Your Geek Recommends:

I spend quite a bit of time elbows deep in computers, for both business and personal reasons. I have collected some of my favorite products to share with you. Everything that I recommend is free. Computers are expensive, software doesn't have to be.

I have used several different free firewall solutions, but ZoneAlarm has been my favorite thus far. It is simple enough for an absolute beginner, but offers enough under the hood to work well for the experienced user. The only thing that I have ever needed that the free version didn't offer was the ability to open specific ports on your PC. However, if that statement means little to nothing to you, then this would make a more than adequate firewall solution.

I have tried several anti-virus solutions as well. I was once a staunch Norton/Symantec supporter. However, I have found over the last few years their products have become extremely bloated and tend to consume more money and system resources than I'm willing to give. For that reason, I sought out a free alternative. I tried three; Clamwin, Avast, and AVG Free. AVG won me over.

Clamwin was clutter-free and had good scanning abilities. The problem was that windows didn't recognize it as a legit anti-virus program. I got tired of fighting with windows telling me I didn't have an anti-virus package installed, even after insisting that I did more than once. I uninstalled it after finding something to replace it.

Avast worked well, but when it updated, a loud male voice let you know. More than once I heard a booming voice proclaim at 2:00 AM that my virus definitions were now up to date. I can only take being scared awake so many times before it's time to find another solution.

For my last switch, I tried AVG free 7.5. That was about a year or so ago. They have since released 8.0, and it incorporates much of what was in their paid anti-virus product. Not only is this silent about its updates, but it will also let me know if my google searches are safe for me to click on by putting a small green check mark at the end of the search results. I like this because I know not everyone knows what the latest list of exploit websites contains. If I have my anti-virus software give me a heads up, it could save me hours of swearing, scanning, and rebooting.

Spyware, malware, and other malicious exploits are rampant! I could easily make a career out of just cleaning up instances of these little pests. The good thing is that the market is flooded with plenty of good, free software packages to help stem the tide of Cialis, adult dating sites, and penis enlargement spam-bots. I will break my best of list down into two groups; the programs with active scanning, and the packages you have to remember to run for them to work.

A co-worker turned me on to this little gem just last year. It will detect all sorts of installations that need to be removed. I have run this after running other scans that came up clean and it has found several items buried deep in the system. This must have been a truffle-smelling pig in a former life.

Where A squared is sloooow to do a complete scan, it is so thorough it might even be able to diagnose athletes foot and that nagging cough as bronchitis. This will find just about everything. Though, don't run this when you only have a few minutes. It's best to get this running and turn in for the night. In Alaska. In the middle of winter.

I have used this little program in departments that do most of their job functions on the internet to help them prevent downtime associated with cleaning their systems of drive-by downloads and other detritus that accumulates with time spent online. If you install the crawler toolbar with the program, it will help to prevent your browser from being hijacked as well as warn you about visiting a "poisoned" page. It will also do a daily system scan to remove any spyware, tracking cookies, or other software deemed to be problematic. I like this for its set it and forget it ease of use.

Perhaps the oldest of the items listed here, using it has been compared to using a backhoe to weed your flower garden. For that reason, use with care. I like this package because it will not only "immunize" your computer against bad URLs, if you install the "teatimer" option, it will help prevent you from clicking on a poisoned link. It's very easy to use, and extremely thorough.

While Adobe has done an admirable job of creating the pdf standard, allowing us to share documents across platforms, their implementation of the reader for their files is, well, lacking. It runs very slowly, often needs to apply updates that require you to restart the PC, and tends to bloat. Foxit offers a free reader that’s much faster, never needs to restart you PC, and allows you to mark-up the PDF file so long as you don’t mind it promoting itself in the header and footer. Thumbs up.

If you need to create quick and dirty PDF files from a pre-existing document, but don’t want to spend hundreds on Adobe's full acrobat program, try Primo. It installs itself as a virtual printer and creates a PDF as easy as printing it on your home printer. You’re given options as to what the end document will be used for, print, screen, or web to help determine the file size and graphic details. Simple as pie.

Checking multiple e-mail accounts can be a royal pain. Heck, sometimes remembering to check even one can be daunting. E-prompter will check multiple types of accounts and report back to you with not only the total number of messages in the inbox, but it will allow you to both read and respond to them without need of a bloated e-mail client. This has been my notifier of choice since roughly 1999, and unless something radical comes out to replace it, it will remain so for the foreseeable future.

Anyone who has used windows for more than a week will tell you that it can get rather arthritic over time. CCleaner, formerly Crap Cleaner scans your hard drive for junk files that can be safely deleted. Depending on how well the computer is maintained, the amount of space gained after running this application can vary from a couple of megabytes to well over a gigabyte.

While I like Google Docs, part of me worries about letting Google have the final say in what I can and can’t do with content I have created. OpenOffice.org gives you an office suite that’s fully compatible with Microsoft Office at no charge. Open Office has some very low minimum requirements and will still run on windows 98. If you need to be able to create complex documents but don’t want to spend much, OpenOffice.org just might be what you’re looking for.

Where Quark used to have the desktop publishing market by the short and curlies, that stranglehold has relaxed a bit in the last few years. Adobe brought their “QuarkKiller” In Design to the market and stole a little fire from the Gods. Then the Open Source Software movement came along and brought with it more free, stable software. Scribus is a free desktop publishing application that gives you the same granular control over your documents you’d expect from a commercial offering at no charge.

Often times, I have needed to be able to create a short”here's how to use this feature” tutorial, but didn’t have the money to pay for a commercial solution. Wink allows you to create a guided tutorial complete with voiceovers, on-screen controls, and instructional pop-ups. Tutorials can be saved as a web page, or a standalone flash movie.

Sometimes, you just need to scribble something down. Anyone who has worked in graphic design knows the value of a program like Freehand or Illustrator. Inkscape is a free, Open Source vector drawing application. I can’t draw a straight line with the help of a ruler, but I can appreciate the value of a free program to help me put my ideas to paper.

TweakUI is a Microsoft powertoy that gives the average user access to all the goodies that can be tweaked in the registry in an easy to use graphical interface. Want to be automatically logged in as one user instead of being prompted for a username and password, get rid of that annoying “shortcut to” business when creating a new .lnk file, or change your pointer settings? This will let you do all those things and more in one easy to use utility.

Yet another Microsoft powertoy, Synctoy will help you to consolidate your files in one place. Say you have a laptop and a desktop that both have a folder called “pictures” and you want to combine the two into one master folder. It would take hours doing it by hand. Synctoy will do that for you in a matter of clicks. Easy to use and fast, this takes tedious tasks and makes them simple.

For the more advanced user, n-lite allows you to customize your windows installation CD almost beyond recognition. You can do something as simple making a basic unattended installation so you don’t have to remember where you wrote your CD key down, or if you can still read that sticker on the CD case. Or, you can slipstream the latest service pack, add custom drivers, install applications like office or IE7, and remove those less-than useful parts of windows like display drivers from the 90’s. N-Lite is the Swiss army knife of custom windows installations.

It seems news reports of some company or organization being broken into and customer data being stolen are common stories on the 6:00 news anymore. TrueCrypt allows you to create encrypted “containers” on your hard drive to save your personal, sensitive, or incriminating documents in. Should your computer be stolen, unless the thief has a super computer and a lot of time on their hands, your data is still safe.

I’ll admit it; I spent too much time on the internet. Far too much time since I’m being honest. And I surf on several different computers. Heck, there are 9 or more in my house alone! I am also a digital packrat. I will bookmark anything remotely interesting that I think I might come back to later. For that reason, I love the bookmark feature in the Google toolbar. It allows me to save all of my bookmarks in a central place where I can access anywhere I have an internet connection. No more hunting through internet history and local bookmarks on several different computers just to find that site I liked from three weeks ago. Now all I have to do is log in to Google and search through my bookmarks stored out there in the interwebs.

Once an invitation-only service, Gmail has quickly become the de facto force in webmail. With Gigabytes of space for your e-mail, you never have to worry about running out of space ever again. The integration of GTalk, excellent spam filters, and the ability to filter your incoming message with the addition of the + mark, this is my go to e-mail service.

Google has long been an ally in the open source web browser community, having supported Mozilla, the creators of Firefox for years. However, they have decided to dip their gigantic toes into the browser pond and released Chrome. It has not been out long as of this writing, but so far it’s lightweight, intuitive, and fast. I think it will grow on me.

There is a seemingly increasing need to be in two places at once these days. While that might not be possible, perhaps having all of your phones looking for you is then next best thing. Sign up for a phone number and enter in the external numbers you want that to ring when it’s called. Move out of state and don’t want to get a new phone number? No problem! Get a local number in your new calling area and have it call your long-distance cell phone at no charge to your friends. Never know where you’re going to be? Tell GrandCentral to call all of your phones in an effort to find you. Be warned though that this will be the end of “I didn’t hear my phone”. Accidentally give your number to someone who you just can’t stand? No problem. Send their calls right to voicemail. Need to record a call because you don’t have anything to write notes on? Hit a button and record the entire call. Have an e-mail sent to you when you get a voicemail. The features go on and on!

Years ago, I not only wrote web pages, but I taught people how to create them as well. I was and am a code snob; I write it all in a text editor, none of this drag and drop crapola for me. IE has been the thorn in the side of many site designer and code purist for many years. Firefox obeys the rules set out by the web police (WC3), displays pages as they’re written, does so quickly and securely, is extremely customizable, and is completely free. Long live Firefox!

Ever find yourself at work and need something from your home computer? Sure, who hasn’t. www.logmein.com has a number of remote access solutions ranging from completely free to enterprise wide solutions that can connect support technicians with people in need in a matter of minutes, without the need to install software on the remote PC. Create an account with logmein, download the client to the PC you want to be able to control remotely, set the master password, and you’re ready to go. You can now access your PC and control it as if you were sitting in front of it anywhere you have an internet connection.

Crossloop.com has very useful free support package that allows for remote screen sharing. The big difference between crossloop and logmein.com is that you have to have someone in front of the remote computer to allow access to share the screen with crossloop. However, you can install that client on the remote machine as you need it, rather than have to plan ahead and install it before you need it like you do with logmein. This comes in handy if you have friends or family in places where driving to help them with a computer question isn’t feasible.

Most of us have run into a problem sending someone a HUGE file that either your or the other guys’ mail server has rejected. No worries. Go to www.transferbigfiles.com, upload the file, enter the recipient’s email address, promise you own the rights to distribute the file, and send away. The recipient will get a message from transferbigfiles.com saying they have am e-mail ready to be picked up. In that message they will receive a link to the file you have sent. Once they visit the site they will be allowed to download the file. You can e-mail up to a 1 Gb sized file for free. You can even select that you want to be notified when the download has been completed successfully.

If you’re like me and tend to either lose or forget to bring your flash drive with you, then this site just might save your bacon. Sign up for an account and you get 1 Gb of space to use however you like. Log in, upload, download, arrange, and delete your data from anywhere with an internet connection.

I use this site to test to see if a network connection is down. Most people have no reason to go to this site as it’s just a purple page that loads very quickly. For that reason, it makes a great litmus test for connectivity.

I think the best way I’ve heard this described is channel-surfing the internet. Install this toolbar, create an account, set up your website preferences, make a pot of coffee, and never sleep again.

Create a bootable windows CD with all sorts of free anti-spyware, anti-virus, diagnostic, and productivity software packages pre-installed. This is my bread and butter when it comes to removing persnickety infections on PCs for people. They’re easy to build, extremely useful, and free!

This is perhaps the most complex item on the list. This is a software server package that acts as a DHCP, firewall, internet threat blocker, anti-virus package, content filter, and VPN solution all in one. Setting up and untangle server is not for the faint of heart. However, the rewards are well worth all the swearing. You will need a spare PC with at least two network cards in it for this to work.

Why would you need something like this at home? Simple. I can think of several real-life examples of where this would be extremely useful. I have a co-worker who has two daughters; one is 13, the other is 15. One sleepless night, he got up to get a drink of water and discovered the light in her room was on. She was up at 3:00 in the morning surfing the internet. Where the site she was on was completely harmless, it got him thinking about what she might have been doing on other occasions. With Untangle you can lock down which computers have internet access to what kinds of sites at what times of the day. In this case, lock down all web traffic between the hours of 11:00 PM and 6:00 AM on the kids’ computer to prevent them from getting into trouble.

Another prime example is my darling husband. He will do what boys do and look at some questionable content on the web. While it’s not the content I object to, it’s the extra crap that those sites tend to install on his computer that makes me want to spit tacks. Simple solution was to lock down all adult content sites for all the computes in the house. No more marathon spyware removal sessions for me! My point is, if you want very flexible control over what does and does not happen on your home network, you might want to look at untangle.

Sure, this isn’t a program, website, or anything you’d think would be related to computers. I learned of this place’s existence and started my love affair with it at Taco Bell. My husband and I overheard this loud, pseudo-geek bragging about all the servers in his basement and how he’s bought them all from this surplus store. Fate would have it that I was sent to Peerless Wiping Cloths a few months later to pick up something for my spouse’s work, and the surplus store was right next door. Curious, I went in to check it out. There I found a geek’s dream, aging toys sold at shamefully low prices to anyone willing to carry with them a CRT monitor. I have purchased an older duplex capable laser printer, 7 dell desktops, a 24 port switch, several LCDs, a chair or two, and my new network rack. I have also shared the secret location of geeky Shangri-la with several of my co-workers. They have since fallen in love as well. The surplus store, she has many suitors.