All of these programs are free for personal use. I use all of these programs on my new Vista laptop except AVG Antivirus. I also have an older Win2000 systems where I use all of these programs.

Be careful in using them, and:

• Make sure they are compatible with your system
• Create a restore point before installing new programs that you are not familiar
• Don't check boxes you are not sure about
• Keep the programs updated

Here's a brief description of what each program does:

• AVG Antivirus - This is a good antivirus program. A Free Antivirus program that automatically updates the virus definitions.
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• Avast! Antivirus - Another excellent FREE program to protect your computer from virus attacks.
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• C Cleaner - This is a vacuum cleaner for your computer. It cleans unnecessary files from your browsers, windows, the registry, etc. It allows your computer to run faster and frees up disk space. 
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• Advanced System Care - Absolutely one of the best programs I have found for keeping your computer running in top condition. It protects, repairs and optimizes your PC. It found many problems on my systems and fixed them.
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• IObit Smart Defrag - Made by the same company that makes Advanced System Care. Another great and free program that does fast defrags and you can enable the program to do the defrags in the background.
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• Ad-Aware SE Personal - The program helps take care of Spyware! It scans your RAM, registry, hard drives, and external storage devices for spyware of all kinds.
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• Spybot-Search & Destroy - This program detects and removes spyware. It is good to use 2 or more programs for spyware, as one program may find something the otherr misses. (I use 3 programs on my computer: the 2 above and Webroot Spy Sweeper which is not a free program)
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• SyncBackSE - A great program for backing up and/or synchronizingyour files to another area. I use it to keep my pictures, videos, and documents backed up to an external hard drive. I sure would hate to lose the over 21,000 pictures I have on my hard drive. SyncBackSE makes sure I have these backed up on an external USB drive.
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• Easy Video Downloader - A free program for getting a YouTube video clip downloaded to your own PC. With this program you can easily download videos from YouTube, Google Video and save it as AVI (High Quality for PC) or MPEG4 (for iPod, PSP). You can also save it as a flv file (flash video).
  Note: If you use Firefox, use the Firefox Extension, Video Download Helper. It's the easiest I've ever seen for downloading movie files.
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• GOM Media Player - I have tried many video players, and this one tops them all. It's even better than Windows Media Player. It will play DVDs, all the stardard movie types as well as flv (flash video).
  
  
• Foxit Reader for Windows -  This is a speedy and small pdf reader for Windows. It works so good that I removed Adobe Reader from 2 of my computers. It's not only FAST, but it has a small footprint. Adobe Reader was taking up 88.2 MB on one of my systems. Foxit Reader only required 7.5 MB. You may want to try it, then if you like it get rid of your bloated Adobe Reader.
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• In addition...
  
• My favorite BROWSER is Mozilla FireFox.

• A good source for Computer Help and Information: