CHEAP IS GOOD – FREE IS BETTER – SOME FREE SOFTWARE WORTH A LOOK

In any economic climate, but particularly this one, cheap is good, free is better!

As Autumn approaches and days under 100 degrees loom on the horizon for those of us in the desert, I thought I’d share some freebies I found over the summer. This is a somewhat eclectic collection of varying categories, but might be worth checking out if you’re trying to save some money…

1. OPENOFFICE (www.OpenOffice.org)

I’ve written about OpenOffice in the past (link) and I’ve been using it as my word processor, database and spreadsheet for three years. There’s a small learning curve, but considering that OpenOffice is free, 100% MS Office compatible and comes with nice features such as the ability to save files as PDF, I think it’s one of the best value deals out there. Between my home and office I have six PCs. Using OpenOffice saves me a fortune when it comes to productivity tools. The only problem I see is that OpenOffice.org doesn’t come with an email client…however…

2.THUNDERBIRD (MOZILLA MESSAGING) EMAIL CLIENT (www.mozillamessaging.com)

Full featured and comes with an RSS feed reader. This is a decent email client. Thunderbird has a built-in spam filter which learns over time, has an email encryption tool, can be run from a USB drive (stick) and you don’t have a ton of bells and whistles that you won’t need. If you want a calendar, you can download the plug-in, and there are a ton of these. Oh, and you can migrate to Thunderbird from Outlook and Outlook Express.

3.SKYPE (www.Skype.org)

No, this is not satellite television. Skype is an instant messenger / PC-to-PC calling system / PC-based phone…you name it. I used Skype all the time. With a headset and an Internet connection, I have a good telephone. It’s free to talk to other Skype users which I do a lot. Many of these are long-distance “calls” and overseas conversations and the quality, 9 times out of 10, is as good as a land line. Calls from Skype to a phone do incur charges and there are plans to choose from. You can also forward your phone to Skype and vice versa. At minimum, Skype is a good instant messaging client. Users can also show their desktop to other callers and share files with a drag-and-drop.

4.ZONE ALARM (www.ZoneAlarm.com)

When it comes to security, I’m always a little wary of free products. Perhaps it’s because I feel safer if I’ve purchased it, who knows? The ZoneAlarm firewall (by CheckPoint, one of the names in computer security) is available for free. It’s a basic firewall, but it’s an effective firewall. Combine it with anti-virus / spam filtering / browser protection and you’ve got some good security going on!

5.AVG (www.AVG.com)

If you want a free anti-virus product, AVG is probably the best-known. Their free package comes with anti-virus protection and surfing protection (links are checked for you). There are minimal features in the free version. If you want spam filtering, online file sharing protection, identity protection, etc, then you’ll need to upgrade to a paid license.

5 more next time!

VIPRE ANTIVIRUS +ANTISPYWARE : ALL HYPE?

I was fortunate to be able to review this product for free (courtesy of Amazon Vine) . I have to confess that straight upfront, because I’m not sure I’d have purchased it knowing the little I’d read about Vipre and the concern about what it might do to my PC after install.

Unlike other software "applications", protective software tends to get into the "nuts and bolts" of a computer. It needs to in order to protect, but this has been known to go wrong. I wish I could say I were not speaking from experience…

Anyway, Vipre arrived. Cool-looking box. The quick-startup directions suggest you remove existing anti-virus software first. Again, from personal experience, I’d learned this. When I’d made the move from Symantec to McAfee, many years ago, the software didn’t test for other anti-virus products and I ended up with two installations that were both convinced the other was malicious. On the positive side, my PC was probably the best-protected in the universe, but it was unusable.

So, this time I uninstalled McAfee and installed Vipre…fingers crossed…flip to "present tense"…

The installation takes time, mostly because after it installs from the CD, reboots the PC, it then has to download the latest version and definitions and reboot again. I found that doing other tasks while keeping an eye on the installation was a little more productive use of my time. On one PC, the entire installation process took about an hour.

Once installed, it’s almost impossible to tell Vipre is running (apart from the glaring "V" in the windows system toolbox). It certainly lives up to its claim of not slowing down the computer. After moving from McAfee, I noticed a very definite speed increase.

The user interface – FINALLY SOMEONE GOT IT RIGHT – is the best feature (besides the protection), designed for the novice and expert alike. There is a simple "at a glance" screen on startup which shows you what’s happened, what is active and a neat little "Worldwide threat level" box which actually does change as new worms and viruses come out.

As with many products in this category, you can "set it and forget it", just install and let it take over. If you’re like me, the fine-tuning options are a pleasure. You can quite literally tell Vipre what it should consider a "threat", how often and in-depth you want your scans to be, how your email is configured, manage quarantine and so forth. Yes, other products offer all this too, but the way that Sunbelt Software has brought it together in a simple, yet in-depth interface is what makes it stand out for me.

I’ve been a heavy user, both personally and professionally, of anti-virus software since it was invented, when there were products such as "Dr. Solomon’s Anti-Virus Toolkit" – if anyone remembers that, you’re a dinosaur to – and I’ve found that as the solutions have become more integrated, they’ve become a bigger drain on system resources. I moved from Symantec (after 10 years) to McAfee when I found the Symantec interface and stability problematic (and my ISP offered McAfee for free).

- Please note that this review isn’t intended to devalue what McAfee and Symantec security products offer, on the whole, they are very good. I’ve been very happy with McAfee, except for the overhead I feel it places on my computer, even after a lot of tuning and tweaking (and I’m a little technical). My decision to test Vipre was driven by this overhead and my decision to stick with Vipre (despite the promise of free McAfee from my ISP) is due to primarily to the performance. I do miss the anti-spam and firewall from McAfee and will end up getting these as separate products rather than part of an integrated suite -

Unfortunately, I cannot make an "apples to apples" comparison between McAfee and Vipre because Vipre doesn’t offer a "complete Internet security" package, but between it and the Windows firewall, I’m very satisfied. My next step will be to find a firewall application that is a little more robust than the Windows one and see how it integrates with Vipre.

Since installation, Vipre has caught a couple of incoming dangers and found several pieces of spyware during its scans. The nice thing is, it tells me and then leaves me alone, just how I like it. One final thing to point out is the license covers you for every computer in your house. In my case that is 6 – for the price of 1. In this economic climate, that’s certainly worth considering.

So, to conclude, it’s affordable, simple to use, fast and effective. I would recommend giving Vipre a chance if you’re looking to get something a little easier on the system than what you might be using right now…and shame on me for not having considered buying it.

I’ve run Vipre on a Dell Precision (4 processor / 3GB / XPP), Dell Dimension (1 processor / 2 GB / Vista HPE), Dell Dimension (1 processor / 2 GB / XPH) and HP Pavillion (1 processor / 1 GB / XPH).

Staving off Doomsday : 10 money saving tips to keeping your PC going a little longer…

I remember, several years ago, working on the trading floor at a Wall Street company. There was an old IBM PC XT in a closet. No one knew what it did, but no one dared switch it off because it did something important and had been doing so for about 10 years.

They don’t make them like that any more.

The life expectancy of a PC is three to five years. There are many out there that have been around longer, I know, but software does tend to force upgrades.

When times are tough, people tend to cut back, and I speak from experience. Unfortunately, there is a semi-constant demand from your computer for your time and money. Consider license renewals, Internet costs, online memberships etc…and of course, the computer always seem to get slower and slower…

Here’s a list of 10 things you can look at that may help save you some money in the short run by improving your computer’s performance and extending it’s life a while longer.

1 Give your PC a RAM boost. RAM (Random Access Memory) is where the work takes place when your computer is on. When you switch on your PC, Windows is loaded into RAM, as are the programs and data you use to work. When RAM is filled up, Windows uses the hard drive to store temporary data and switches back and forth between the hard drive and RAM as needed. This can seriously slow you down, especially if you run many programs at once. Some new memory will boost this work space and speed up your computer. Windows XP does have a (just over) 3 gigabyte limit. So, if you’ve already got 3 gigabytes in your PC, any more won’t be used, it’s over to Vista for you. Many people don’t have that much and upgrading is very easy and inexpensive. If you visit www.crucial.com, they have a little utility you can run that will test your computer, figure out what memory you have and what you can do to expand it. Upgrading RAM isn’t a long-term for speed, but if it means not buying a new computer for another year…?

2 Lose the Bells and Whistles. Desktop tool bars, web browser addons, weather updates and anything that has to go out to the Internet for updates can slow down both your computer and your Internet speed. Do you really need three tool bars and the weather in two places and a cute little changing photo on your desktop?

3 Clean it Up. Delete or archive what you no longer use. Check to see if there are any online services you’re paying for that you don’t use. Those small amounts add up!

4 Free is Good. Last time I checked, the basic Microsoft office was over $200. OpenOffice.org is free. OpenOffice.org is a collaboration between Sun Microsystems and web programmers. It’s fully Office compatible and, did I mention, free. It doesn’t come with an email package, but Outlook is available as a standalone product. OpenOffice does take a little getting used to, like any new software, but it will read and save your Excel, Word and PowerPoint files just fine.

5 Maintenance, Maintenance, Maintenance. Keep up your basic computer maintenance, including defragmenting your disk, compressing old files and archiving emails. I posted a blog entry 7.5 Ways to a Faster PC.

6 Too Much Going On? Check the system tray, that’s the box in the lower right corner of the Windows tool bar How many icons are there and what do they do? Move your mouse pointer over them to find out. Many programs, in an attempt to be helpful, may load themselves into memory even though you use them once in a blue moon.

7 Email. If you use Outlook, how often are you sending/receiving? If it’s every couple of minutes, consider changing the interval. Outlook is notoriously heavy on the computer at send/receive time.

8 Security Software. Many people use security “bundles” such as McAfee’s Total Protection. Right now, you can get 3 PC coverage from them for $39.99 for one year. That includes firewall, spam protection, surfing protection and anti-virus. If you are a Cox high speed Internet user, in some places (such as here in Arizona), you get the whole McAfee suite for free as part of your service. Just log into your Cox.net account (if you don’t have one, you’ll need a bill for information) and select “Internet Tools”. It’s the same product that you pay for if you buy from McAfee. While “free” is good, I personally am a little hesitant about free security products, but that’s just my own opinion. But free is better than none.

9 Daily Exercises. Do your “Windows Updates” on a regular basis. Microsoft and many hardware manufacturers release updates to improve the performance of Windows.

10 Unclogging the Drains. Consider a registry optimization tool such as RegistryFix.com, but I urge caution if you’re not particularly technical. Any time you touch the registry there is some risk, so run the software with due caution or speak to a computer professional.

Dave

PS – Remember that old computer hardware should disposed of properly, as much of it contains elements that cannot go in the trash or is considered hazardous waste.