Ask a dozen who owns a computer or laptop what their preferred anti-virus software is, and two names are going to pop up regularly – Norton and McAfee. In fact, you can get into a heated debate with some people over those two programs. Why? Well, for a lot of those in the tech industry, they use one or the other on their company servers, so when they give advice to end users as to which is better, they tend to side with the one they’re the most comfortable using.

Now both of those programs are fine for anti-virus software in their own right; however, I prefer something that doesn’t cost me an arm and a leg to own. I don’t have a major server network, and I don’t need phone support 24/7. What I need is an anti-virus program that does what I need it to (stop bugs from getting into my system) and is cheap – or in this case, free.

That’s why I go with programs like Avast!, AVG, Panda and others. Now, out of that list, the one I personally prefer (currently) is Avast!. Why? Well for several reasons. First of all, they’re a smaller company, which means they have to try harder than the big dogs to impress me. That means they’re going to work harder at catching everything they can. Secondly, they have one of the few Anti-virus softwares I’ve ever seen that can install on an infected system without corrupting the program in the process.

I recently installed it on a client’s laptop, rebooted and discovered over 200 viruses on their computer – all of which were caught and quarantined. After the reboot completed, I let it update the virus database and ran the scanner under Windows – to find over 100 more viruses on the system. All were caught and quarantined by Avast!.

(more…)

When you open up your new laptop for the first time it is a great feeling. Everything is quick and you cant wait to get busy on your new machine. That is until you open the the My Programs folder in the start up menu and realize you have no software on your new laptop. One piece of software you would like to see standard on your computer is the MS Office suite. Unfortunately you will not get it unless you’ve dished out extra cash for it. Luckily in the software world for every paid software package there is a free one. Most of these alternative are just as good as the paid version.

The free alternative for MS Office is Open Office, a free office package developed by Sun Micro Systems. I have used this package before and to be honest there is little difference between the Sun and Mirosoft office. I will strongly encourage you to download it and give it a try. The Open Office suite includes the following Programs

* Calc – Spreadsheets
* Writer – Word Processor
* Impress – Presentations
* Base – Data Base
* Draw – Graphics

Download your free copy here