Top 10 Freeware

Do you want to fit your computer with quality software without paying a cent. That dream is do-able in these tight times because a swathe of modern software positively wants to be free.

Here are 10 of the best free programs around.

1. Avast!

www.avast.com

Fail to install antiviral software on Windows and a worm or slice of spyware will invade your hard drive eventually. The highly praised free antiviral option Avast! offers automatic, around-the-clock protection without complexity.

2. Easeus Partition Master

www.partition-tool.com

As Partition Magic alternative, EASEUS Partition Master Home Edition is a FREE disk partitioning utility that offers a powerful range of functions such as resizing partitions, formatting partitions, copying partitions, creating new partitions, deleting partitions, hiding partitions, changing drive letters, setting active partitions, and a handful other functions.

3. StripMail

www.dsoft.com.tr/stripmail

Every bit as slick as its name, StripMail  rids texts of awkward formatting and clutter, magically zapping the character “>” from forwarded e-mails for instance. The only minor minus, which also applies to Avast!, is that  it requires registration.

4. OpenOffice.org

www.openoffice.org

So you find Microsoft Word buggy and expensive. Consider this open-source word-processing program, which offers all the essentials and rarely crashes. OpenOffice.org also makes producing PDFs a snap yet demands far less processing power than its rival.

5. SystemCare

www.iobit.com

A Click A Day For PC Clean, Repair, Protection & Optimization

Advanced SystemCare Free (formerly Advanced WindowsCare Personal) has a one-click approach to helping protect, repair, clean, and optimize your PC. With over 20,000,000 downloads since 2006, this fantastic, award-winning, free program is a “must-have” tool for your computer, 100% safe and clean with no adware, spyware, or viruses.

Don’t waste money on expensive “registry cleaners” to fix your PC when Advanced SystemCare Free will repair, tune, and maintain it for you!

6. Chrome

www.google.com/chrome

Browser wars newcomer Google Chrome has compatibility issues with some mainstream sites. Still, Chrome is solid, streamlined, fast and different. Both web addresses and search strings go into the Omnibox, which processes information particularly quickly if you right-click and select paste and go. Even more of a winner than Firefox.

7. Skype

www.skype.com

Despite its remarkable cost-cutting capability, many entrepreneurs still overlook Skype. The communication software offers free phone calls to anyone in the world who is logged on to the system, which runs over the internet. The sound quality is better than you might think  and

improving.

8. ClipMagic

www.clipmagic.com

ClipMagic could use an interface makeover from Apple. Despite the inelegance of the clipboard extender, once mastered it is handy. It enables you to copy and keep multiple bits of written information or images then paste or merge them at whim. In a nutshell, ClipMagic spells control and convenience.

9. VLC media player

www.videolan.org/vlc

Nothing is more frustrating than receiving a video file and being unable to play it. Many users fiddle with codecs (encoding/decoding mechanisms). Simply downloading and firing up VLC automatically enables you to handle almost any video file format.

10. Auction Sniper

www.auctionsniper.com

Suppose you want to buy one of the new breed of dirt-cheap netbooks at eBay, but fear overpaying or being beaten to the punch. Auction Sniper lets you set your ceiling. If the price is right, like a soccer supersub, in the dying seconds the program automatically bests the last bid by a fraction. Bye bye bidding wars. Your first three snipes at least are free. After, the fees (www.auctionsniper.com/payment.aspx) are low.

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Closer To Home by Matthew Harwood and Scott Cresswell

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