Free Software Collection

If you just buy a new PC / Laptop with included Windows OS, which other softwares will you install later on? Different persons will install different softwares of course, depending on their preferences. For me, at this time, I will not expend some money for expensive softwares for home use due to limited budget. I have been testing many free softwares and find that some free softwares can really help you but some can also turn your PC or laptop into "a pain in the ass". Before adding new softwares on my new PC / Laptop, I will make an image of the disk so that I will easily revert back to the original if I make some mistakes during installation. For disk image burner, you may use bundled softwares from the PC / laptop vendors or Acronis True Image which is not free but I guess it's the best.

Here is the list of the free softwares which I consider the best to date:

1. UPDATED! I have migrated to avast! which is a very good and quite reliable anti virus software. I found a little problem with AVG. Luckily avast! can take care my notebook more than 1 year now without a single problem at all. avast! is most recommended for your current and new PC or notebook! Before I used avast!, AVG Free 8.0 had been accompanying my software journey. I disabled AVG Free LinkScanner because it seems that the scanner runs slower than expected. I install "McAfee Siteadvisor" instead. See point 10 below
2. CCleaner (System Optimization and Privacy Tool): very handy to clean all your trashes and registry inside Windows and keep it running fast
3. Adobe Reader (pdf file viewer)
4. Mozilla Firefox (web browser) with many useful add-ons:
• DownThemAll (makes your downloads much easier and manageable especially if interrupted downloads frequently happens)
• Flashblock (Block the flash so that webpages show faster, but you can still watch the flash if you want to by clicking on the placeholder)
• DownloadHelper (you can download embedded movies such as youtube etc)
• ShowIP (to show you the IP address of the visited site) UPDATED! I have switched to WorldIP plugins for firefox though I think it is a bit slow and freezes my browser when it tries to connect to its server?
• Adblock Plus to block all unnecessary advertising from being downloaded to your firefox browser
  
5. OpenOffice 3.1 which provides you with similar applications to Microsoft Office Suites
6. Google Talk (for free phone to other google mail members)
7. HijackThis (In-depth tool for scanning computer for spyware)
8. Microsoft PowerToys for Windows XP (Miscellaneous fun and powerful Gadgets for Win XP such as Tweak UI and Power Toy Calculator). NOTE: I drop this because I use it only to disable CD autorun and clear the login fill-in. You can disable CD autorun directly from registry setting as follows: My Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Cdrom\AutoRun value should be set to Zero (0).
9. Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer (Security Analyzer from Microsoft will check your security settings in your Windows Environment). NOTE: already included in Windows XP Home Edition Service Pack 3
10. McAfee SiteAdvisor for both Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox: a faster internet site scanner
11. Fortunately, I have got very useful bundled softwares from the manufacturer of the laptop such as: CyberLink Power2Go (Disk Burner) and ArcSoft PhotoStudio (Scanner and Image Editing)
12. Useful backup software from Western Digital Hard Drives when you buy their small backup drives (WDSync) or using their free Acronis True Image WD Edition Software: very easy to use and save my time for saving backups
13. Windows Live Messenger : you can exchange messages with friends using yahoo id also!! So that I disable the original windows messenger. Moreover you can make phone calls to other live / hotmail users around the globe! NOTE: It's a good freeware indeed but I heard the security is not good enough. I am in search of new one similar to this and comparing which ones is the best --- if there is any :-) If you still want to use it as in my case, I only install 2 components of it, ie: Windows Live Messenger and Sign-in Assistant 
14. Comodo Firewall Pro with Defense+: a very good freeware firewall to prevent your system from intrusion and other exploits using holes in TCP/IP ports. Recommended for new clean install system. NEW!
15. Windows Live Writer: helps you in publishing your post onto your blog. NEW! 

One more thing, I also install Linux Mint 4.0 Daryna and use its bootloader to choose between Windows XP or Linux OS at startup. Both have run smoothly for around 1 year. It suits for Desktop PC or Laptop. But for server you may choose others. I never install Linux for server yet but it says that Fedora is one of the choices. Linux Mint is within top 10 best hit ranking at DistroWatch. Beside its beautiful appearances, I prefer Linux Mint because it uses Ubuntu repositories which allow you to install and manage free softwares inside Linux from the repositories easily. Linux Mint also improve the manageability of the updates both the system and installed softwares.

From Ubuntu repositories, you can install helpful and fancy softwares. One of them is Pidgin ("...multi-protocol Instant messaging client that allows you to use all of your IM accounts at once). Remember to install firewall for your Linux because there is no firewall by default.

Here are my new favorite and free softwares:

1. PDFCreator: create pdf file from other types of files by just print them to PDFCreator "printer"
2. Burnaware Free: to burn your CDs/DVDs. It can make a bootable CD or DVD too.
3. Easeus Partition Master: hard disk partition and management utility

I welcome any comments, corrections and suggestions to make this free software collection better and better.

Hasta la vista!