The Top Five Free Programs All Computers Need

I have been fixing people's computers for years and I want to show you what programs you can use to save yourself time and money on repairs. All of the following programs are free and regularly updated. They make complicated tasks easy and have been recommended by many people and come with top reviews by the leading computer magazines.

CCleaner:

The best application you will ever download. Originally "Crap Cleaner", CCleaner is a light weight program that will remove all traces of your internet viewing. While this may seem unnecessary to most, the reason you want to do this is because every time you get online your computer downloads thousands of images and saves them to your computer so that the next time you get online it loads faster. What about when you go to a website that you will never return to? Well you still have mountains of files on your computer from that site until you delete them.

Enter, CCleaner. It does just that, it deletes them. You run it once a day and it will remove all of the junk built up on your computer from various programs like Kazaa, Winzip, Firefox, Internet Explorer, and more. The first time you run it, it will probably take five minutes and remove 800 megabytes of junk. That is more than the average computer could store in 1990.

After the initial run, you just click it once a day and 5-10 seconds later your computer will be running better than before. This is especially ideal on laptops that don't have as much space as a regular PC. There are other features of interest too in CCleaner. It is able to fix your registry. Everything your computer does is saved into a big chart on the system. Again, you will do things once and it is saved for ever, but not once CCleaner has a go at it. It identifies things no longer needed and removes them.

By far, one of the best pieces of software on the internet, and it is 100% free to download. Go to http://www.ccleaner.com/ and get your copy right now. No spyware or adware included and if you think you got some from it, this next download will get rid of it ayway.

Spybot Search & Destroy:

This is your one stop fix for anything that you think could have gotten past your anti-virus. The way this program works is, it has a giant database online of every virus imaginable, how it works, where it hides, and how to get rid of it. When you run it, it systematically goes through each and every virus in the course of about an hour and determines if you have it, and then gets rid of it. While this is not an effective way of guarding against viruses, it is a GREAT way to get rid of them when you think you might have one.

I had to use this once to fix a friends computer. She had a virus and was not sure how to get rid of it. Being a few thousand miles away I wasn't sure what to tell her, so I said just run this and sit back and wait. Sure enough, an hour later everything was running just like new. It doesn't get any better than that.

You can get your free copy of it here http://www.safer-networking.org/en/spybotsd/index.html. As always, 100% free with no ads or attachments, just a better computer. As I mentioned earlier, this program is for getting rid of virus you get, but how do you keep from getting them in the first place, for free?

AVG:

This little Czech company start up in 1992 originally called Anti-Virus Guard has become the leader in free anti-viruses. In 1997 it spread to the UK and Germany and by 1998 was in the US. Its success has been credited to its free version, AVG Free, that you need to get.

Tested every year against the commercial competition like Norton, it has always done just as well without all of the bloat. I used it for a few months before leaving for college and never had a single problem. Try it out and if you aren't convinced, get rid of it. If you have it and get that one sneaky virus that everyone got - just use spybot and continue with your life.

You can get the latest version of AVG Free from http://free.avg.com/us-en/homepage. They also offer a variety of other programs for identity protection and other things. If you really enjoy AVG and want some of the extra features, they do offer a paid version but I don't know if it is necessary for the average user.

Defraggler:

After using the above programs, you will be left with a clean, virus free, computer. This will make it run better even if you don't have viruses. When the computer saves anything to your hard drive, it does it starting at the 1st part and working its way to the end of the drive. If you delete stuff, the computer does not go back and fill in the holes, it just keeps writing and when it starts over it will fill in the gaps.

Defraggler take a few hours and it will take all of the files and reorder them at the front of the drive, filling in the gaps, and letting your computer get to the files it needs faster. This only needs to be done about once a month, but it will make everything run significantly faster.

You can download this at http://www.piriform.com/defraggler from the same people who make CCleaner. As with everything else, it is free and has no adware. Even if your using Microsofts defrag program, consider trying this as it is a much more effective solution.

Firefox:

The final program is Firefox. I really hope you all are viewing this site on it right now, but if your not, stop and go get it at http://firefox.com. Mozilla has created this Internet Explorer alternative that is most well known for its ability to block pop-ups and prevent viruses because it doesn't get many of the viruses that IE is prone to.

The two best things I like to promote about it is its addons and its updates. It is updated by a group of people regularly. If there becomes a problem they will fix it quickly and get it working. The addons allow you to customize it to the way you want and get many 3rd party features. My favorites are PicLens and GreaseMonkey.

Try it out and even keep IE if you still want it, but it is a faster and safer method of viewing the internet.

Overview:

The five above mentioned programs are all free and available on the internet. They will make your computer faster, safer, and more user friendly. Get them now and see what you have been missing out on.