Free Software Tools by Greg Luther, Computer Shoppe

Are you on a budget?  These days it seems most of us are, so I have compiled a list of very useful software tools that are of good quality, yet free of charge.   If you are like me, you may ask why are these tools free?  There are many reasons; some are free because they are new and are trying to get known.  Others try to get you to use their product, so in the future you may buy some of their other products, or buy the enhanced features of the current product.  While others are “open source” which means the source code is available to anyone to develop, and some do just that for fun and recognition to further their careers as programmers.  The reasons are many, so why not take advantage? Let’s get started...  

•  Are you tired of running the Windows operating system?  Are you tired of combating viruses and spyware, but a Mac is not in the budget?  Try Linux at http://www.ubuntu.com/ or http://distrowatch.com/. 
•  Do you want to use MS Office, but don't have an extra $100 to spend?  Try open office at http://www.openoffice.org/. 
•  Do you wish you could buy Photoshop to edit photos?  Did you know it retails for $699.00.  Try Gimp at http://www.gimp.org/. 
•  For those of you running Windows, are you paying for your antivirus and spyware?  Try Avast at www.avast.com/index or AVG at http://free.avg.com/us-en/homepage for antivirus.  For antispyware, try Malwarebytes at http://www.malwarebytes.org/ or Superantispyware from the link at the bottom of the page www.computer-shoppe.net/ComputerServices.asp. 
•  Want to burn a CD or DVD?  Try Infrarecorder at http://infrarecorder.org/. 
•  Want to see what software and hardware you have on your computer?  Take a look at Belarc Advisior at www.belarc.com/free_download.html. 
•  Do you backup your computer regularly?  Try cobian backup at www.educ.umu.se/~cobian/cobianbackup.htm or http://www.dropbox.com/ (2GB free online storage). 
•  Are you combating email spam?  Try mailwasher at http://mailwasher.net/. 
•  Need to transfer files between computers?  Try www.flexense.com/downloads/windows.html.  

 For many more free software tools you can visit http://download.cnet.com/ or http://www.tucows.com/.  And this is just a small list of many software programs that are available for free on the internet, so have fun trying some of these great software applications.