Free Software Collection

If you just buy a new PC / Laptop with included Windows XP, what 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 more 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. 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!
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)
• Ant Video Downloader and Player (recommended) or DownloadHelper. Using one of these addons you can download embedded movies on webpages such as youtube
5. OpenOffice 3.1 which provides you with similar applications to Microsoft Office Suites
6. 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).
   
   Or you can follow the "tips" from Microsoft itself as explained here (recommended):
   
   To disable Autorun yourself on operating systems that do not include Gpedit.msc, follow these steps:
   

   • Click Start, click Run, type regedit in the Open box, and then click OK.
   • Locate and then click the following entry in the registry: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\policies\Explorer\NoDriveTypeAutorun

   •  Right-click NoDriveTypeAutoRun, and then click Modify.

   • In the Value data box, type 0xFF to disable all types of drives. Or, to selectively disable specific drives, use a different value as described in the "How to selectively disable specific Autorun features" section.

   • Click OK, and then exit Registry Editor.

   • Restart the computer.
7. 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
8. Fortunately, I have got very useful bundled softwares from the manufacturer of the laptop and Canon Scanner such as: CyberLink Power2Go (Disk Burner) and ArcSoft PhotoStudio (Scanner and Image Editing) 
9. 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 
10. 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.
11. Windows Live Writer: helps you in publishing your post onto your blog.

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 favorites 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
4. PowerISO (recommended): a powerful CD / DVD / BD image file processing tool, which allows you to open, extract, burn, create, edit, compress, encrypt, split and convert ISO files, and mount ISO files with internal virtual drive. It can process almost all CD / DVD / BD image files including ISO and BIN files

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

Hasta la vista!