Computer, Electronic, and Freeware

Free software comes in two categories. (Neither of these categories includes illegal or pirated copies of software that is not meant to be free.) The first category is known as ‘trialware’, where the period of free use expires after 30 days or so. The main purpose of trialware is to get you to buy the paid version once you’ve had the chance to assess the product.

The second category – which this article is all about – is known as freeware. Freeware is software that is both free and completely legal to download. It is often created as a hobby, by a programmer who doesn’t need (or doesn’t want) to charge for it. Sometimes it is even created by a whole team of people, as with Mozilla, makers of the fabulous Firefox browser, Open Office and many other wonderful things.

But why do programmers go to all the trouble and expense of creating free software, producing a website and allowing anyone to download the program completely free of charge?

HIDDEN STRINGS

Mozilla software and the various others I will be recommending in this article have no strings attached. They are the genuine article. But some free software does, and the strings may be hidden. In particular, free programs sometimes include spyware, so after downloading and running one, you might find that your browser gets redirected, your home page changed, or unwanted pop-ups keep appearing all the time. With some free software there is no spyware, but during installation you have to be careful not to accidentally agree to change your toolbar or to install additional items on your computer that you don’t actually want. Always read the prompts carefully before clicking the ‘OK’ button!

Some free software is full of ads which are intentionally quite obstructive and annoying. The programmer earns a bit of money from the ads, and states that if you register the program you can make the ads go away. Registration often costs just a few dollars, and if you like the program it may be well worth the cost.

ANTI-VIRUS FREE DOWNLOADS

Free downloads of anti-virus products? Surely they can’t be as reliable as paid programs? With free stuff, where’s the guarantee? If this is what you think, you couldn’t be further from the truth. Some free anti-virus programs are actually better than paid products. I’m not going to name any names of paid programs which did not compare so well in tests – but rest assured, it’s true.

Two really outstanding free anti-virus downloads are Avast and Avira (to get the download links see my website address at the end of this article). They both have excellent reviews, and provide first-rate protection. Many people feel they have overtaken AVG Free Antivirus, which used to be top of the charts. Anti-virus products are very expensive to produce, and if you’re wondering how the makers manage to survive by providing them free, it’s because they also produce complete commercial internet security packages, which give broader protection than just antivirus. People who like the free antivirus often invest in an annual subscription to the full security suite.

OTHER FREE internet security DOWNLOADS

For enhanced firewall protection, it’s hard to beat free ZoneAlarm. Many people who get this as a free download and use it together with one of the top free antivirus programs, feel that they have complete protection. But even the best anti-virus can sometimes fail when it comes to spyware and Trojans. I’ve already mentioned some of the harm that spyware can do. Free Ad-Aware from Lavasoft, and free Spywareblaster are top-rated free anti-spyware programs. Spywareblaster doesn’t just remove spyware, it also prevents it from being installed on your computer.

Trojans are just as sinister as viruses and spyware. They are small programs that masquerade as something useful, but in fact exist to steal information from your computer. Malwarebytes Anti-Malware is recommended by many as supreme in Trojan detection and removal. With the free version you have to update it manually every time you use it, but the paid version (which does not cost a lot) keeps itself automatically updated.

FREE MEDIA PLAYERS

The other day I tried to play a short video using Windows Media Player, only to find that WMP rejected it as having an ‘unknown codec’. Surely a video is a video is a video…? What the h… is a codec anyway? The video was in a perfectly normal format, so there wasn’t anything I could do to make it playable.

I had heard that free VLC Media Player could play absolutely any audio or video format, and can even repair failed downloads, so I decided to download it. Lo and behold, it was not only incredibly easy to use, but played my video without a hitch. Guess what I’ll be using in future instead of Windows Media Player? VLC gets a 10/10 rating from quite a lot of reviewers on the internet, and that’s rare. It can also convert files into different formats, and there’s a Macintosh version too.

Another top-rated free media player is free Jet Audio. This program plays your music files and you can also use it for CD ripping and burning, recording, and converting music files to different formats. Other Jet Audio features include an equalizer, ability to download YouTube videos, synchronized lyric (karaoke), and tag editing (artist, album, track title etc.)

When you begin to look for ways to speed up your computer and optimize it’s performance, you will come across the option of using a registry cleaner, and with these programs comes many options as well. Perhaps you are searching for freeware or maybe you are OK with spending a few bucks to get a quality product, but first you just need to know how to choose the top registry cleaner software for your needs.

That is what we are going to discuss in this article, we are going to go over the features that you should be looking for when choosing a registry cleaning application.

First, a top registry cleaner software will have the ability to remove invalid entries. Some applications will only clean out the ‘empty’ registry entries. This is a problem because the majority of registry errors, pop-up messages, and overall computer instability is actually caused by invalid entries.

A registry entry basically contains the location of some important files that are on your computer. These files are used by certain applications in order to function. If your registry cleaner only removes the empty files but leaves all of the invalid files, then over time this will cause a problem and your cleanings will no longer have a positive effect on your PC’s performance.

Second, you want to make sure that the registry cleaning tool that you choose to use has a backup feature. Nothing in life is perfect 100% of the time, and that includes registry cleaners as well. Even with the best registry cleaner software money can buy, there is no guarantee that you will not experience some form of a problem. It is not the fault of the cleaner usually and is actually caused by a poorly-written program that may have been downloaded on your PC in the past.

In the odd chance that your cleaning process encounters an error, you will need a way to restore your registry to it’s prior state and having the backup feature allows for that. Cleaning your registry can be a very finicky process, even the pros create backups first so you should too.

Although this is just a quick run down of a couple of things to look for when choosing a top registry cleaner software, there are more features that can improve the security of a registry tool as well.

As you continue on your search for a good registry cleaning tool to use, make sure that you keep these two things that I just shared with you in mind. If you don’t, you may be setting yourself up for more problems down the road. A good program should help your PC, not make it worst.

So what is the best registry cleaner available on the internet? This is a difficult question to answer given the large amount which are readily available for download on the internet today.For starters most of the ” free registry cleaner ” tools you download from the internet are in fact not free and require a small payment in order to allow you to use the full program.When it comes to choosing the best one I think it really comes down to testing different types and seeing which one has the better affect on your pc in terms of speed and functionality improvements.But what is the registry anyway and why does it cause so many problems?

If I told you that the windows registry is an information database which is responsible for storing all your hardware,software and user profile configuration information you should immediately begin to realise why it can easily cause problems if erroneous.The registry becomes problematic over time due to the fact that most pc users will change system settings as well as add and remove hardware or software which will cause this database to expand with a large amount of old and unused entries.This will consequently cause performance and functionality problems due to the fact that windows has to constantly refer to this component to process information related to program and task operation.

So when you start to suffer from frequent error messages,speed degradation,system crashes,deleted program files and poor functionality then you will know that it is time for a scan with a free registry cleaner tool.The importance of performing frequent maintenance scans with free registry cleaner program can never be stressed enough in that failure to do so could result in the downfall of your operating system.

When it comes to free registry cleaner programs I can highly recommend Reg Cure.This pc repair tool has continued to gain huge popularity because of its powerful scanning and repair abilities and has continued to keep my pc error free.

If you would like to download the latest version and scan your pc now please visit the website below.

If you are one of the millions who are looking for the best antivirus freeware, then it is definitely a good idea to read through this article. The Internet is filled with spyware and malware, but are you willing to shell out some of your hard earned money for a program that you can get for free?

If your answer is no, then read the list below and see how some of the best antivirus freeware compete and even work better than their counterparts.

For the purpose of narrowing down the list, this article will discuss the three most popular choices in antivirus freeware. These include Avira, Avast and AVG.

Here are some antivirus reviews

1. Adware Software

Nasties can install on your personal computer without your consent, spyware software monitors or controls your personal computer use. Your operating system, like Windows or Linux, may offer free software “patches” to nearby hole in the system that spyware be able to take advantage. Therefore, it tends to be when “ware” is short for “software”; occasionally it is tricky to define exactly what form of software it involves and realizes.

A browser hijacker is software that hijacks browsers, and does some nasty things. Free software like screensavers or person to person file sharing programs that you download, such as Kazaa. Worse, no one piece of software will safeguard you from the above.

Companies add adware to their software frequently freeware and shareware to purchase programming charges. Spyware is a form of software that collects information from your personal computer and sends it to a third party without your expertise or permission. For many years, promotion companies have been cashing in on us by writing programs and sneaking them into software downloads without our permission so they can force us to view there advertisements for products.

2. Adware Free

If you are adware free from adware then you can stick with it without a care in the world, your cash will still be in your pocket and your personal computer will be running safely. Have you ever came over a peer-to-peer file sharing site and downloaded games, movies or just about any archives from these free sites? The next is a guide on how to eliminate spyware, adware, and pop-up ads using free tools prepared to download anytime.

If you are an updated Windows OS user, you pull up your activity manager system information screen and see that your system is running at 100%, then you are infect with spyware because your system continually needs slightly free space in order to process information, which is why your system slows down when you have spyware on it. Ten years ago you could possibly do not have any Internet safety applications and still have pop out after a browse of the Internet with a pandemic and malware free personal computer, but this situation is no more apparent. Do not just download programs that are free, or sound too good to be true.

3. Removal

You do not have to get involved with this anymore, you can actually eliminate spyware and adware, and you can eliminate it free. The best alternative to remove spyware and adware are to download spyware removal tools.

“These fraudulent programs foul machines undermine productivity and in many cases frustrate consumers’ efforts to eliminate them from their computers. Lawmakers are recognizing the difficulties and the invasion of privacy that these promotion companies are causing and are working on laws to make them outlawed, but until that day comes the best we can do is educate ourselves about how to safeguard and eliminate spyware from our personal computer systems.

4. Anti-spyware

There are many software available designed to eliminate viruses, spyware, adware and other nasties from your personal computer. If your personal computer is infected you must try to eliminate it with any good anti spyware program, some of them could be freely download from the internet. An efficient anti spyware program will detect and eliminate all doable infected archives.

The first thing you will wish to do is be sure you have the latest, most up-to-date anti-spyware scanning program on the market.