Free Software - Is it Worth It?

Free Software -- Is it Worth It? Yes!!!
Do you find yourself needed Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint but do not want to spend the money for it? Is there a substitute and will I be able to open my current word documents. The answers are all yes!! What about anti virus? Or pc cleaning software? Yes and yes.

The OpenOffice Suite located at http://www.openoffice.org/ is free and is a substitute to Office. Will there be growing pains. Sure like any new product or version there will be some glitches or annoyances. Most of these will be due to the fact you are a newbie with the product. I give this free suite 5 stars.

Antivirus - Avast and AVG are great free products. Had some minor issue with avast sending a registration code for their free software. I guess they really want you to get annoyed and spend the extra bucks for the Pro version. I did not and therefore I give them a 3 out of 5. I give free AVG a 4 out of 5. No registration code to muck with.

Cleaning software - I like ccleaner for this task. You can clean cookies, history, and old registry items. One new feature that I really like is that you can disable certain programs that get put in the startup folder. This is a nice feature because if you deleted it and now need it it could be a hassle to put back.

Recover files - Recuva same maker that does ccleaner.

Defrag software - Defraggler - again same software developer of Ccleaner and Recuva.

I like to obtain these through filehippo.com. Note that all software on filehippo is not free.

Virtualization - VirtualBox www.virtualbox.org - Sun Microsystems purchased them. yes the software is still free for home use. Vmware has a free version as well but, the performance is not that great. Performace wise between the two I pick virtualbox but ease of use I pick vmware. Virtualbox is starting to get better with their bridging technology until then Vmware is my choice even though it has some performance issue with the free version.

Firewall - ZoneAlarm has a free version of their firewall. Note I do not have many recommendations as I am using a payed firewall version. If someone knows of a good one please let me know and we will run our own tests.

Email - Thunderbird http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/thunderbird/

More on this topic to be published -- So check back for updated software.