A D   M U N C H E R AdMuncher is a the most effective means to avoid the advert overload on the web. It works with any browser and I wouldn't want to be without Ad Muncher at home. 30 days free trial. AdMuncher website - (forum) S O F T W A R E   T I P S On the rest of this page you can find a number of tips on software that I find to be especially useful. All of them share the admirable aspect of being free of charge for home users. S E C U R I T Y   S O F T W A R E Avast Free AntiVirus While required to register by email within 60 days to keep using Avast Home, it remains completely free of charge. The protection is also excellent by free-standards. With the recently released version 5 its interface and security makes it for the altogether best free antivirus package. I'm currently using the Pro version at home. Avira AntiVir Personal An old friend returned, Avira AntiVir is in second place on my recommendation list because of its top scores in malware identification. Unfortunately it comes with a very visible nag-screen flashing in your face during updates, but in turn there is no need to register by email. Recuva If you have deleted some files or even formatted a drive but want the data back, Recuva gives you a chance to recover some of that data. Use the drive as little as possible before recovering, or more of the data will be lost forever. TrueCrypt TrueCrypt can either encrypt entire drives or make encrypted container files, wherein you can safely store items of importance. Like for instance banking or work related documents. Several combinations of popular encryption algorithms are availalble. V I D E O   S O F T W A R E FFDShow - (image) FFDShow is a multi-use video and audio decoding filter that handles most of todays formats. While typically not necessary if you use MPC - Home Cinema(below), FFDShow can improve the experience with most video players or Windows preview panes. It can also be used in order to get access to a lot of settings for video and audio that are otherwise not available, like video filter effects or audio resampling. MPC - Home Cinema - (image) - (betas) This is Media Player Classic - Home Cinema edition, a renewal of the original Media Player Classic project. This lean yet feature filled and largely codec independent player brings with it modern features like the ability to accelerate high performance H.264 HD video, offloading work onto the video card when possible. I can warmly recommend this player to anyone. QuickTime Alternative QuickTime Alternative is an efficient way to get access to QuickTime video without having to install the original QuickTime software. Movie trailers Real Alternative Use Real Alternative to be able to play RealMedia video without having to install the RealOne player software. O P E N   O F F I C E Open Office A piece of software that deserves being put in a category of its own on this page is Open Office. Open Office is something as amazing as a completely free application suite that can do by far most tasks that everyday users require of Office-style software. You have your Writing, Spreadsheet, Presentational and other parts that you may have been accustomed to using expensive products like the Microsoft Office suite. A couple of valuable extras are also included, like the ability to easily create Adobe PDF files from your regular documents. If you have a decent internet connection then you can download the whole suite without any kind of payment or registration necessary. If it sounds too good to be true, then just go ahead and try it out.	U T I L I T Y   S O F T W A R E 7-Zip 7-Zip is a free file compression/decompression tool that supports all major archive formats like ZIP, RAR, 7z and so on. Strong encryption is supported with 7z. Autoruns - (live link) Autoruns is a highly technical tool for controlling what autimatically runs on your computer at system startup. Very useful for cleaning up a system bogged down by autostarting software, but best used carefully. CDBurnerXP CDBurnerXP is a free application to burn CDs and DVDs, including Blu-Ray and HD-DVDs. It also includes the feature to burn and create ISOs, as well as a multilanguage interface. CDex - (image) CDex is an excellent program for creating music files from your audio CD's. CDex can handle many formats but excels at making high quality MP3's with the help of the acclaimed LAME encoder and by using an error correcting CD ripping routine. CPU-Z - (image) CPU-Z is a nifty little tool that can give the user technical information on system components like the processor, motherboard, memory modules, and now also graphics. Daemon Tools Gives your system up to four virtual CD or DVD type units to wich you can load disk-image files. See also Virtual CloneDrive. FileZilla FTP - (image) FileZilla is an FTP client that is as easy to use as any. There is also a server version available. Free Download Manager Download Managers exists to handle downloading of files better than a typical web browser. In some situations they can speed up a download, but that feature is rather secondary compared to being able to resume, pause and other improvements. GPU-Z GPU-Z gives detailed information on the graphics part of your system, like technical specs and sensor readouts. HWMonitor A handy utility for monitoring various metered hardware readouts like temperatures, fanspeeds and voltages. A more basic but also easier to use alternative to SpeedFan listed below. JPEG & PNG Stripper Digital images of today tend to hold more data than the picture itself, if taken with a modern digital camera or edited with a major photo application. This program removes redundant data in picture files of the popular JPEG and PNG formats, making them require less storage space and internet bandwidth. KeyTweak KeyTweak allows you to remap/change out any key on your keyboard for another. Equally useful for fixing a keyboard with an odd layout or if you have simply found a better use for a certain key on any keyboard. Maxthon Browser - (forum) (image) The Maxthon web browser uses the core of Internet Explorer to display web pages, giving added value by a large number of additional features as well as insurpassed customizability. I have been using Maxthon version 2 for a few years now and while there are many other nice browsers out there, they all leave me feeling limited since I have gotten used to how Maxthon lets you do just about everything your own way. Miranda instant messaging Miranda is a smart instant messaging client that can handle several networks simultaneously, like ICQ, MSN, AIM, Yahoo, Jabber, Google, and more. nLite nLite is a tool for making customised installation discs for Windows XP. Mainly, it lets you integrate things like extra drivers, service packs and hotfixes into the installation procedure, as well as simplifying the routine by filling in registration and settings in advance. The alternate project for Vista is called vLite and by following tips in the forum it can be adapted for Windows 7. But in the case of the latter there is typically much less "to do" unless your primariy aim is to conserve drive space by removing features in advance. Note Tab Light - (image) A competent text editor that can handle having many text files open at the same time, and comes with powerful features like search-and-replace over multiple documents. I have been using it for coding my little website since ages ago. Orthos stress test - (image) Stress Prime 2004 Orthos Edition is a handy tool for stability testing a system. By loading either or both CPU and RAM the overall system stability can be tested. Process Explorer - (live link) Process Explorer provides more detailed information of the running processes than the regular Windows Task Manager. Useful for troubleshooting software or satisfying curiosity. RAMMap - (live link) The latest of the SysInternals utilities, RAMMap lets you discover where all that free memory has gone, and in some detail. Quicksys RegDefrag The registry is a central part of Windows that contains most of its configuration data. Over time the registry file itself grows and becomes less structured, leading mainly to increased system startup and shutdown time. Instead of modifying the contents of the registry like "registry cleaning" software does at some risk and often little gain, defragmenting and compacting the registry as Quicksys RegDefrag does is both safe and beneficial. Seagate SeaTools A harddrive diagnostics program from drive manufacturer Seagate which helps the user diagnose harddrives of any brand for potential problems. Easier to use than most similar tools from other manufacturers. SpeedFan SpeedFan is primarily a tool for monitoring temperatures and fans. Can also regulate the speed of a fan connected to most motherbard types. µTorrent µTorrent is a BitTorrent network client that focuses on being fully featured and yet resource efficient. Virtual CloneDrive A somewhat simpler and easier to use alternative to Daemon Tools listed above. Virtual CloneDrive has also been largely free of some install/uninstall issues that the other software has had.