Friendly Links

These links can help you enjoy your computer.

1. A general page with evaluations of free software. Read this page and choose which utilities will be useful to you.

2. Download repository, both commercial and free software.

3. Free CutePDF works like a printer but creates .PDF files instead. Send any printable output to files which you store on disk. You can view them, email them, print them, etc. This is a great way to store web pages and other documents for easy retrieval.

4. Spyware protections, free for private use:

Spyware Blaster by Javacool (prevention)

Ad-Aware by Lavasoft (detection / removal)

Spybot Search & Destroy (detection / removal)

5. Zone Alarm (not free) has many options, a strong reputation, lots of savvy and great technical support. The Zone Alarm firewall-only is free for personal use.

6. Spam filtering: There are two approaches that go beyond the filtering services provided by most ISPs.

(1) Qurb (Computer Associates) downloads all emails to a holding area unless the senders are already in your correspondence history. This makes a lot of internet traffic and takes space on your computer for processing.

(2) Editor's choice: MailWasher Pro (Firetrust) This is the B E S T ! It easily handles 1,000 spams per day by showing you just the header information so you can quickly click on the ones you want to save. The body of the junk email never makes it to your computer; the culling is done on the server.

7. Open Office is free software for general word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations.

8. (a) AVG Anti-virus. High quality; free for private use (not free to nonprofit organizations) (b) Avast Anti-virus free for private use, discounted for not-for-profits (c) AntiVir Anti-Virus free for private or nonprofit use for one year. At the end of a year this product requested payment for the premium version, but I reinstalled the free version.

9. Selected from item #1 above, here is what I find particularly useful: image viewer zip utility file utility