Links to other useful and/or interesting sites

I'll be adding more links over time, so check back occasionally to see what's new...

• Daily Rotation
  
  
  • This is a site I visit daily to read tech oriented news headlines of hundreds of sites, all brought together on one page. If you sign up for a free account, you can customize what sites you'll see, how many headlines from each, and how many columns to display. Try it!


• OpenSourceWindows (links to Mac, and Linux too)
  
  
  • Lots of free, open source software for Windows, as well as Mac and Linux.


• UBCD4Win
  
  
  • This was some excellent software that helped you build your own Windows Boot CD for servicing/repairing computers having problems, but sadly has been discontinued. I'm searching for a decent replacement as we speak, so stay tuned...

And here's a partial list of some of the free software I use and/or recommend:

Warning: whenever installing free software, you should *always* read every single step/page of the installation process very carefully, watching for any 'secondary' software it may want to install, and always un-check these before proceeding! Some of these can be very sneaky/tricky, and it is very annoying, but the price we must pay for some of the excellent software that is available.

Security and Maintenance Software:


• Bitdefender Antivirus (free) - while I personally prefer ESET/NOD32 for my Antivirus/Security software, they don't offer a free version, so if you want free, then Bitdefender is the one to use. It is lightweight and very effective, and unbelievably, Ad-free as well.


• Malwarebytes Anti-Malware - Powerful malware scanner and remover - paid version has a resident scanner that actively protects you against most malware and rogueware, and is one of the few security programs (other than ESET) that is well worth the money.


• Malwarebytes Anti-Exploit - A new, powerful memory resident program that proactively protects most web browsers (and browser add-ons), as well as Java. The paid version (also worth the money) adds shields for PDF readers, Word, Excel and Powerpoint, and most Media Players - and you can even add your own custom shields.


• SpywareBlaster - Powerful Antispyware Innoculator.


• SuperAntispyware - Powerful Antispyware scanner and remover. Watch out for the Google Chrome install option that is enabled by default. I recommend just un-checking the option to install it, and when it runs for the first time, un-check the option to enable automatic updates (puts you in 'Trial' mode, and it will then nag you about buying it), and finally 'Decline' their last attempt to get you into the Trial mode. Personally I don't think the automatic updates feature is worth paying for it, but it wouldn't hurt anything if you did.


• CCleaner (formerly affectionately known as 'Crap-Cleaner') - a powerful yet simple tool to keep your computer running smoothly. Deletes Temp files and other 'crap' that can slow your computer down, and is the only Registry Cleaning tool that I have ever used, trusted, and that has never caused a problem.


• Virtualbox - Powerful Virtual Machine environment that runs on Windows, Mac and Linux hosts, and supports a large array of Guest Operating Systems.
  
  I put Virtual box in the Security/Maintenance section for one reason - using virtual machines, while very handy for computer professionals to do testing, is also an excellent way to protect your computers from on-line security risks, hard drive failures, and even makes upgrading a computer extremely easy. Here are just two examples of how useful Virtualbox can be:
  
  
  • You're casually browsing the internet, googling, clicking on interesting looking links, when all of a sudden you click on a link and something happens that makes you go 'uh-oh'... if you're running a Virtual Machine, all you do is shut it down, and revert to the previous snapshot (you configure Virtual box to save a snapshot every time you launch a machine, for just this purpose.
  
  
  • Your computer is getting old, and you've been eyeing one of those fancy new rigs you see in the local computer store. The process used to be: back up all of your data on the old computer, get the new computer, install all of your programs (if you can find the disks, and if the old software will run on the new version of Windows that you may hate, etc), then restore your data - and hope that nothing goes wrong during this process. If you're running Virtual Machines, you simply connect your external backup drive (you are backing up all of your data, as well as your Virtual Machine Images, to an external drive, right?), install Virtualbox on your newcomputer, import import your Virtual Machines from your external backup drive, and you're old Virtual Machines are now running on your shiny new super fast computer - and best of all, nothing has changed, except the speed - same operating system, desktop, programs, data, everything.
  
  
  
  Productivity and other Software:
  
  
• Libreoffice (formerly Openoffice.org) - a free and very powerful Office Productivity Package that is very compatible with Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint file formats.


• Firefox - Mozilla's powerful, fully customizable (through its use of Addons) Web Browser.


• Thunderbird - Mozilla's powerful, fully customizable (through its use of Addons) EMail Client.


• Notepad++ - Free/open-source powerful Notepad (text editor) replacement.


• The Filezilla FTP Suite - FTP (File Transfer Protocol) Server and Client - if you don't known what this is, you probably don't need it.


• GIMP - 'GNU Image Manipulation Program', some call it a 'Photoshop Clone'. While it isn't as powerful as Photoshop, it does many of the things Photoshop does - and its free!


• Paint.NET - Another free Image and Photo editing software that some feel is much easier to use than GIMP. I usually only resort to GIMP if I can't get it done in Paint.NET.


• PDFCreator - Excellent, versatile and free (watch out for the crapware during the installation!) PDF creation/conversion Print Driver tool, but it can also create PDFs from multiple documents, and can print to Image files as well.


• UnityPDF - Powerful, easy to use and free (not open-source, so please donate if you use and like it to keep it free!) PDF manipulation tool - merge/insert, split/extract, divide, rotate and even protect PDF files.


• PDFSAM (PDF Split & Merge) - Powerful, easy to use and free (open-source) PDF manipulation tool - not quite as easy to use as UnityPDF in my opinion, but does most of the same things - merge/insert, split/extract, divide, rotate and even protect PDF files. The link I provide takes you straight to the SourceForge project page, which provides the Portable/ Standalone App for its main download. The installer available from its more commercial page is laden with adware junk, so I don't recommend it.


• FaxTool - Easy to use and free (not open-source), portable/standalone PDF and Tiff splitting/merging tool, very useful when you need it (ever have someone send you a muli page Tiff file and wish there was an easy way to split it up?).


• PDF Merge Tool - Excellent, simple tool for merging multiple PDFs into one. I prefer the standalone (portable) version of programs like this, but sometimes you have to dig for them. This one is has a new version that you will need, that is a little harder to find, so I've made it easier for you. First, the 1.0 release version available from the the main page is very old, released in 2009, and there are a lot of PDFs that won't work with it, so you'll need to download the latest development snapshot, available here. To get a standalone, working copy, simply: click the 'Download Snapshot' link, extract the zip file to your hard drive, drill down in the extracted folder: pdfmergetool-code-6-trunk > PDF Merge Tool > bin, then drag the 'Release' folder to your Documents folder (I recommend creating a 'Portable Apps' folder in your documents folder, for standalone/portable apps like this), rename it to PDF_Merge or something similar, then open it and create a shortcut to the "PDF Merge Tool.exe" file and put it on your desktop (or better, in a folder on your Desktop called 'Portable Apps') for quick/easy access. Wow, that was a lot of work... but worth it if you find it useful to be able to quickly and easily merge multiple PDFs into one.


• Image Burn - Powerful CD/DVD/HD DVD/Blueray burning application.


• DVD Flick - An excellent tool to create DVDs from many different file formats (including .flv files that you can download from youtube!) that are playable on most any standard DVD player.


• Audacity - Powerful audio editor and recorder.


• Handbrake - Powerful DVD ripper and video transcoder.


• Image Burn - Powerful CD/DVD/HD DVD/Blueray burning application.