www.ultimatehandyman.co.uk

Just bought your computer and have no money left over heres a few programs I use some because they're better than what comes with the computer some because they dont cost as much as the computer (M$ office):

Internet

Firefox - nuf said.
Flock - basically firefox geared towards social networking.
Opera - extremely fast browser.
Thunderbird - better and more secure than outlook plus with addons can do webmail.
Pidgin - multi-protocol chat client.
Trillian - multi-protocol chat client more features than pidgin.

Multimedia

VLC Media Player - players just about everything.
Media Player Classic - plays just about anything.
Realplayer Alternative - replaces Realplayer and has a lot less bloat and no nag-ware.
Quicktime Alternative - replaces Quicktime and has less bloat.

Irfranview - image viewer.
The GIMP - photo editing, a bit complicated.
Paint.NET - photo editing more user friendly need .NET framework.

IMGBurn - for burning iso files to disk.
CDBurnerXP - good cd/dvd burning utility.

MP3Tag - very good mp3 tag editor.
Audacity - audio editor.
Exact Audio Copy - cd ripper.


Security

Antivir - anti-virus.
Avast - anti-virus.
Spybot SD - anti-spyware.
Spyware Terminator - anti-spyware with real-time shield.
PC Tool Firewall Plus - firewall very user friendly comes with Threatfire malware scanner.
Comodo Firewall Pro - firewall very good but less user friendly the the above.
RootKit Revealer - finds rootkits.

File Mangement

7zip - archiver.
Universal Extractor - can extract just about anything from anything.

System

CCleaner - cleans windows up for you.
JKDefrag - excellent defragger.
SIW - system information.
WinAudit - system information.
CPU-Z - system information.


Office

Openoffice - office suite.
StarDict - offline dictionary very useful.
Foxit PDF Reader - pdf reader thats light weight and a hell of a lot faster than adobes.
FreeMind - mind mapping program.
Bullzip - pdf writer.
PDFCreator - pdf writer.
GNUCash - personal finance sofware.
Evernote - note organiser program
ATNotes - sticky notes program.


I'll add some more tomorrow. Needless to say linux is the best way if you want to pay nothing.

In my wisdom I downloaded JKDfrag and tried it out

Worked very well on the computer, so thought I would do the portable

Hey its only 500gb and never been done before, but I can honestly say I've never seen anything the fragmented before, it looks like sand on the beech.

Phase 2 has taken about 5 hours so far

asinine wrote:
I'll add some more tomorrow. Needless to say linux is the best way if you want to pay nothing.

Any more to add yet?

OK a bit late but never mind I've been away for a while. Right heres some more but rather than writing them all out myself or copying and pasting heres a lot more. And they're updated as well.

More Free Alternatives to Commercial rip offs

If you want to run your whole life from a USB stick with all you programs documents and setting, which you can with how cheap memory is getting try Here and Here

That's excellent, thanks.

I would also add AVG antivirus to that list.Runs in the background without slowing things down and its free.

The only reason I didn't was the new free version and I'd assume the paid for one is resource hungry and bloated, the older versions were much better.

I will agree with that asinine.

The new versions slow the computer right down, in addition Firefox and Avg don't get on together.

thescruff wrote:I will agree with that asinine.

The new versions slow the computer right down, in addition Firefox and Avg don't get on together.

its AVG thats the problem ,everybody thought it was the new version of firefox causing the problems but it seems to be AVG

something about AVG`s link scanner

What sort of problems are people experiencing as i've had no problems at all and i only use firefox and avg.
Im also on vista and everyone seems to hate that too

I personally had a minor problem, basically what happened was I installed it and my computer couldn't do anything and half the programs wouldn't work, I uninstalled it everything was fine. Thinking it was a one off I reinstalled and same thing, so I installed antivir which is much better.

Luckily I personally use linux as my main os so I don't have to worry too much.

www.techsupportalert.com

This link is for Gizmo Richard's best ever freeware list. Everything and anything is listed on this, as well as his (rather good) review of each item.