Our Favorite Software

Our current e-mail application is Mozilla Thunderbird , and it's just great as well as being free. Highly customizable with an antispam engine that learns as you go along.

Before that we used Pegasus , authored by David Harris of the United Kingdom. It's also freeware and is worth a serious look. He has been working on the program for 17 years. You'll have to get used to a different kind of interface, but it does the job well.

We've never used Outlook or Outlook Express - besides being poor excuses for e-mail programs (and worse at news), they're loaded with dangerous security holes- we're not interested in opening our entire computer system to attack so people can send us cute animated "stationery". We are former users (for many years) of Eudora, though we do not like the directions in which its developers have taken Eudora since 3.x. One of the reasons we like Thunderbird is that it reminds us of Eudora when it was at its best.

Firefox is a full-featured web browser that's easy to customize and use the way you like it. It's also stable, incredibly fast, and small, and has excellent security features. If you're tired of the bloated, buggy browsers that are the offspring of the Netscape vs. Internet Explorer wars, this is an excellent alternative. It's strictly a browser, no e-mail or news components. There are many plug-ins that can be downloaded to add features and change appearance.

Firefox, like all Mozilla projects, is strictly freeware. It's open source and based on the old NetScape core (based on NCSA Mosaic), and is undergoing continual development. Unless you're a geek who likes to tinker, best to download the "latest stable version" from the website.

If you prefer an "all-in-one" Internet Suite, try mozilla.org's SeaMonkey (available at the same site). It's got a good simple web composer tool too, which is what these pages are created with.

We have to admit that Internet Explorer 7 is a very good browser. Competition from Firefox forced it to be.

Agent is the best program we know for accessing and managing Usenet. It has superb filtering and crosspost management capabilities - almost necessary these days to use Usenet at all. Agent comes in a totally free version, Free Agent, which lacks the filtering capabilities and some other higher level functions but will show you how the interface works. Download it and try it - if you like the basic setup, the full version is 29 dollars and cheap at the price.

Agent also includes an e-mail component.

Agent 2.0 was released in early 2004. It did not seem to be a really significant advance. However, improving Agent was like trying to improve the 1956 Chevy Bel Air. We stuck with Agent 1.9. Agent is now up to version 4.2.

However, we wish Usenet hadn't become the Skid Row of the Internet!

Irfan View is a freeware graphics viewer that's just superb. Just get it! It's much more full-featured, stable, and capable than many pay versions. It also doesn't consume much RAM.

We have tried a number of freeware PIM's (personal information managers), including Digita Organiser and ClickTray; both have excellent features but fatal flaws. We realize most people use Outlook, but we're concerned about security flaws and not interested in combining our PIM with our e-mail.

However, the Palm Desktop, available as a free download at the Palm website, is a better PIM than many you pay money for, even without a Palm Pilot. However, a basic Palm Pilot is now under $95 and worth every penny & more! David has physically worn out, in succession, a Palm 505, a Zire, and a Tungsten T3, and is now constantly using a Palm TX, the "laptop replacement" model. It's great to be able to check your e-mail and browse the web (there are plenty of sites optimized for handhelds) wherever there's a wireless hotspot, without having to lug a laptop around - besides having all your personal info at your fingertips.

And if you've got a Palm, there is a fantastic Palm Freeware Site .

EVERYBODY needs a good Internet Security suite these days, including adware/spyware protection. The hard part is finding one that doesn't gum up your 'puter. We were miserable with the Symantec (Norton) products. (We actually got an unsolicited email from Symantec that was titled, "Computer Slowing Down? Norton can Help!" - now that's unintentional truth in advertising.)

No freeware we know of is remotely adequate for this job any more. We HIGHLY RECOMMEND the AVG Security Suite, available from Grisoft. Great protection with a light footprint on your system, and very attractive pricing if you buy a 2-year license.

Tired of the constant forced expensive updates to MS-Office? Tired of it making decisions for you without asking? Try Open Office , a freeware, open source alternative. Unless you're adventurous, go for the "latest stable release". And if you're on dialup, please note this is a 93 megabyte download.

A fully capable word processor, spreadsheet, database, and presentation program are included in the suite. Open Office can both read MS-Office files and save in MS-Office formats, as well as saving in PDF format.

I first used Open Office in 2005 taking an old computer to an isolated location to do some writing. I never intend to buy, or update, MS Office again.

If you're into working with sound files, dBpoweramp has a great selection of freeware tools to edit, rip, convert and combine your music files.