Audio & Video Software
Backup & Recovery Software
CD & DVD Software
Desktop Software
Internet & Email Software
PC Hardware
PC Maintenance & Utility Software
Photo & Image Software
Productivity Software
Security Software
Audio & Video Software
Acoustica Audio Converter Pro – Convert your MP3, WAV, OGG, WMA & CDA files with a right click! Includes an integrated CD ripper for easy CD ripping! Professionals will find this tool indispensable. Home hobbyists will find Audio Converter Pro a very handy addition to their arsenal of audio tools. A great little program I use frequently to change formats and bitrates of my digital music. Converts mp3, WAV, OGG, WMA to any other format. You choose the bitrates. It’s the best format converter I’ve used.
iWisoft Free Video Converter – Free and easy to use with a simple polished interface. Excellent range of output profile presets plus plenty of settings to tweak bit rate, frame rate, video size, sample rate, etc.
VLC Media Player – A great free video and audio player. Supports most video formats without needing to download additional codecs. Brilliant range of features. Portable available.
Backup & Recovery Software
Acronis True Image Home 2011 – Do you value the data on your computer? Do you value your time? How much time will you spend recovering data and returning your computer to its original state after a hardware failure or software glitch? Acronis True Image is my #1 pick for backup software! True Image consistently creates backups 10-20% smaller than its competitors and doesn’t require Microsoft’s .Net framework to run like Norton. True Image creates backups to internal drives, external drives, network drives, and directly to CD/DVD. If you value your data you need this program! Read my backup strategy here.
EASEUS Partition Master Home Edition – Excellent free and comprehensive hard disk partition management; Resize, move, create/delete, hide/unhide, format, copy, merge, wipe, convert.
FBackup – A free yet very simple and effective file backup program. Backup important files and folders to local, external (USB) or network drives. Backup to ZIP compressed file or exact copy. Includes scheduler, file filters, verification, password protection and more.
Macrium Reflect – Create, save and restore entire disk images for free with Macrium Reflect. Features include; Excellent compression. Mountable images. Save to Network, USB, firewire drives and DVD. Linux based Rescue CD with Network access and full GUI.
Crashplan – Free automated backup to multiple locations. Use the Crashplan software to automatically encrypt your files and backup to external media, other computers on your network, or the computers of friends miles away. There is also a paid service available, which allows you to backup to Crashplan’s servers that starts at $1.50 per month if you choose to use it.
CD & DVD Software
AnyDVD – Removes the copy protections from DVD and Blu-Ray disks, allowing you to make backup copies. Considering the amount of money you’ve invested in movies you cannot afford to not back them up!
Ashampoo Burning Studio Free – A free full featured CD/DVD/Blu-Ray burning suite. Easy to use with intuitive interface. Includes direct (1:1) disc to disc copy.
DVDFab – Is my favorite DVD software. I tried many different programs before settling on DVDFab. It offers every function of the other programs and more! Copy, burn, shrink, convert for mobile devices, or convert for streaming. DVDFab has built in profiles for converting to iPod, PSP, xbox360, PS3, and other mobile devices. Almost all of the other programs I’ve tried did not function as advertised or did not have features that worked as advertised. DVDFab works, and works as advertised! It’s easy to use, has a pleasant user interface, and it updated often. I haven’t found a program that beats it!
DVD Flick – Great simple interface and very easy to use free software. Convert and burn video files to DVD. Supports a multitude of video and audio formats. Add a menu, add your own subtitles. A complete all-in-one solution. (Win7/Vista/XP 32/64bit)
DVD Shrink – The best DVD copy freeware. Not supported any more but still works a treat with unencrypted disks.
ImgBurn – Highly developed advanced free burning software. Great range of features and options. More suited to advanced users.
Desktop Software
Fences – A nice free program that makes organizing your desktop a breeze. You create and name zones called “fences” and can move folders, icons, shortcuts, and programs into the zone. A great way to keep like articles together.
LogonStudio – A great free program to change the screen where you enter your password as you logon to Windows. There are literally hundreds of free skins that you can download. A great way to personalize your computer!
Internet & Email Software
Firefox – Is truly a great browser. Firefox is more secure by design, allowing you to surf the web without worrying about drive by downloads, spyware, and other nasties. The language of the internet is “html” and pages, such as this one, displayed in your browser are written in html. Firefox adheres to the html standard. This means that web pages display as they should be, not how Microsoft wants them to be. Firefox is also much more customizable than other browsers. There are literally thousands of extensions you can add to Firefox for free. There are extensions to do just about anything you can imagine!
Google Chrome -Very fast browser with a simple uncomplicated interface, now with extensions available too. Rapidly gaining popularity.
KeePass – Store passwords securely with this free program. Works great for websites! Saves a lot of time entering passwords, usernames, and sign-ins.
MailWasher – Excellent email/spam manager. Preview and/or delete emails on the server. Includes white list and blacklist, visual and audio notifications, automatic deletion. Never download unwanted emails to your computer again.
Sandboxie – Free software which creates a virtual environment (sandbox) for safe surfing. When you delete the contents of the sandbox everything, including any malware, is erased.
Thunderbird – A completely free full-featured email program from the authors of Firefox. Very popular and fully customizable with add-ins.
WOT (Web Of Trust) – Excellent free site advisory service integrates with your browser to provide safety ratings for search results and individual sites. A must have!!
Roboform – This program is the next best thing since sliced bread! This program integrates into Internet Explorer, Chrome, and Firefox. It generates very secure passwords at the click of a button. How do I remember these complex passwords? Roboform allows you to save passwords and personal data in an encrypted format. A master password (yes only one password to remember!) allows access. Roboform in IE and Firefox works like a super powered bookmark. You click the site you want to go to and Roboform opens the site, enters your username and password for the site (if required) and – as if by magic – clicks the submit button and logs you in. If you shop online Roboform can enter your personal information and credit card information, which is also stored in a secure encrypted file, in one click. A real time saver with great security thrown in to boot! Free version is limited to 10 logins.
PC Hardware
Crucial Memory – The leading source of quality RAM memory. Great selection, good prices, excellent support, and a lifetime warranty! A real winner!
CyberGuys.com – A great place for cables, USB devices, and accessories!
HP Computers – HP is currently my pick for both laptop and desktop computers. Great prices and performance. The design of their current laptop line is simply beautiful!
Newegg – My current pick for DIY computers and computer components such as hard drives, motherboards, cpu’s, sound cards, and video cards! Newegg has the best customer service and their prices can’t be beat! Great Products! Great Prices! Great Customer Service! A Trifecta for geeks.
PC Maintenance & Utility Software
Auslogics Disk Defrag – Easy to use, free, and fast. Features optimization, consolidation of free space, automatic defrag and scheduler. Portable version available.
CCleaner – Very popular free privacy and cleaning tool. Removes temporary files, internet traces, and includes basic registry cleaner. Very safe and easy to use.
Diskeeper 2011 – Will keep your hard drive operating like when it was new! Diskeeper runs in the background constantly working to keep your drive defragmented when your computer is idle. Diskeeper also offers scheduled defrags, Master File Table defragmentation, and paging file defragmentation. Diskeeper allows boot time defragmentation, which can defrag the files, MFT, and paging file before Windows even starts. What does this mean? The most thorough defragmentation possible.
Recuva – Recuva is free software which helps recover accidentally deleted files from hard drive, camera card, MP3 Player or flash drive.
Revo Uninstaller – A free uninstaller that goes above and beyond the uninstaller built into Windows. Will search for and delete leftover files and registry items. Includes a couple of handy tools and has a portable version too. The best!
SIW (System Information for Windows) – SIW is free and provides detailed information such as a hardware report, software report, and much more. Save reports in a variety of formats. Portable!
TeamViewer – is remote control software that connects to any PC or server around the world within a few seconds. You can remote control your partner’s PC as if you were sitting right in front of it. This is a great tool to troubleshoot and fix computers without having the computer in front of you!
WinPatrol – A versatile startup manager with a free version. Disable startup processes and prevent software from adding itself without your knowledge/permission.
WinRar – Is my pick for compressing files. WinRar offers better compression rates and faster operation than its competition. WinRar also comes with a lifetime license. WinRar supports more zip formats than WinZip and is full featured without requiring add-ins to function. Great for emailing large files and securely archiving your data. Give it a try.
Photo & Image Software
FastStone Image Viewer – Excellent free image browser, editor and converter that supports all major graphic formats. Nice array of features such as image comparison, red-eye removal, emailing, resizing, cropping, color adjustments and musical slideshow.
Paint.Net – A free well designed image editor with an attractive interface. A medium level editor with lots of options and tools comparable to commercial software.
Picasa – Is a free program from Google that does a great job of organizing and sharing your photos, while being fast and easy to learn. Picasa has basic editing function, but you should look to Adobe Photoshop Elements if you need more than basic editing.
Productivity Software
AllMyNotes Organizer – A free combination sticky notes/personal information manager. Centrally store and organize all your: recipes, to do lists, shopping lists, correspondence, diary entries, blog articles, anything and everything. Very easy to use and includes a nice notes editor. All notes are searchable and can be password protected. A portable version is available.
LibreOffice – Has supplanted Open Office as the leading open source office suite. Full featured free suite for creating; text documents, spreadsheets, presentations, diagrams, and databases. Fully compatible with Microsoft Office formats.
Money Manager Ex – Easy to use free personal finance manager. Available in installable or portable versions. Includes all the basic features most users would want in a personal finance application yet manages to retain simplicity and ease of use.
PDF-XChange Viewer – Rather more than just a PDF reader, this software provides just about all your PDF needs in one free package.
WordWeb – Terrific dictionary/thesaurus that is free. Simply select a word in any document and you’ll immediately get a popup with the word’s meaning and synonyms.
Security Software
Avast Free Antivirus – Excellent free protection via an extensive array of protective shields plus anti-spyware component.
Eset Smart Security – Truly the absolute best antivirus program available today. Included in this security suite is antivirus, antispyware, antispam, and a personal firewall. It has the highest detection rates, fastest scan rates, doesn’t slow your computer down, and uses very little memory. It is simply better, faster, cheaper without dragging down your system like Norton! Eset Smart Security consistently receives a 100% rating from Virus Bulletin and top scores at AV-Comparatives.org. I won’t have a computer without it!
Microsoft Security Essentials – Extremely easy to use, zero configuration required and light on resources, yet very effective protection that’s provided free by Microsoft.
Online Armor Firewall – This two way firewall keeps the bad guys out and your personal information secure. This program has the best user interface of any firewall I’ve used and has informative dialog boxes. Online Armor Firewall makes your computer invisible on the net! Online Armor is truly the Best of the Best firewalls available today, and you can’t beat the price!
Secunia Personal Software Inspector (PSI) – Secunia PSI is a small application which scans the host computer for outdated and possibly vulnerable software. PSI compares versions installed on your computer to a comprehensive list of latest versions contained in its huge data base. At scans end a list of outdated/insecure applications is generated, including links to the latest versions and or updates. Secunia PSI is a must have for anyone serious about keeping their 3rd party (non-Microsoft) applications up to date and maintaining a secure computing environment.
SUPERAntiSpyware & Malwarebytes Anti-Malware – The best free malware programs available. Superior detection and removal of all types of malware.