firefox. http://www.mozilla-europe.org/en/ Internet Explorer (IE) is a competent enough browser but it has become such a target for malicious exploits that it is now a major security risk. There are several excellent alternatives with Mozilla Firefox a solid first choice. It's safer than IE, so safe in fact that many users have reported no spyware infections since they started using the product. It's also browses a tad faster than IE, is very stable and is more standards compliant. The program loads a little slower than IE but once running, it positively zips along. With tabbed browsing and over 600 free extensions that allow you to customize your experience, it provides most users with a major surfing upgrade. Opera http://www.opera.com/ Another Alternative to Internet Explorer is Opera. It's a fast, fun and easy way to browse the Web. Opera 9 comes loaded with the tools to keep you productive and safe. Try it today, it's absolutely free! Zip Utility TUGZip http://www.tugzip.com/ TUGZip is a powerful award-winning freeware archiving utility for Windows that provides support for a wide range of compressed, encoded and disc-image files, as well as very powerful features; all through an easy to use application interface and Windows Explorer integration. Supports ZIP, 7-ZIP, A, ACE, ARC, ARJ, BH, BZ2, CAB, CPIO, DEB, GCA, GZ, IMP, JAR, LHA (LZH), LIB, RAR, RPM, SQX, TAR, TGZ, TBZ, TAZ, YZ1 and ZOO archives. Supports BIN, C2D, IMG, ISO and NRG disc-images. |
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