Anti-Virus software are one of the MUST haves for a computer user, there are a lot of commercial products available to choose from but the free/alternative products are equally popular and effective. Here is a list of five popular free Anti-virus software

Avira Antivir

Avira is one of the best freeware Anti-Virus Software around. Ranked No.2 at downloads.com with 981,521 downloads is known for its high detection rates and low system resources usage. Version 9 has a better interface with more detailed information. It allows QuickRemoval that eliminates viruses at the push of a button. Also gives protection against phishing, spywares and adwares. The scanning is a bit slow. Also every time it updates its definition shows a nag screen to upgrade to premium. Installation is straight forward, gives an optional subscription to the news letter, uncheck if you don’t want to subscribe. Avira Antivir has a huge user base. Its completely free for personal use and a dependable anti-virus software for protecting home computers.

Download Here.

AVG Antivirus

AVG Antivirus is the most downloaded software on CNET’s Download.com with 1,405,030 downloads. It is one of the most used antivirus applications worldwide. Protects against viruses, spyware, adware and trojans. It integrates into the web browser giving real time link scanner protection against poisoned web pages while surfing. Tabbed navigation makes it easy to use. It uses less system resources while scanning or when running in the background. By default, the application is set to search for new virus definitions daily which is a recommended setting for stronger protection but if you want you can use the scheduling tool to change this. AVG Antivirus is Free for personal use.

Download Here.

AVAST Antivirus

AVAST Antivirus is one of the popular Antivirus software, its lightweight, doesnt hog much system resources and pretty fast in scanning. FREE avast! antivirus Home Edition includes ANTI-SPYWARE protection, certified by the West Coast Labs Checkmark process, and ANTI-ROOTKIT detection based on the best-in class GMER technology. Daily automatic updates ensure continuous data protection against all types of malware and spyware. Has a huge user base of over 80 million users. Its boot-time antivirus scan feature helps detecting viruses and worms during the system startup. AVAST Antivirus is free for home users.

Download Here.

PC Tools AntiVirus

PC Tools AntiVirus is another free AntiVirus software thats protects against the most nefarious cyber-threats attempting to gain access to your PC and personal information using its real-time protection IntelliGuard™ and comprehensive system scanning. Its rapid database updates, IntelliGuard™ real-time protection and comprehensive system scanning to ensure your system remains safe and virus free. Features Include:
* Protects your PC as you are working, surfing and playing
* Detects, quarantines, disinfects and destroys Viruses, Trojans and Worms
* IntelliGuard™ protects your computer against threats in real-time
* Automatically checks for frequent updates against the latest threats
* Best of all it’s FREE. No catches, limitations or time-limits.

Download Here.

Comodo Antivirus

Comodo Antivirus comes combined with Comodo Firewall as Comodo Internet Security. It is another light weight antivirus software with a fast scanner. It eliminates ALL known Viruses, Worms and Trojans from desktops and networks. It constantly protects with real-time On Access scanning. The Built in scheduler feature allows you to run scans at a time that suits you. Daily, automatic updates of virus definitions helps keeping the system secure and virus free. Its easy to install and use with no license fees or hidden costs.

Download Here.

There are a lot of PDF converting software available but if you need a simple one that gets the job done without any fuss DoPDF is the one. It is a basic PDF converter that lets users create PDF documents from within any program using the Print command.

Installation file is just about 1.6MB. DoPDF installs itself as a virtual PDF printer driver so after a successful installation will appear in your Printers and Faxes list. To convert to PDF, just print the document using DoPDF printer, select the save location and name for the PDF file and click ok, the PDF file will be created and opened up in your default PDF reader. Freeware alternative to Adobe Acrobat Reader

DoPDF can be used virtually with any application (with Microsoft Word, WordPad, NotePad or any other software) that allows you to print the documents. Advanced users can adjust the resolution of the PDF they’re creating. DoPDF is very light on resources and takes up almost no RAM. Its Free for both personal and commercial use can be downloaded here.

Copying and pasting text directly from a webpage to a word document brings a lot of unwanted formatting, tags links etc along with it, which is sometimes a real pain if you are researching on internet. Pasting in notepad for removing formatting and then pasting in MS word is an option but is a bit time consuming. Would be good if somehow you can directly paste from a webpage to a word document without bringing in any text formatting.

PureText is one such utility that helps removing unwanted text formatting, tags, links etc with a simple Windows hot-key combination. It’s a tiny application just about 28KB with no installation required simply place the file at a desired location (Program Files, C Drive, My Documents etc), create a shortcut to it on desktop and run it.

Normal copy paste commands are “Ctrl + C” and “Ctrl + V”, with PureText the copy command remains the same as “Ctrl + C” while the paste command is configurable; by default the paste hot keys in PureText are “Windows Key + V”.

PureText sits in the system tray, right click on it for options, here you can select the option to run PureText when Windows start, configure the paste hot-keys if you don’t like the default “Windows Key + V” there are a lot of available combinations to choose from, it can also capture the key combination you desire just click the “Capture the next key typed” and hit the desired key combination on your keyboard.

PureText version 2.0 is completely free to use. Download it at here.

Burning CDs, DVDs is something that is quite common for a regular computer user, but handling different file formats and burn them on a disc has always been a pain unless you have the right program for it. ImgBurn is one program which is lightweight, free and can handle many formats like BIN, CUE, DI, DVD, GI, IMG, ISO, MDS, NRG and PDI.

The Install file is just about 2 MB in size and installs in seconds without asking any personal information like email id or name etc. Installation also offers the ability to automatically check for newer versions. The User Interface is quite simple and easy to use.

ImgBurn is a very flexible application supports all the Windows OS’s – Windows 95, 98, Me, NT4, 2000, XP, 2003, Vista, 2008 and 7 (including all the 64-bit versions). It also supports all the latest drives without the need for updates (including booktype / bitsetting / advanced settings on many of the major ones – i.e. BenQ, LiteOn, LG, NEC, Plextor, Samsung, Sony).

ImgBurn may look simple from its interface but has the right mix of features. If you have more than one drive image queue system can be used for burning several images (which you can automatically share between multiple drives). Layer break selection for burning double layer DVDs. Other features include automatic write speeds, different modes for different tasks like

Read – Read a disc to an image file
Build – Create an image file from files on your computer or network – or you can write the files directly to a disc
Write – Write an image file to a disc
Verify – Check a disc is 100% readable. Optionally, you can also have ImgBurn compare it against a given image file to ensure the actual data is correct
Discovery – Put your drive / media to the test! Used in combination with DVDInfoPro, you can check the quality of the burns your drive is producing

It’s a must have disc burning software download HERE

Conversion of text links into clickable urls, search bubble appears when you highlight text, shows Google results automatically in the awesomebar, automatic copy of text are some of its features. Search engines can be configured using the Quick launcher which can be invoked by default using Ctrl+Space key combination.

SmarterFox works with FireFox 3.0 and above. It’s a must have add-on for FireFox, can be downloaded here.

It supports almost all the popular chat networks like Yahoo, Google Talk, AOL, MSN, ICQ, Facebook etc. Trillian Astra has extended its integration with Skype chat, twitter and even emails making it a centralized program for all you online communication needs. Other featured include tabbed chatting interface, enhanced messaging, Auto-History, More than 300 emoticons etc. Files can be transferred by just dragging the file to the IM box. It also has a resume feature for sending large files over a slow internet connection. You can even check what went wrong on a failed file transfer.

Installation and setup is simple, installation comes with ASK search toolbar, uncheck it if you don’t want it. It’s completely free and has no adwares or spywares. Plug-ins are available to further enhance its functionality. Trillian Astra can be downloaded here.

It is easy to use just click the start recording button on the main page, select the desired options like full screen recording or rectangular area, audio device and the webcam if required and hit the record button or Alt+S it will start recording. Hit stop when you are done. That’s it the video is created; you can now either publish the video or download it. There is no need to register to use ScreenToaster but you wont be able to publish your videos without registration.

The quality of video clips is pretty good and they can be directly uploaded to YouTube using the ScreenToaster website itself. ScreenToaster comes in handy for creating demos, tutorials, training sessions, if you are taking online training programs; the tutorials can be recorded using ScreenToaster for future reference. ScreenToaster is compatible with Windows, Mac OS X, Linux.  Also see How to record the computer screen? Open Source Desktop Recording Software.

10 Minute Mail is a disposable email address service that provides you a randomly generated email address that expires in 10 minutes. Time period can be extended if required. The interface is simple just copy the randomly provided email address and use it anywhere you want, any email coming to that id will be shown on the 10minutemail website itself. You can even reply to the emails. There is no registration required and it is Free to use.

You can also share the data with your friends; colleagues etc using shared folders, even control who sees what by assigning passwords. Uploading the files is as easy as drag n drop the files from your computer to the online folder. Online folders can also be bookmarked as each of them has a unique Web address. File as large as 50MB (max limit per file) can be uploaded.

DataRecovery scans the drive you want to recover files from and gives you the option to restore them or wipe out completely. It can even recover files that you have deleted from the recycle bin of your computer.

Supports FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, NTFS. Also it is windows vista supported. It can wipe off the deleted files forever so that they can never be recovered again. The Interface is pretty simple to use just select the Drive to scan for deleted files and wipe or recover them using the options available.

There is no installation required. Just unzip the downloaded archive and run it. The complete application is less than 500KB unpacked; it will fit on even the smallest of USB thumb drives and run from there. But DataRecovery doesn’t assure that all files deleted can be recovered successfully. It mostly depends on your system/configuration. DataRecovery can be downloaded here.