Free software.

Niggy_2

I've found http://mywebpages.comcast.net/SupportCD/OptimizeXP.html to be worth a look too.

A lot of the free software refered too above is on this site but there is also a lot of information on configuration to speed your PC up.

superscaper

mascherano wrote: »

and you decided to take the opportunity to once again bump this spam thread with the sole intention of attracting traffic to your site?

How can it be spam if this thread is in the official newsletter? Also I don't see how high traffic would be benefitting the OP.

spud17

Just bought new computer?

http://www.pcdecrapifier.com/home



P.S.No, I don't mean me.

0rsen

Mascherano. Would you kindly elaborate. How am I gaining any benefit from this thread? And as for 'bumping', you just did it for me in that case.
From the emails and thanks that I have received, this post has helped quite a few people. We are supposed to be here to assist one another, not to denigrate and scoff.
There are no commercial links on my site. The only links are those I have put on myself, and they are to other genealogy sites. I derive no financial benefit whatever from them.
By the way, hope you don't mind, but this will send the thread back to the top again. I'll be wealthy in no time at all!

save-a-lot

mascherano wrote: »

and you decided to take the opportunity to once again bump this spam thread with the sole intention of attracting traffic to your site?

Some people do not listen. It has been said before earlier in the thread that your post is endorsed by :money: and there is absolutely no financial gain that you will make, there are no Google Adsense on your pages, it is just a resource. I even think this should be made a "sticky". It would be good if Martin included this again in the newsletter, but this time asking the MSE population what other Free software they know of to build the resource even further. It is best just to ignore people who have no clue what the word "spam" actually means.

save-a-lot

Hi

Here is another super-powerful bit of free software

http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~mbrown/autostitch/autostitch.html

it is a photostitching software that is good for creating panorama's or just really large pictures. Here is a link to a picture I have done as a test of the software...

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.html?p=4024041&postcount=15

0rsen

Many thanks, save-a-lot. Nice photo. I'll take a closer look at the program later.
By the way, the Family History site is just a hobby of mine. I had no idea that Martin would send out the link in his weekly email. And, as you say, I certainly do not benefit financially in any way. I made this clear when I first submitted the details to the forum, as I know it is taboo.

JDPower

Generally good but one or two poor choices on that site.

CWShredder is completely unnecessary and outdated and has been for a while. Pretty much any anti-spyware program will remove the CWS variants now.

Registry Wizard should have a warning in the advice. Reg cleaners ARE dangerous especially (not only) if you're not sure what you're doing, and even worse this one is beta so could cause any number of problems. Far better to use CCleaners safe reg (issues) cleaner. It may not be the most comprehensive reg cleaner but you won't risk a dead computer using it.

A alternative to Auslogics reg defrag is NTRegOpt (LINK) which comes with an even more useful registry backup program (Erunt).

Firefox Cookie Culler, just use CCleaner. Set it to save the cookies you need then run it after closing any browser to clear out cookies and temp files (and more) and will erase them securely.

Eraser, excellent program, I use it all the time to right click>erase instead of right click>delete to securely delete files. Only word of warning DON'T use its 'First and last two bytes' erase method as it can (and did for me) kill your operating system. The latest version is supposed to have this bug fixed but it still killed my OS. If you want to avoid the risk of using it accidentally use version 5.7 instead which doesn't have this option (LINK).

Apart from that some good stuff there - Sygate Firewall, Spyware Blaster, NVU, PC Pitstop, Photofiltre, Foxit - all excellent.

I'd add:
Super Antispyware instead/as well as Spybot.

AVG Anti-Virus Free instead of Avast (which though good has a habit of giving false positives)

FastStone Capture as a first class alternative to Screen Grab Pro (though personally I use the exceedingly small TinyResMeter for the screen grab then edit in IrfanView to edit/crop them as I use that anyway)

As well as the PC Pitstop forums there are some very knowledgeable people on the CCleaner Forums, its not just about CCleaner

A far better defrag tool than Auslogics is JKDefrag and if your not sure how to use it use one of the GUI versions - LINK

An alternative to Auslogics System Information is SIW

And finally, for more advanced users, an alternative to Photofiltre would be The GIMP. It has a steeper learning curve but is a powerful software if you need it.

superscaper

JDPower wrote: »

Generally good but one or two poor choices on that site.

A lot really depends on personal preference and experience. There are a few people on this board who would say that AVG is much worse than Avast, for example.

JDPower

superscaper wrote: »

A lot really depends on personal preference and experience. There are a few people on this board who would say that AVG is much worse than Avast, for example.

Some of it depends on personal preference I agree, thats why I explained my reasoning. But the likes of CWShredder for example is completely pointless nowadays, its simply not needed anymore.
And in the interests of balance I gave that reg cleaner a try as I'd not heard of it before and I have to say its a pretty poor piece of software and certainly would NOT recommend it to anyone. That isn't personal preference.