Jan Fagerholm showed how your computer can deal with a tough economy with the best in free software for Windows. Software included the following:

Utilities

Advanced System Care 3– http://www.iobit.com/advancedsystemcareper.html – anti-malware, reg cleaner, disk cleaner, security, disk defrag (Smart Defrag 2)

Avast Anti-virus– http://www.avast.com – antivirus, internet security. Requires annual registration.

AVG Free Antivirus–http://free.avg.com antivirus, Internet security.

MalwareBytes Anti-malware– http://www.malwarebytes.org– anti-malware, anti-spyware.  

Graphical Applications

The GIMP– http://www.gimp.org – graphical bitmap editor for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Bitmap vs. vector. GIMP vs. photo organizers.

Picasa 3- http://www.google.com/picasa/ – photo organizer and editor. Upload photos to Web site for sharing.

Internet

Firefox– http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox – Web browser.

If you use IE7 or older, you need to upgrade for security.

Thunderbird– http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/thunderbird/ – full featured e-mail client for Windows, Mac, Linux. (client-sides Google and other e-mail accounts).

Google Chrome– http://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en/landing_chrome.html?hl=en – faster way to browse.

Brief tour for those unfamiliar.

http://www.chromium.org – for chromium projects including ChromeOS.

Office Suites

Open Office– http://www.openoffice.org – full featured office suite using open source XML standard for documents.

XML vs. DocX (M$) format.

Demo open-close-save M$ Office docs.

IBM Lotus Symphony 3– http://symphony.lotus.com/software/lotus/symphony/home.nsf/home – browser based basic office suite with M$ Office file compatibility.

Though browser-based, does not require cloud computing.

Google Docs– http://docs.google.com –Web-oriented document maker. Demonstrates cloud-style computing.Refreshment Break: