If you are a home/personal computer user on a budget, and run Microsoft Windows, there are many options open to you.
If you have access to the Internet you have access to almost endless resources of free software.
In part one of this article we’ll deal with the security aspect of daily computing. You’ll learn about the basic software you’re going to need to keep your online experience a pleasant one. These basic tools you’re going to need are free to download, as long as you’re a private home user, and include an Anti Virus, Firewall and a Spyware program.
Lets start with protecting your computer from unwanted things like viruses. I recommend AVG Free Edition this link will direct you to Download.com’s page where you can download the program for free.
The reason I personally recommend AVG Anti Virus is that I use this program on my personal home PC and have only had good experiences using it. AVG Free updates daily and has not to date let me down. I have been recommending AVG Free Edition for the past year, and have yet to hear any complaints regarding performance and virus problems. So as far as virus protection is concerned AVG Anti Virus Free Edition gets 10/10 from Click This IT Solutions.
Next we’ll move to a Firewall.
On the subject of Firewalls I again have a personal favorite. I recommend ZoneAlarm Personal Firewall because, I just love the idea of being able to configure which programs can and cannot access the net. You can configure zones which is trusted as well as configure a trusted zone like specifying your local network or LAN eg 192.168.0.0 I love it. Unfortunately I haven’t had the pleasure of using ZoneAlarm Pro yet. It also gets 10/10 from me, mainly because I use it at home on my personal PC and also recommend it to home/personal computer user.
Next Spyware.
Surprise surprise I again have an old favorite. For this one you don’t have to be a personal or home user. I use SpyBot Search & Destroy at home as well as using it when visiting clients to sort out problems on their systems. When used in advanced mode, there are loads of tools to help you get rid of all sorts of problems, even edit your Windows start-up programs without even knowing how to edit you registry. Again I give SpyBot Search & Destroy a 10/10.
I will cover each of these programs in more detail in a future post and give you a better idea of what you should do to keep things running the way it should.
In part 2 of this post, I’ll give you some more ideas on free software that you can use when on a budget. I’ll cover things like office productivity and tools to make your computer working life just that little bit easier.
Till next time, safe virus free computing.
