paint/graphic editor: gimp http://www.gimp.org/

web suite( browser, email, composer, news group): sea monkey http://www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey/

text editor: notepad++: http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/about.php

pdf reader: http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php

file manager, explorer replacement: http://www.freecommander.com/index_en.htm

music& video player: winamp http://www.winamp.com/player/

window clean up: ccleaner http://www.ccleaner.com/

sticky notes for desktop: turbo note http://www.turbonote.com/ v3.4 is freeware

real time spyware protection: http://www.prevx.com/ v2.1 is freeware

instant message – for multiple ip- aim, yahoo, msn…: trillion im http://www.ceruleanstudios.com/downloads/ ‘basic’ is freeware

Antiviral.
AVG free. Excellent protection available from: http://www.Grisoft.com

Don’t use two antiviral products together as they may be incompatible. If your Antiviral trial has run out, then remove product from your computer and get the AVG installed.

Antispyware
Essential products are: Adaware SE from: http://www.lavasoft.com
Spybot SD from: Download.com or similar, Tucows etc
Spywareblaster “ “ “ “
Windows Defender – from Microsoft downloads.

Office Applications
Open Office has an extremely good free to use and distribute product at http://www.openoffice.org

It contains programmes fully functional in Word-processing, Database, Spreadsheets, Drawing and Presentation. It looks and feels like Microsoft Office and can even make PDF’s

Photo-manipulations
For ease of use and management of your photo files try Kodak easyshare software or Picasso.

For advanced and fully functional photographic manipulation gimp2 is very similar to Photoshop and is available from http://gimp.org

Browsers and E-mail programmes.
Can recommend Firefox for browsing and has many safety features installed and is self updating and for a general e-mail programme, Thunderbird is very good. Go to:

http://www.mozilla.com/products/

Fun and helpful programmes
Have a look at Calendar Magic, it has lots of Scientific, Geometry, Factor and Expression calculators as well as Global distances, Sun and Moon Data, a Pregnancy Calculator, Time Data and Alarm clocks as well as an extremely comprehensive range of Calendars in about 27 different formats from Afghanistan to Vietnamese, including Chinese and Hindu.

C Cleaner.http://www.ccleaner.com/
This will tell you a lot about what is on your computer, such as running programmes,cookies, History, settings etc. and will help you clean up and remove unwanted items. Be careful how you use it as it is a very powerful programme and you should read the help index before you do anything with it.

Hope this information is of help to you and others.

FireFox is an open-source internet browser and a million times better than Internet Explorer. Make sure to get 2 extensions: AdBlock and Filterset.G Updater. Adblock gets rid of those annoying ads beautifully and Filterset.G Updater automatically updates the adblock list.

Irfan View is a free small image editing program. Very nice. I do professional web design and the big reason I use it is that it can make icon files.

Oh, yeah. And a paid for Anti-Virus program that updates from time to time.

Also, enable the firewall or use a third party firewall like Norton.

Be sure to also DL SPK2 for Win XP.

And lastly but not least, a computer is only as good as the idiot sitting in front of it. If he screws it up there’s no software package on earth that will ever make things the way they were when the box was new.