Rob's Blog

A very quick post for this evening. The last couple of days I’ve been running AVG’s free anti-virus application to see if you can really get top quality software for your PC for nothing. Well, over the last few days I’ve had memory leaks and crashes all over the place and using my PC has slowed to a crawl.

I’d really like to believe that there’s some good software out there that’s also free to use. Mozilla’s Firefox is a great example of how good free software can be; however everything else at the moment seems to be a pale imitation of the paid-for versions it attempts to replace.

I’ve decided to rip out AVG’s anti-virus and have a go with Kaspersky’s product – one that seems to get top reviews everywhere I look and has the added benefit of being relatively cheap.

However, it’s got me thinking – is there any other free software around that’s worth actually using on the desktop, with the exception of Firefox? I suppose I’d break down essential desktop software as the following:

• Anti-virus
• Anti-spyware
• E-mail reader
• Firewall

Now for the above I’m using a mixture of free and non-free stuff; Kaspersky Anti-Virus, Windows Defender, Microsoft Outlook (not Express) and the Windows Firewall (I have a hardware firewall on my router anyway). Two of the four there are paid-for products.

So, are there any decent free products for the home user? It’s important to note here that I’m saying the home user, not the average geek like myself. I’m comfortable installing, reinstalling, removing, hell even writing software. But what about someone who struggles to know which way up to hold the mouse?

Over the next few days I’m going to try and evaluate as many free products as I can. I’ll be focussing on ease of use and effectiveness – and how they stack up to the paid-for offerings.