Recommended software and download Links:
Antivirus and Internet security - this is now a vital component to safe computing; luckily, there are quite a few free antivirus products (for home and personal use) out there to make things safer. From experience, we prefer Bitdender Free - a bit basic but very lightweight and effective. We'd give a special mention for Malwarebytes Free - it's one that we too would use to clean up an infected PC - Brilliant. As a rule of thumb however, once a Pc has been infected once we would advise buying a paid version of the AV software.
Antispam - Spam is now such a nuisance that we simply cannot ignore it - MS Outlook does a OK job recognising the spam, but get Spamaware to stop this time wasting annoyance; use this free software gain control of your e-mails again.
...and to Avoid spam - they all want your email address for some reason...and if you are unsure, use Mailexpire's great facility to throw spammers off your scent. Mailexpire will allocate you a temporary email address for those nagging sign ups wanting your email address...
Sandboxie - the professional method in keeping your web browsing secure and private. Install the
Sandboxie product and use their sand box system (everything done in the "sand box" enviroment will be destroyed without a trace upon exiting) to protect your system from infections and virus attacks when web browsing. We professionals use this method to test dangerous applications and view potentially dangerous web sites...!
Office Applications - being productive has always meant using MS Office for many years, but there are plenty of cloud based (Google Docs) and freeware Office packages (Openoffice, Libreoffice) to chose from. Even the cheaper Softmaker Office is a really good substitute.
PDF writers - save the planet by saving trees- print to pdf files instead of to paper; Great for e-mailing and saving secure web pages too - use DoPDF - it's the least fussy of the lot.
Backup Software - With the emergence of ransomware (encryption malware) there is only one true protection - good backups - and preferably cloud backup as ransomware will encrypt even usb backup drives that are traditionally used to hold backups. Ask us about using Livedrive as your backup solution.
Image your PC - save yourself the grief of reinstalling your pc if something goes horribly wrong with Windows - use to not only backup your data, but to also create an image of Windows so that an image restore can bring you back to your last stable Windows state. Beats normal backup anytime.
Media players - Fed up with missing codecs and odd reasons why movies won’t play? This player does a good job of finding the missing bits for you - GOM Player .
cbfsms - send free SMS txt messages from your computer. We can’t resist giving them a mention - they deserve it !
