HardwareLogic Software Recommendations

In this day and age, there is honestly very little reason to spend good money on software. While I'll give you a free pass when it comes to the Operating System, you'll get no such sympathy from HardwareLogic when it comes to applications for everything from Anti-Virus to Firewalls, and even Productivity Suites.

Unless otherwise noted, all the applications listed below are free to use (With the obvious exception being the operating system). Application quotes are taken directly from the companies website, or from MajorGeeks.com or CNET's download.com.....who we recommend for all downloads.

*Editor's Note: Of course not everyone will agree with all of these choices, if you feel there is a better alternative to one of these applications, please share it with us in the HardwareLogic Forums.

Operating System	Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium (64 bit) Sure Windows has its share of problems.....but to be perfectly honest, no operating system is perfect. where Vista's older sibling really dropped the ball with its 64 bit support, Vista has really stepped up and offered a stable platform to work with.  As the old addage goes, "Different strokes for different folks".....and this definitely applies to those of you considering Linux distrobutions. Those looking for a good entry point should consider Ubuntu 8.10, or openSuse 11.0, both of which offer good operability out of the box. Those looking for a little more of a challenge can check out Fedora 10, Linux Mint, or PCLinux 2008 For those of you brave enough to go the "Open Source" route, Linux.org or DistroWatch are both great places to start.
Security	Avira AntiVir Personal Avira AntiVir Personal Free Antivirus is a comprehensive, easy to use antivirus program, designed to offer reliable free of charge virus protection to home-users only. Avira offers: Extensive Malware Recognition of viruses, Trojans, backdoor programs, worms; Automatic incremental updates of antivirus signatures, engine and entire software; Permanent virus protection, with Virus Guard real time monitoring. Comodo Firewall Pro  Comodo Firewall, rated by PC Magazine Online as an Editor's Choice, constantly monitors and defends your PC from Internet attacks. It's easy to install and use and passes the industry's most stringent firewall "leak" tests. SuperAntiSpyware SuperAntiSpyware, a next generation product, with its Multi-Dimensional Scanning and Process Interrogation Technology will detect spyware and remove over 1,000,000 pests such as Vundo, ZLob, SmitFraud, WinFixer, VirusRay, and VirusHeat. Repair broken Internet connections, desktops, registry editing, and task manager. The program provides complete and custom scanning of hard drives, removable drives, memory, registry, individual folders include trusting items and excluding folders for complete customization of scanning. Detect and remove spyware, adware, malware, Trojans, dialers, worms, keyloggers, and hijackers. Prevent potentially harmful software from installing or re-installing Hijack This HijackThis, a general homepage hijackers detector and remover. Initially based on the article Hijacked!, but expanded with almost a dozen other checks against hijacker tricks. It is continually updated to detect and remove new hijacks. It does not target specific programs/URLs, just the methods used by hijackers to force you onto their sites.
Browser	Mozilla Firefox Mozilla Firefox project (formerly Firebird, which was formerly Phoenix) is a redesign of Mozilla's browser component, written using the XUL user interface language and designed to be cross-platform. It is small, fast and easy to use, and offers many advantages over other web browsers, such as the tabbed browsing and the ability to block pop-up windows. After you download and install the browser, take some time to look over the vast assortment of extensions to customize your experience.
Email	Mozilla Thunderbird  Mozilla Thunderbird is a redesign of the Mozilla mail component. Our goal is to produce a cross platform stand alone mail application using the XUL user interface language. Our intended customer is someone who uses Mozilla Firebird (or another stand alone browser) as their primary browser and wants a mail client based on mozilla that "plays nice" with the browser.
Instant Messenger	Pidgin Pidgin is a multi-protocol instant messaging client for Linux, BSD, MacOS X, and Windows. It is compatible with AIM (Oscar and TOC protocols), ICQ, MSN Messenger, Yahoo, Google Talk, IRC, Jabber, Gadu-Gadu, and Zephyr networks.  Pidgin users can log in to multiple accounts on multiple IM networks simultaneously. This means that you can be chatting with friends on AOL Instant Messenger, talking to a friend on Yahoo Messenger, and sitting in an IRC channel all at the same time.
Productivity	Open Office  OpenOffice.org is the open source project through which Sun Microsystems is releasing the technology for the popular StarOffice productivity suite. It is an international office suite that will run on all major platforms and provide access to all functionality and data through open-component based APIs and an XML-based file format. Foxit PDF Reader Foxit Reader is a free reader for PDF (eBook) documents. You can view and print PDF documents with it. Foxit Reader is small (the download size around a 1MB), so you can download it quickly. It doesn't need any lengthy installation, so you can start to run it as soon as you can download it. And it starts up immediately, so you don't need to wait the annoying "Welcome" screen to disappear. Foxit Reader is extremely easy to use, just double click it to start and then click open button to open your PDF document. If you want to print, click on "Print" button. If you want to setup the page layout for printing, select "Print Setup" from "File" menu. novaPDF Lite novaPDF is a pdf creator for Windows that allows you to easily create professional quality documents in industry-standard PDF file format. Using novaPDF, everyone from novice users to professionals, can instantly create high-quality PDF files, by simply selecting the "Print" command from virtually any application.
Photo Editing	Gimp A free alternative to the powehouse Photoshop. While not the simplest application to wrap your head around, the Gimp website includes several tutorials and a FAQ. There are also several books dedicated  to the open source image editor, and a support forums where you can get help from Gimp veterans.
Compression Encryption	7Zip 7Z also known as 7Zip archive utility is available as open source and is free to use. 7Z is fast, efficient and free. While we like 7Z and we recommend it to everybody who asks for our opinion we do believe that people should have the freedom to choose the archive utility that is right for them. 7Zip.com provides a comparison of what we think are the best seven Zip alternatives. TrueCrypt TrueCrypt is a software application used for transparent real-time on-the-fly encryption. It can create a virtual encrypted disk within a file, or a device-hosted encrypted volume on either an individual partition or an entire storage device. It can encrypt the Windows boot partition or entire boot drive, and has the ability to create and run a hidden encrypted operating system whose existence is deniable. It is distributed under the TrueCrypt Collective License. TrueCrypt natively runs under Microsoft Windows, with support for Mac OS X and Linux.
Utilities	CCleaner CCleaner is a freeware system optimization, privacy and cleaning tool. It removes unused files from your system - allowing Windows to run faster and freeing up valuable hard disk space. It also cleans traces of your online activities such as your Internet history. Additionally it contains a fully featured registry cleaner. But the best part is that it's fast (normally taking less than a second to run) and contains NO Spyware or Adware! :) Speed Fan  SpeedFan is a freeware program that monitors fan speeds, temperatures and voltages in computers with hardware monitoring chips. SpeedFan can even access S.M.A.R.T. info for those hard disks that support this feature (almost all :-)) and show hard disk temperatures too, if supported. At the lowest level, SpeedFan is an hardware monitoring software, but its main feature is that it can control the speed of the fans (depending on your sensor chip) according to the temperatures inside your pc, thus reducing noise and power consumption. JKDefrag JkDefrag is a disk defragmenter and optimizer for Windows 2000/2003/XP/Vista/2008/X64. Completely automatic and very easy to use, fast, low overhead, with several optimization strategies, and can handle floppies, USB disks, memory sticks, and anything else that looks like a disk to Windows. Included are a Windows version, a commandline version (for scheduling by the task scheduler or for use from administrator scripts), a screensaver version, a DLL library (for use from programming languages), versions for Windows X64, and the complete sources.  Bart PE Boot Disk Bart's PE (Pre-installed Enviroment) is a handy multipurpose bootable CD that allows you to save corrupted Windows installations, recover from viruses, and much more. Virtual Box VirtualBox is a general-purpose full virtualizer for x86 hardware. Targeted at server, desktop and embedded use, it is now the only professional-quality virtualization solution that is also Open Source Software. Imgburn ImgBurn is a lightweight CD / DVD / HD DVD / Blu-ray burning application that everyone should have in their toolkit! ImgBurn supports a wide range of image file formats - including BIN, CUE, DI, DVD, GI, IMG, ISO, MDS, NRG and PDI. It can burn Audio CD's from any file type supported via DirectShow / ACM - including AAC, APE, FLAC, M4A, MP3, MP4, MPC, OGG, PCM, WAV, WMA and WV. You can use it to build DVD Video discs (from a VIDEO_TS folder), HD DVD Video discs (from a HVDVD_TS folder) and Blu-ray Video discs (from a BDAV / BDMV folder) with ease. KLite Codec Pack The K-Lite Codec Pack is a collection of DirectShow filters, VFW/ACM codecs, and tools. Codecs and DirectShow filters are needed for encoding and decoding audio and video formats. The K-Lite Codec Pack is designed as a user-friendly solution for playing all your audio and movie files. With the K-Lite Codec Pack you should be able to play all the popular audio and video formats and even several less common formats.
Benchmarks	Sisoft Sandra Lite SiSoftware Sandra is a 32- and 64-bit Windows system analyser that includes benchmarking, testing, and listing modules. It tries to go beyond other utilities to show you more of what is really going on under the hood, so you draw comparisons at both a high- and low-level in a single product.  Everest Free Edition EVEREST Home Edition is a freeware system information, system diagnostics and benchmarking solution for home PC users, based on the award-winning EVEREST Technology. It offers the world's most accurate system information and diagnostics capabilities, including online features, memory benchmarks, hardware monitoring, and low-level hardware information  CPU-Z CPU-Z is a freeware that gathers information on some of the main devices of your system GPU-Z GPU-Z is a lightweight utility designed to give you all information about your video card and GPU.