List your favorite free utilities for virus, adware, pictures, etc

I just tried Malwarebyte's,and it only fixes 100 errors,then you have to buy it...
What's the best free anti-virus that doesn't slow your lap-top down to a bug's crawl?
(Norton is killin' me,it slow everything right down)
Oh yeah,and I'm pretty much 'puter illiterate,so it's gotta be easy 'nuff a 5 year old can run it.
 
I quite using Nortons a couple years ago because it was killing my computer and I was a die hard Nortons fan for a long time. This year Nortons really cleaned up their act and it is now one of the faster anti-virus programs, plus one of the most effective. I went back to Nortons a few months ago and have been pleased with it so far.
 
Thanks Tracy!
I just got my laptop back from my lil' bro awhile back,but I guess it's running an older (copy?) of Norton...
when it starts it's scan,everything begins to craaaaawl....
 
Comodo anti virus/firewall free. It'll lock your stuff up tight as a drum.

BC

ps - had Norton/MacAfee before and still had problems.
 
There's a few things that I've learned/remembered since I last posted.

A router is a major part in protecting your PC from being hacked by having your IP address different than what the outside world can see.

64 bit systems are more powerful than 32 bit, but also are much more secure as 64 bit cannot have rootkits installed into them. When I mentioned Combofix earlier, that would help clean up rootkits in windows xp, but now that I have windows 7 x64, Combofix will not work because there is not much need for it.




And I still promote Malwarebytes. I was unaware that it had a 100 item limit for the free version, but I went ahead and bought a few copies. You can find coupon codes online to use, and multiple copies saves some money. I don't use Norton or McAfee because they both seem to slow down computers so I just use Malwarebytes and I have had no issues with it. It's quick and doesn't slow down the PC at all, even during a scan. (But I DO have a 3.0 ghz quad core processor......., 4gb ram, etc.etc.)
 
Over the years I have tried, and eventually rejected just about every free Anti-Virus out there. All of them either do not detect important viruses, or they hog so many system resources that they will drag down even a top of the line computer. I also purchase Norton, and found that it slowed our computers down so much that I thought we were still using Windows 95!
Last year I tried what was then a new product, VIPRE It has proven to be the best I have ever used. Since installing it, it has caught ever single virus that has come down the pike, and is super light on using system resources. In fact I just finished updating my subscription for another two years.

One "free" program/service that I could not be without is Gmail. I can access my email for any computer, everything is in one place, and with the large amount of storage Gmail offers, I rarely loose anything (unless it's because of my own stupidity) :)

I also agree with everyone who recommends FireFox.....with all the add-ons available, it makes life MUCH nicer that most other browsers.

I'm one of those people who is always looking for free programs that are useful. Every morning when going through my routine, part of it is to check PC World, and Download.com for useful free programs.
There is another site: http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/ that gives away programs that would otherwise cost. Although most of isn't useful to me, every now and then they offer something that is very good.
Most notably for me have been SoThink DHTML menu (I use for my website), and Glary Utilities.
 
I've used most all the free spyware/malware programs most are useless crap that just make you think you have a problem you don't. ALot of them are trojans or malware to begin with I stronly recomend staying away from these "free" programs.
Some of them really work to an extent. they will tell you what you have but will not do anything about them. I prefer one that will do it all, detect, prevent and remove malware, trojans and spyware and clean the crap out of your cache you dont need. I use PCtools software for most of this on my home pc. It is recomended by PC magizine, PC user, and the list goes on. Spyware Dr is one of the best that wont mess with your existing programs and also works in the background preventing infections from becoming real problems. You buy one subscripton and get it for 3 pc's for one year, a Bargan considering I charge $45 an hour to remove the virus's and malware from peoples pc's all the time. And all I do is remove thier HD and scan it wiht Spyware Dr and clean it on my PC. Usualy only takes 20 min or so for a TB hard drive.
For real security get a hardware firewall. It looks like a small router but is a security device, I recomend these for home networks as well as business networks.

I use IE, Firefox, mozilla, opera, netscape and google chrome. Chrome mostly now because of all of the features it has or doesn't in some cases. I also would recomend to anyone out there looking to get a new pc or software to look into getting a 64 bit system Ive been using 64 bit for a long time and love the speed, most wont realize the speed but for a pc it helps. another thing is to create a backup disk and a boot disk for your system espicialy if you have a RAID type HD system.
 
Ran across this one yesterday..

Yesterday morning during my routine email and internet visits, I ran across this program: Photo Optimizer

Most knifemakers are not the greatest photographers, and I found this program to be very useful. I installed it and ran a number of my own photos through it. It's not always the answer, but about 80% of the time it improves photos noticeably. It's a single minded program, with only one function, but it does it pretty well.

I generally use Microsoft Digital Image Suite, and Corel Photo X2 for my photo work, but in many cases this program did a better "one click" refinement of photos than the one click solution in the other two programs.
 
It's not to useful for knife photos, but a great panorama-stitching program is Autostitch (http://cvlab.epfl.ch/~brown/autostitch/autostitch.html). It's my preferred program for casual image stitching, (I only use Photoshop for tricky prints).

Here's an image I stitched together from eleven separate frames.
4943165341_058e712558_b.jpg


This panorama was shot handheld with my 17-40F4L at 24mm to minimize distortion. I was unable to find any alignment errors in the final (3ft wide) print. The software is super easy to use, too. Just import the component images and let it run for an hour or so. Stitching like this is a great way of getting more resolution from your camera (which results in bigger available print size). My camera's sensor is only eight megapixels, but by stitching many frames together, I was able to achieve a 40 megapixel print.

The GIMP was mentioned earlier as well. It is a very powerful image editor. In my experience, the only better image software is by Adobe. (Adobe Photoshop is, unfortunately, worth the high price over the GIMP, at least for me.)

Phillip
 
my short lisyt of free likes / uses

advance system care ....... great program very helpful
AVG ....... I am currently not using it as i have kepersky for free it uses a bit less resources but can hang up on updates as they are not announced
mailware bites ..... I use it in demand mode only
spyware blaster...... on demand only use
spy bot .... on demand use only
CC clean
hijack this
defraggler
reimiage repair
file assassin
file shredder
open office
adobe photoshop express ...... online photo edit and gallery
photo bucket...... picture hosting
deviant art on line gallery see here http://retrogrouch.deviantart.com/gallery/ portfolio here http://retrogrouch.daportfolio.com/
mediafire ....... online storage and sharing of files my varied and constantly growing library http://www.mediafire.com/bssc
firefox .... IE is dead to me my top add in must have is adblock plus
 
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