All the software listed here is free, unless otherwise noted. Ali Baba Computech can help you configure any of these Software's based on your needs in to your computer.   Free Live Chat Software Security Firewall – Zone Alarm Basic This is one of the best firewall programs there is. VERY straight-forward user interface, yet, very solid security. It is customizable and teaching it to handle programs is simple and easy to do. Anti-Virus – AVG Free Edition One of the best anti-virus programs out there, and it's free! Fairly simple to use, yet powerful. And they have updates almost every day. It takes up very little in the way of system resources as it runs in the background. Avast Avast antivirus Home Edition is available free of charge for non-commercial home use ONLY. You can find more detailed information about the product here. Anti-Spyware Spybot S&D An excellent anti-spyware program for doing regular manual scans. The definitions are updated frequently, and this will catch a lot more junk on your computer than some of the commercial programs. Ad-Aware Personal Edition Another very good anti-spyware program for manual scanning. In combination with Spybot S&D, these programs should enable you to keep things clean. Anti-Spam - Mailwasher Free If you get a lot of spam all the time, this is the program for you. With it you can bounce the spam back at them and never see emails from the same spammer twice.   Internet Browser Mozilla Firefox This is the browser I recommend (over all the other Mozilla/Netscape browsers, Opera, and over MS Internet Explorer). The core of it is small, but it is powerful, especially with the ever-growing amount of available extensions. And it is more secure than Internet Explorer. It is also very customizable, so it can be tuned to your specifications.   Email Mozilla Thunderbird This is the companion to Firefox. More customizable and user friendly than Outlook (and less bloated).     Productivity OpenOffice.org – Office Suite This is a free open source office suite that is comparable to and is sometimes better than Microsoft Office. It is also able to open MS Office files, and you can save to MS Office file formats too (if you need to). There are still some minor things in the file conversion processes that fall through the cracks, but improvements are continually being made in this and in other areas of the suite. Included are the following programs: Writer (word processor) Base (database) Calc (spreadsheet) Draw (drawing) Impress (presentation) Math (equation editor) Note: you can export to PDF format from all of these programs.   GIMP – Image Manipulation Program A small but powerful image manipulation program – an alternative to Adobe Photoshop.   Google SketchUp – 3D Design A simple yet powerful 3D design program.   Media – Video, Music and Image Programs Quick Time Alternative A small and simple program for viewing Quick Time movies. Unlike Quick Time, this program is quick to load, never asks you if you want to upgrade to the Pro version, and does not try to access the Internet. Swiff Player A small and simple program for playing Flash files on your computer without using a browser. Real Alternative – (alternative to Real Player) Quick and simple program that plays .ram and .rm files. Unlike Real Player, Real Alternative does not take long to open, continue to force part of it to start when you start your computer, or try to access the Internet all the time. CD-DA X-tractor – Audio Conversion A very simple freeware program for converting CD songs to MP3 files. It's handy if you have an MP3 player that didn't come with any conversion software. VLC Media Player A very good simple media player/viewer, that will also play DVDs and streaming audio/video. Picasa - photo viewer, editor, slideshow A fairly in-depth but fun and easy to use program for viewing, editing, and sharing your photos (and videos).       Utilities & Miscellaneous Foxit - (alternative to Adobe Acrobat Reader) A quick and simple PDF reader. Unlike Adobe Acrobat Reader, Foxit does not hog a lot of system resources, take a long time to load, crash your browser on occasion, constantly load part of itself to start when your computer starts, or try to constantly access the Internet. Foxit just lets you view the PDF file and has none of Acrobat's failings. With Foxit, you can also type notes onto the PDF file and save them with it. Visualizer Photo Resize If you have a digital camera and you either didn't get software with it, or you can't figure it out, then this program is for you. This is a small but handy image manipulation program that can quickly and simply enable you to resize photos (shrink them down so you can email them without filling up someone's email box on the server), or crop them. It lets you do some other neat things too. Image Resizer This is one of the Microsoft Powertoys for WinXP. Once installed, you can access the Resize choices by right-clicking on an image in Windows Explorer.    Belarc Advisor This program creates a list of the hardware and the installed software on your computer. It is very handy for when you have problems with your computer and your computer technician starts asking you questions about your computer. This will list a lot of the specs that he/she will need to know. Cobian Backup An easy to use backup program for scheduling backups daily, weekly, monthly or whenever. 7Zip A free program for compressing or decompressing a number of compression file formats. It will open zip, rar, cab, iso and many other file types.