A basic desktop PC should be equipped with a number of important software applications including email, web browser, word processor, spreadsheet and more. Here is a set of free software titles that will work for many types of users.

Security

The first thing I do when I am setting up a new PC is to remove the trial-version of the commercial security suite. While McAfee and Norton / Symantec will help to keep your PC safe they are bloated and consume too many resources. To keep your PC secure I recommend AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition . This is the baseline program you want to maintain security.

If you are connected directly to the Internet, that is you are not behind a firewall enabled router, then you should have ZoneAlarm, too. Please note, AVG and ZoneAlarm are free for non-commercial use only. If you are a business looking for an inexpensive security solution, please contact me for more information.

Browsing and Email

Your Windows based PC came with Internet Explorer and if you don’t have it yet, you should upgrade to IE Version 8. In my opinion, however, the best free browser is Mozilla Firefox. It is actively maintained and updated by members of the project and there are hundreds of extensions that allow you to customize it so you can make the Internet your own.

If you prefer desktop email clients to web based, then Mozilla Thunderbird is the way to go. The Lightening extension provides calendaring making this an excellent alternative to Outlook. Combine these products with GMail, Google’s free email service, and you can take advantage of the IMAP and iCal technologies. They let you work with the Mozilla tools on your desktop(s) and GMail’s browser based interface when you are mobile or at another’s PC. This setup gives you the best of both worlds.

Productivity

Instead of MS Office, use OpenOffice.org. It is a very mature Office Suite that includes a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation editor, image editor, math equation editor, chart editor, and database access tool. The components were developed together from the ground up so they all play together very well. Because their interfaces are so similar, most users of Word and Excel are able to adapt very quickly to the corresponding Write and Calc found in OpenOffice. This one switch alone can save your organization hundred$ per worker. And again every few years. With OpenOffice you will never pay a licensing fee for office software again.

For graphics editor check out Paint.NET. It is an excellent alternative to Adobe Illustrator and Corel Draw. Another good alternative is GIMP.

Utilities

PDF Creator lets you turn any document you can print into a PDF file for publishing on the web or email distribution.

CDBurnerXP Pro is a great tool for creating media and music CD’s, installation programs, presentations and other CD distributions.

Instead of WinZip, try 7Zip. I believe it to be a far superior tool and there are no annoying pop-ups reminding you to pay up.

Find these and more free software at The Free Software Catalog.

Bookmark and Share

More »

1. Begin using open source tools for some of your less than mission critical functions. This is a good way to get familiar with finding, downloading and installing open source solutions. Because you will be using them in the peripheries of your operation there is less risk that any part of your operation can be disrupted. Firefox and KeePass are pretty good choices for this because they are more personal tools then they are enterprise tools.

2. Begin using open source solutions next to the commercial versions. This is a great way to see that open source solutions can be and are just as good as their proprietary counterparts. Choose OSS applications that also run on Windows. This will greatly simplify your ability to evaluate them. If you use MS-Office, install OpenOffice and use it occasionally. It works directly with the MS-Office file formats and you’ll find the learning curve is not very steep. Use Firefox next to IE and Thunderbird/Lightening next to office. In the case of Office vs OpenOffice / Thunderbird you may find that the MS products are a bit more rich in features, but most users find they don’t use those features very often. In the case of Firefox, I think you will find it much better than IE.

3. Setup a Linux box. If you’re like most small businesses, you have one or two old PC’s lying around. Brush off the dust and install one of the popular GNU/Linux distributions. Most of them run pretty well even on older PC’s with less capacity, particularly for evaluation purposes. You’ll have to invest a bit more time with this project, but in the end, should you choose to move to Linux based servers, you can save thousands when deploying new database, web and application servers.

4. Work with IT consultants that have experience with open source. In my travels I have seen many computer consultants that are animately opposed to using open source. As I get to know them better, I realize that it’s only because they have no experience with it. They’ve been working with MS products so long, they don’t want to take the time to learn anything new. That’s fine for them, but can get very expensive for you. A consultant with OSS experience can share their opinions of products with you, help you with the deployment of products and create custom solutions using them.

5. Conduct a pilot project using your new LAMP Stack. Once you have a Linux server running use your IT consultant to build a simple application that you can begin using. As you see that the benefits are equal to that of an MS-based solution, you will have the confidence to move forward with more OSS products and custom solutions based on them.

Despite the popularity of Microsoft in the small business environment, their solutions are not always your best choice, particularly when you factor in the high licensing fees of server based software. You will get more from your IT infrastructure when those license fee dollars can be directed towards building useful solutions for your business. The clients I work with that choose open source software solutions find it is a great way to maximize their return on investment. So slip of your MS loafers and dip your toes into the OSS pool. I promise, the water’s not that cold.

Bookmark and Share

More »

Commercial security suites are good, but sometimes too good. To justify their continuing subscription fee, they bloat the software with new features in each release. Pretty soon, we feel like our computers exist just to run the security suites and were buying memory upgrades to handle the programs we want to run.

It doesn’t have to be that way.

Anti-Virus

When starting with a clean machine, most users only need a simple and reliable Anti-Virus tool with a light-weight active scanner and frequent automatic updates. My favorite is AVG Anti-Virus. It is the one I run myself and the one I recommend to all of my clients, friends and family. If you are using it in a commercial environment then Grisoft does require a subscription fee comparable to other commercial AV vendors.

Click here for more free Anti-Virus tools.

Anti-Spyware

In addition to Anti-Virus, we all need protection from Spyware.  You can find a number of excellent free packages in the Anti-Spyware page of the Free Software Catalog.

If you suspect that your machine is infected with spyware that your anti-virus is not detecting you should install and run one of these packages. Remember to run the product’s update function before scanning to ensure you detect the latest threats.

For those hard to reach places these next two tools are great. I wouldn’t recommend them for the novice users because the results of their scans can be hard to interpret. But, if you’re the neighborhood computer geek, these are a must have.

• CCleaner
• HiJackThis

Once your machine is completely clean you shouldn’t need to consistently run spyware blockers. That is, unless you visit a variety of “unscrupulous” sites or you frequently download music, games and programs from file share networks. If these are your surfing and use habits you should probably run one of the active blockers, such as SpyCatcher Express.

Firewalls

Nowadays, most home based computers access the Internet through a router. That router provides basic firewall protection by using something called network address translation (NAT). NAT makes it very difficult, if not impossible, for hackers to gain control of your machine from outside of your network. This means that most home users do NOT require a software based firewall.

The additional advantage a software based firewall does provide over the NAT enabled router is the ability to detect when software on your computer tries to access the Internet. This can be useful in identifying and stopping spyware. Of course, if you keep your computer free of these threats it’s not totally necessary.

However, if you are not using a NAT enabled router, i.e. your computer is connected directly to your cable, DSL or dial-up modem, then you need to run a software based firewall.

If you are running Windows XP or later you already have a decent firewall built-in. Make sure it is running.

If you feel you want something a bit more robust, check out ZoneAlarm.

Conclusion

As you can see there is no excuse for not properly securing your PC. You can learn more about these packages here.

Bookmark and Share

More »