Note: There may be better alternatives available for those willing to pay.

Note: Know of a great piece of software that I'm missing? E-mail Me and let me know! 

Note: I take no reponsibility for what if any damage or problems the software listed here may do to your computer, nor do I         make any claims about the overall effectiveness of these programs for anybody outside of relating my own personal         experiences. This site is intended as a convenient point of reference only. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK!

Security Software

Comodo Personal Firewall - An incredibly full featured firewall. Free for life after completion of an online                                                         licensing form.

Comodo AntiVirus - This should one day be a feature rich AntiVirus program that integrates with the Comodo                                Launchpad, but for now it's still in it's infancy and I would highly recommend sticking with                                avast! 4 Home. Free for life after completion of an online licensing form.

avast! 4 Home - A quality AntiVirus product available for free for home/personal use.

avast! Virus Cleaner - A standalone tool to find and clean many virii and worms if you know your already                                            infected. You should run this before installing AntiVirus software.

Spybot Search & Destroy - An excellent tool to find and eliminate spyware and adware.

Ad-Aware SE Personal - Another great tool to find and eliminate spyware/adware/malware.

a-squared Free - Yet another tool to find and eliminate spyware/adware/malware.

Productivity/Communication Software

OpenOffice.org - Very advanced, full featured, open source, and cross platform office application suite. Forget                            Microsoft, everyone should switch to this!!!

Firefox - The best web browser available, PERIOD!!! Stop using Internet Explorer immediately and switch to                   Firefox. Faster, more stable, and much much more secure.

Thunderbird - A very fast, stable, feature rich, and easy to use e-mail client from the same group of great folks                       that bring you Firefox.

Miranda IM  - An open-source multi protocol instant messenger client for Microsoft Windows. It's smaller,                               faster, easier! Supports AIM, MSN, ICQ, Jabber, Yahoo, and many many others. Great for those                       who have friends spread out across many different IM networks, no longer need to run them all                       seperately.

Ghostscript  - An an open source interpreter and library which allows you to interpret and convert                                           PostScript (.PS) and PDF files. I highly recommend the AFPL version, which is newer and more                           frequently updated than the older GPL version.

GSView - An open source graphical front end for ghostscript which allows you to easily view and print                            PostScript and PDF files. A functional and fast alternative to Adobe's free Acrobat Reader, though                    considerably uglier and less featureful.

PDF Creator  - An open source program which allows you to print from any application to a PDF file. Great                                alternative to Adobe's Acrobat pro if you don't need the advanced features and just want to                            quickly create PDF files. Requires AFPL Ghostscript 8.53 or higher.

Adobe Acrobat Reader - Pretty much the defacto standard for viewing and printing PDF files, heck they did                                            create the format.

Multimedia Software

VLC Media Player - An excellent, open source, cross platform video and audio player, goodbye windows                                        media player.

Audacity - A very good open source, cross platform audio editor and recorder.

GIMP - The GNU Image Manipulation Program. Excellent open source, cross platform software for such tasks                as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. A nice alternative to Adobe Photoshop.            Requires the GTK+ 2 Runtime Library, which is available for download along side the GIMP.

iTunes - Currently the best software for organizing and listening to large mp3 music collections.

Picasa  - Nice tool to find, oraganize, edit, and share your digital photos, courtesy of Google.

Google Earth - A combination of satellite imagery and maps combined with Google search give you access to                         the entire planet!

Tools / Utilities & Customizations

7-zip - Excellent open source archive file packing/unpacking tool. Full Support for 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2 and TAR file types, Unpack only support for RAR, CAB, ISO, ARJ, LZH, CHM, Z, CPIO, RPM, DEB and NSIS file types.

EasyCleaner - Windows Registry Cleaner.

uTorrent - Full Featured, lightweight and efficient BitTorrent Client. My absolute favorite.

TaskSwitchXP  - An advanced task management utility that picks up where the standard Windows Alt+Tab                               switcher leaves off. It provides the same functionality, and adds visual styles to the dialog                               and also enhances it by displaying thumbnail preview of the application that will be switched                           to.

Xpize  - A GUI enhancer that replaces most of the non-XP icons, avis and bmps that Microsoft has always                      overlooked. It also includes some extras and a reloader, which you can use after visiting Windows                  Update.

DAEMON Tools  - A virtual cd/dvd-rom emulator. It is able to emulate nearly all known copy protections on the                            market today.

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