Computer Health
July 29th 2009
It is getting harder and harder to guarantee that your computer remains free of malware, spyware and viruses these days. If you have children it's nearly unmanageable. Here I've built a list of spyware free and open source software that is not completely guaranteed to solve your problems but may help quite a lot.
I recommend searching the list at www.spywareguide.com prior to installing any software.
It is also recommended that you create user accounts that do not have administrator access and therefore require all software installations to go through one person. A responsible person who then checks the list to see if it is spyware, malware, etc. and then assists in either installing the software or finding comparable software that is tested spyware free by a number of reputable download sites.
www.tucows.com
http://download.cnet.com
sourceforge - Directory of open source software (free)
Software
www.openoffice.org - A very stable program virtually identical to Microsoft Office. You can set this program to save in .xls format so your Microsoft friends won't notice the difference.
Avast Home Edition Anti-virus software
Firefox
spyware guide
spybot - search and destroy
malwarebytes.com
Soulseek Music file sharing
7zip File extraction software
Developer Software
For the most part I've used notepad the most to edit html and css files.
I like the fact it does nothing for you (except strip out formatting).
However, I've used everything from frontpage express to Amaya and html-kit.
Right now my two favorites are
html-kit
and Global search and replace.
Both are very powerful tools for the web developer. If you have no
experience writing html, html-kit will help.
html-kit html Editor
Global search and replace
is just about the handiest tool I've ever found.
Very easy to use program that automatically searches through multiple files
and directories for instances of code and gives you the option of replacing that text.
Simple, yet very powerful. I highly recommend that if you are
spending any time at all fixing broken code that you purchase a copy of GSR 2.2 immediately.
Global search and replace
It is highly recommended that parents download games with their children from either tucows or download.cnet.com. Either of these places will help ensure your children have games that are superior in quality and free from malicious programs.