PCSOS RECOMMENDED BEST FREEWARE PROGRAMS
Free to download. Free to use. Save money and improve your PC performance.

Install a good anti-virus which is permanently running in the background, we recommend:
AVG Anti-Virus - this is our favourite free anti-virus and the one that we use personally, non intrusive and low on system resources.

Install at least 2 of the following anti spyware programs to ensure you catch the bad guys and protect against false positives. Dont forget to manually update the definitions and routinely scan your hard drive. Its a good idea to scan all new downloaded files before you run them.
AVG Anti-Spyware - excellent scanner, very reliable - XP compatible only at present.
a2 squared (free version) - our joint favourite along with AVG. Works well with XP and Vista.
an excellent alternative, Super Anti Spyware is very simple to use.
Spybot - one of the first and very reliable. Includes an 'immunisation' feature to prevent malicious sites from automatically installing dialers etc.
Spyware Blaster - not a scanner instead it provides extra immunisation against malware that try to install themselves via webpages.

is the way to go to encypt your files or entire drives. Very reliable, Truecrypt creates a secure 'virtual' drive within your hard-drive with military level security. You log in to the password protected virtual drive and you can work on and store all your sensitive files in it - just make sure you never forget your password!
Anypassword is our favourite password manager, save all your passwords (email / banking / logins / etc) in one encrypted file and you just have to remember one master password to open it (Vista version under development)
File Shredder - Securely erase sensitive documents: simply 'deleting' files actually leaves them on the hard drive, this program will scrub them clean so they are unrecoverable.

We hate Windows Media Player! These are great alternatives for viewing video files:
GOM player plays most formats, with minimal drain on system resources.
VLC is great for playing DVDs and other files, but isn't as user friendly. (When using with Vista you will need to set the 'Video output mode' to Windows GDI, OpenGL or DirectX located in Settings/Preferences/Video/Output modules).
KMPlayer is fast becoming the best player around - like GOM and VLC it comes with all the codecs necessary to play multiple formats.

Frostwire is our prefered file sharing option, basically a nicer version of Limewire. It's also worth looking at .
uTorrent would be our bittorrent recommendation for simplicity, + its very small and light on system resources. Also worth looking at Bitspirit and Bit Tyrant - a variation of Azureus.

A WORD OF WARNING! File sharing networks are infested with trojans and viruses, ALWAYS scan EVERYTHING you download with your anti-virus and malware programs with up to date defintions. A good practice would be to create a new folder called 'downloads' on your desktop and make sure all downloads from your browser, bit torrents, file-share programs go there. Then it's simply a matter of right clicking on the folder and choosing the scan option for your different scanners.

Firefox - THE alternative web browser to IE7: many people's first choice browser, including ours. We find that it displays pages better and has the option of so many great extensions and skins.
Real Alternative and Quicktime Alternative - replace Real Player and Quicktime - no nagging, no automatic updates, no trying to grab file associations.
Netmeter is a great program to monitor your internet usage: upload and download speed in real time + overall volume of data - very useful if you have a monthly bandwidth limit. Netmeter has the cleanest interface and is first choice, but Bitmeter is worth looking at as well.

Spacemonger - truly indispensible, shows you graphically what is using up all your hard drive space.
xplorer2 lite - twin pane explorer replacement, the best by far. Makes managing your files between different folders and drives easy and intuitive and we especially love the robust copy/move feature.
Google Earth - you'll need fast broadband to get the best out of this but it is truly amazing - and yes, that is your house!
- popular and easy to join, Skype is also cross platform so you can talk and videoconference with your friends who have Apple Macs.
Lupus Rename - right click on a folder to rename the contents with a fantastic variety of options, the best we've found.
Unlocker - context menu item to 'unlock' locked files. Find the cause of those annoying 'cannot move/delete. this file is in use by another program' popup messages.
- excellent for extracting and viewing zip and rar files. Vastly superior to the built in windows zip folder handling.
Magic Disk - for mounting files such as iso's as virtual drives. The best we've found. (some people have problems installing this, they might want to try Virtual CloneDrive which works well but isnt as easy and intuative to use.
HD Tune - benchmark test your hard drive and external drives with this nice little program.

Lots of hints and tips for your PC and in-depth freeware info at http://o-k-computer.blogspot.com/
N95 Best Tips and Tricks - Nokia info and freeware at http://sjc-123.blogspot.com/

Terms and Conditions.
We can only fix software related problems and issues. If your problem is hardware related such as faulty RAM or hard drive failure, we will do our best to advise you.
Startup times of 90 seconds for XP and 1 minute for Vista are dependent on you having minimal background programs loading at startup and on having a reasonably new computer / hard drive.
In the rare event of serious problems such as file corruption and driver problems, a reinstallation of windows would be advised and you would possibly need to back up all your personal files first, we will endeavour to advise you on this.