Underrated Champs
There are so many software out there for our daily tasks, some are significantly better than the rest. Here is a list of software, most of them free, that do the best job for their purpose.
- Mozilla Firefox | free
- Named product of the year by PCWorld and got over a million downloads during the initial days of release, the new browser is not even anything close to being over-rated.
- Open Office | free
- The free and functional alternative to Microsoft office. It opens up all the Word or Excel documents without a glitch and it is free of charge. We recommend this office suite to reduce the cost of your IT.
- Audio Grabber | free
- The best in extracting audio from your cd and if you choose, convert them to mp3 or aac format.
- foobar 2000 | free
- Alot of people use Winamp for mp3 playback but this program is smaller, faster, and consumes very little system resource.
- Sygate Firewall Personal | free
- This is a true firewall, proven and reliable and free of charge, but its complete control is what stands it out from ZoneAlarm.
- FileZilla | free
- Open source FTP client that is free and clean.
- Pidgin | free
- Pidin is an open source instant messenger client that supports AOL, MSN, ICQ, Yahoo, GoogleTalk and alot others. It is lite and compatible.
- WinRAR | $29
- When it comes to compression utilities, WinRAR has better archive abilities than WinZip and its format is much superior.
- DVDShrink | free
- Best DVD archive program released.
- Nero | $80
- The DVD/CD Burning utility that gives you control, now allows you to make movies, edit audios, and create picture shows.
- SpeedFan | free
- A nifty utility that monitors temperatures, fan speeds and voltages. Also able to access S.M.A.R.T. data and shows hard disk temperatures.
- Real and QuickTime Alternative | free
- Most of the internet multimedia are in these formats, but the original plug-in from the vendor also installs huge amount of junk and track-ware. Solution: Alternatives. These alternatives only install the necessary codec to display the multimedia content, and none of the junk.
- Media Player Classic | free
- Forget upgrading to Windows Media Player 10+. This little free program is all you need. Small, gives you the ability to watch DVD on your PC (others charge you at least $30), works with all kind of video files (divx, xvid, mp4) and no installation required. Just double click the program file and "drag 'n drop" a media file into the program window to enjoy.
- HiJack This | free
- HijackThis is an advanced spyware scanner that takes a heuristic approach to scanning. It is also widely supported on user forums.
