A few free programs that are very helpful!!

Choopocabras

Join Date 11/2004

A few free programs that are very helpful!!

Please add your opinions & reccomendations

I stumbled acress a program today that I find to be pretty usefull, it's called EULAlyzer. The free version only runs as you call for it to which is what I prefer. Whenever you have to read an EULA, just run this program and drag the crosshairs to the text you want to analyze. It will highlight stuff that stands out such as talking about installing 3rd party software or adbots, ect.
http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/eulalyzer.html
http://www.download.com/EULAlyzer/3000-2086_4-10464852.html

I also just d/l a program called MP3TAG that works very fast and well for editing mp3 tags easily and lets you copy and past album covers (i have roxioEMC10 but too many issues on vista!!) http://www.mp3tag.de/en/

Ausligics disk defrag works very smooth for a free disk defrag. I'm using this for now untill I find something really worth it for Vista (the one that comes with Vista sucks, at least the one on XP had some info to it)
http://www.auslogics.com/disk-defrag/

Here is a great utility for doing minor edits on pictures and even can get plug-ins to play video and mp3 The best is you can easily resize a picture (by pixel, percent or there is even a button to quickly reduce it by 1/2 (VERY light on resources)
http://www.irfanview.com/

BLACKVIPER~ a great O/S service page It has a list of all windows (even VISTA) services and what they do, and recommendations on what can be turned on/off in certain situations
http://www.blackviper.com/Articles/OS/OSguides.htm

One thing that I need some opinions on is a good firewall for vista, but also not a resource hog. I figure if you have read past where I mention turning off system services then I'm confident that you will have some educated opinions

I had ZONEALARM Pro, and 2 months after I paid for 1 year, I got vista. A year later and they do not have a version that works good with vista?! The zonealarm they have ready for vista is too buggy and a por version is still not available (they were gonna credit me for the time I've been subscribed but not using ZApro but now I'm calling them trying to get a refund to my credit card) Guess they're following same path as adaware 2007.
I've tried outpost firewall and It woulda been a sure choice for me but for some reason surfing the web slowed down to early dial-up pace (ruled out kaspersky AV, firefox addons and IE, ect) Next I tried Jetico Firewall but that one is too involved. I have been looking at reviews but most of them list norton and big names like that (and all the user comments rave about how great it is)
Please reply back with any suggestions for good Vista Firewalls (not worried if it is free or not) and any free usefull programs that people may not realize are out there

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uhm , there is one thing good about a software firewall , is that if it's configured correctly it can alert you of unwanted outbound connections.

Oh as for NAV, I recently fixed a PC for a friend it was running slow. I assumed that because he had an updated NAV on his machine he was ok for viruses. So I cleaned up his tasks , ran CCleaner and Spybot and cleaned up the PC and it was still running slow. So since he only had 50 days left of his Symantec license , I uninstalled NAV and set him up on Avast. When Avast ran it's boot-time scan we found 10+ viruses which Avast proceeded to remove, both from his login and his restore points. Now his machine works OK ( I still think it needs a format and reinstall , since it's an old WinXP install on a laptop ).

NAV will never see the hard drive of a machine I own, ever. Nor will I reccomend it to anyone.

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Phoon

Join Date 10/2001

+382

Hmmm honestly this isn't something and FAq or help page will really satisfy.

a minimal amount of self education goes a long way. A basic linksys router/firewall is very very easy to set up.

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I never understood why people use software based firewalls on highspeed connections.
A home router/firewall is very inexpensive, will do the job better, and will not hog resources.

outbound traffic control is one reason for Software Firewalls.

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I'm using Vista Firewall Control 1.2 for some time now and it's a quite good firewall and it's also free (have a pro paid version too but the free is good enough)

http://www.sphinx-soft.com/Vista/order.html
For Antivirus, Avast! Home Edition (free too)

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NightTrainthedark

Join Date 07/2003

+255

A basic linksys router/firewall is very very easy to set up.

so easy, even I couldn't screw it up.

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We used to use Norton for our security at the office and we use a custom designed database program in Microsoft Access. Our database started having serious crashing problems and we traced the problem down to an incompatibility with the Norton Anti-virus. At that time, we changed over to McAfee. After a couple of years, we started having problems with it causing our database to crash. (lol..our database was originally programmed in Access 2.0..that will give you an idea how long we've been using it). We now use AVG Free in combination with CCCleaner, AdAware 2007 and Spybot and have not had any problems with either our database or our computers getting viruses. lol..the only one in our office that has gotten a virus is the boss..he doesn't know not to click on popups..even tho we've told him (many, many times!!) and even the best anti-virus progam won't protect from that!!

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If anyone is in the market for a free Firewall Comodo Firewall Pro was put thru' it's paces today by the Softpedia experts and got a 5 Star rating.......Can a program that is this good really be FREE..........Yep........Here's the review if you are interested.

WWW Link

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