Programs & sites often mentioned during the shows. All, I think, are free!! Some make money with Ads on the Pages, so be careful which link you click! SOME offer a Chekcbox to install things like Yahoo! Toolbar that they get a small Commission from. Always EXCLUDE such things.

Let's start with those free utilities that passively help report what exactly your machine is and does.... IE they do not change anything but just provide useful information about the PC every time they are run...

BELARC PC Inventory Program; the free download is here
CPUID from HERE identifies Brain, memory type and maker etc.
SPEEDFAN Hard Disk and machine temperatire and fan S.M.A.R.T. Troubleshooter
WinDirStat gives statistics about your hard drive usage
memtest86 gives info about the computers memory.
The machine has to be booted from separate media like a bootable CD, floppy or flash drive

This section lists programs that will optimize the PC by cleaning defragmenting and otherwise improving things..

CCLEANER - Venerable Cleaner of Crap off PCs! Removed temporary/scratch and cache files that can accumulate over time and slow things down. Also has a REASOBALY good Registry Cleaner

EUSING Registry Cleaner Trims entries in the single datafile Windows uses called the Registry that are orphaned or are otherwise wrong..

NTREGOPT  Optimizes the Registry by converging fragmented parts of the branches of the database and clearing empty entries.. I Think. REBOOT after thsi one.

MYDEFRAG is a simple Disk Defragmenter that in default install mode provides an ingenious screen saving defragmentation routine

Spybot AntiMal/Spyware Software (Home Page) <or maybe here>
AVG Free Anti Virus

Thunderbird (email & Usenet client)
Firefox (a web browser, many plugins, more basic interface)
Opera (a web browser, some plugins, more user-friendly interface)
UBUNTU Linux an alternative operating system
For the PC there's Syncback Lite, a free backup program
Blender is a suite free tools for 3d graphic creation

Ad-Aware anti-spyware form Lavasoft
Zone Alarm firewall (for those without XP + service pack 2)
Audacity Audio editor
Audacity plugin called Lame (for saving your work in mp3 format)

crucial.com gives info similar to mentest86
Winamp plays audio files

Picassa a picture editing & managing 
Paint Shop Pro is now a Corel product but earlier free versions can be found
   The version I got at this location seems to be working ok but USE AT YOUR OWN RISk.

Black Light Anti-Rootkit 
   mentioned in show notes here and here

Openoffice is mentioned. It's a great alternative to Microsoft office and handles many of its file types.
Gmail is an web based email service; can be used as a POP & SMTP mail service.
Google Docs is sort of like using Microsoft Office online

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