Which free download programs are the must haves?

[Grez]

Just got done making my first pc, with lots of help reading this site, and it has gone very smoothly. I've been doing some searching on good free download programs to help keep the pc protected and sharp. Could use some advice on which programs I should have and maybe ones that aren't needed. OS is Vista 64 bit home edition, CPU is Q6600 quad core 2.4

Currently have: Avg free edition, Speedfan, Registry Mechanic, Ad-Aware antispyware and Everest Home edition. Also using the windows firewall atm.


I have used ZoneAlarm firewall on previous comp and liked it, my question is should I use the Windows firewall or zonealarm or both?

Any other good free download products I should get?

Also, I have updated my motherboard driver from Nvidia website (mobo is an Asus P5N-E SLI), but Everest currently does not recognize my mobo or the chipset when I run the program. Any ideas?

Thanks for any help

[RickyTick]

With Windows Vista you will have Windows Defender. It works fine. All you really need beyond that for virus/spyware/malware protection is AVG. Its a free download and works great.

In the past, I found ZoneAlarm and AdAware to be a lot of trouble. They seemed to be resource hogs as well.

To be honest, my current pc has no virus protection. For one thing, I'm behind a secure router. Secondly, I don't open anything or click on anything I'm not 100% sure of. So stay away from those porn sites, they're bad for you anyway. :D


You might consider CPU-z, and Rivatuner for tweaking you new computer, especially if you want to overclock. Adobe Reader is useful at times, as well as OpenOffice.

[Jamie Nixx]

CPU-Z, Core temp, Guru 3D Driver Cleaner, Zone Alarm, AVG Anti-spyware, Rivatuner, Sisoft Sandra, Aquamark, 3D Mark, Orthos.......

Turn Windows Firewall off and run ZA on its own.

[joenewbie]

Any updates for this since this post is from 2007 I thought it would be nice to update it.

Also I'm looking for a freeware if possible, pay for if I must, utility to auto sort TONS of files and to maybe rename files on a standard I determine. I basically have 1 Terabyte of movies, music, educational programs, foreign language training audio which I'd like to sort quickly, either way it's going to be sorted even if I have to grind through file folder by file folder to do so.

I already expect I'm going to have to for a lot of document files to see what's relevant vs what I'm going to dispose of or possibly merge 10 documents into a single one. So anything that will help take the labor out of that would be great.

[RickyTick]

Freeware that I currently use is:
Notepad++
Gimp
VLC media player
Handbrake
Audacity
Macrium
Jing
and of course
Microsoft Security Essential
and Malwarebytes.

I hate OpenOffice. I get Microsoft Office very cheap and it works perfectly, otherwise I might use Libreoffice.

[joenewbie]

Freeware that I currently use is:
Notepad++
Gimp
VLC media player
Handbrake
Audacity
Macrium
Jing
and of course
Microsoft Security Essential
and Malwarebytes.

I hate OpenOffice. I get Microsoft Office very cheap and it works perfectly, otherwise I might use Libreoffice.

Yeah MS has a tendency to overcharge, like I said before if it weren't for the fact that I want to play games I wouldn't have even paid for Win7 to install on this build. Linux Mint is on my laptop and I can use it for everything but gaming really. WINE and other Windows type emulators don't seem to let me play the games I want to play, hence this build. That being said I write, a lot, so having software that will let me pound out the keys and save my ideas is important to me. LibreOffice will work fine. I didn't know that about OpenOffice though, I thought it was still being developed with Oracle just being the backbone to help distribution. Didn't know they essentially killed it.