The 46 Best-ever Freeware Utilities
There are a lot of great freeware products out there. Many are as good as or better than their commercial alternatives. This list features my personal pick of the “best of the best.”
All the utilities in this list have featured in past issues of my free monthly newsletter “Support Alert” More freebies are published in each new issue. If you are interested in great utilities and freeware you really should consider subscribing. It’s free.
Listed below are 46 different freeware categories with my selection of the best products in each category. The list is ordered by program function rather than merit so you’ll get the most out of it by browsing down this page at leisure. The pathologically impatient can consult the index below.
The Best-ever Freeware List
Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) is a competent browser with enough features to meet the needs of most users but is difficult to recommend due to on-going security concerns. In the past IE has been a focus for security attacks and there is little to suggest this will change with the release of IE7. Additionally, Microsoft have a poor track record for speedily fixing IE defects and this has left users open to drive-by attacks and other forms of zero-day exploits.
There are several excellent alternatives with the new Mozilla Firefox V2 [1] a solid first choice. It’s safer than IE, so safe in fact that many users have reported no spyware infections since they started using the product. It’s also browses a tad faster than IE, is very stable and is more standards compliant. The program loads slower than IE but once running, it positively zips along. With tabbed browsing and over 2000 free extensions (add-ons) that allow you to customize your experience, it provides most users with a major surfing upgrade. Firefox is now my everyday browser though I still leave IE on my PC for the occasional web site that’s designed around IE’s non-standard features. If you need any further convincing then check out my IE to Firefox migration guide [2].
An equal first choice is Opera [3]. It’s a speed demon; probably the fastest of all the common browsers. But it’s much more than that; it’s full featured, standards compliant and safe. Just as Firefox is extensible through add-ins, Opera can be enhanced using Widgets, though there are not nearly as many of these available as Firefox extensions. Then again, it doesn’t need as many extensions as a lot of the features added by Firefox add-ins are already available built into the standard Opera browser. There’s just so much to like about Opera V9 that you could easily create a case that it’s better than Firefox. Indeed, if I could get an Opera replacement for some of my key Firefox add-ins, I’d probably switch.
Users who don’t want to drift too far from the Microsoft stable can get some of the feature advantages of Firefox and Opera by using one of the many customized shells for Internet Explorer such as Maxthon [4] and Avant [5]. Their main selling feature for these products used to be tabbed browsing but now that this is available in IE7 it’s hard to create a case for their general recommendation. Still if you need a specialized feature they are worth considering. On the downside these shells share most of the same security problems as IE as they utilize the IE engine.
Last but not least is the K-Meleon browser [6], a slimmed down cousin of Firefox that’s optimized for Windows. Of the four browsers I use on different PCs, K-Meleon is the quickest loading and along with Opera, the fastest for surfing. On the downside there are only a limited number of add-ons and plug-ins available so you are pretty well limited to the features available in the standard product. If you are the type of person who prefers performance to bells and whistles you should definitely try K-Meleon.
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[1] http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/ (5.7MB)
[2] http://www.techsupportalert.com/firefox.htm
[3] http://www.opera.com/ (4.6MB)
[4] http://www.maxthon.com/index.htm (1.9MB)
[5] http://www.avantbrowser.com/ (1.86MB)
[6] http://kmeleon.sourceforge.net/ (6MB)
2 Best Free Anti-Virus Software Updated November 28, 2007
If you are looking for the best possible protection my top recommendation is Avira AntiVir Personal Edition Classic [1]. Although its detection rate is outstanding there are some reservations. First it lacks email scanning; this is only available in the paid version. That means that AntiVir won’t warn you about any infected emails before you open them. However should you open an infected email then AntiVir will still spring into action, so not having an email scanner doesn’t mean you are not protected from email based infections. My second reservation is that AntiVir is quite an intrusive product - you will certainly be well aware of its presence. Finally AntiVir Personal Edition Classic has a time limited license. It is renewable but be aware you will have to periodically go through the hoops.
If you not prepared to accept the drawbacks to AntiVir I would suggest either AVG Antivirus 7 Free Edition [2] or the Avast! scanner [3]. Neither is quite as effective in detection as AntiVir however they are both more complete products and less intrusive in use.
AVG Free has been continuously refined since it was first released in 1991 and the latest version V7.5 makes further improvements to an already solid product. Additionally, it’s relatively small, light on resources, has regular automatic updates and handles email scanning. There is a free and a pro version, the only difference being that the free version has a few non-critical features disabled and has no technical support other than a free user forum .
Equally effective is the free Avast! scanner [3] though its funky media player style interface is not to everyone’s taste. Avast! also required periodic re-registration while AVG does not. However Avast! does not seem to suffer the signature file update problems that plague some AVG users.
AVG and Avast! are excellent free products that will meet the needs of most users. However none of these offer the best malware detection available. That title belongs to commercial products like NOD32, F-Secure, the full versions of AntiVir, Kaspersky AV and others. They are however capable packages that offer the financially challenged a real alternative to the major anti-virus suites.
However if you use AVG or Avast! in conjunction with a sandbox for surfing (see section 4) and an anti-spyware product (see section 3) you can achieve a level of protection approaching that offered by the best commercial AV products.
Further improvement is possible running regular on-demand scans with a different anti-virus product.
On-demand scans should be run regularly, at least weekly, to check for viruses and other malware that may have been missed by your main scanner.
A good option for on-demand scanning is the free version of the commercial AV product BitDefender [4]. It’s a first class product with excellent detection rates but as the free version lacks an email scanner and a resident virus guard, it’s only really suited for use as an on-demand scanner rather than your main AV product. There are some other limitations as well. First it has an annoying habit of detecting malware products that have been quarantined by other security products and you can’t exclude these areas from subsequent scans. Second, it is only available on a one year non-renewable license.
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[1] http://www.free-av.com Windows 95-Vista, 20.3MB
[2] http://free.grisoft.com/freeweb.php/doc/2/ Windows 98-Vista, 29.0MB
[3] http://www.avast.com/eng/avast_4_home.html Windows 95-Vista, 16.1MB
[4] http://www.bitdefender.com/PRODUCT-14-en–BitDefender-8-Free-Edition.html Windows 98-XP, 13.2MB
3 Best Free Adware/Spyware/Scumware Remover Updated November 28, 2007
A couple of years ago most folks relied on SpyBot Search and Destroy and Ad-Aware for spyware protection. Alas spyware has evolved so quickly that these once outstanding products are no longer up to the task of providing primary protection though they remain useful as secondary, on-demand scanners.
The new generation of malware requires a new generation of defensive products. Such products need to provide stronger active protection and broader spectrum detection. The best anti-spyware programs, WebRoot SpySweeper, Spyware Doctor and CounterSp
January 24, 2008 6:23 pm 
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