free ware

[jean88]

Are the free software downloads any good? If they are so good, why are they free? compare to norton and u have to pay for updates too.

[fo3nix]

well, some free software is great, other free software is terrible. just the same with software you have to pay for.

some people believe that software should be free, so make it so. others want to make lots of money from it, so charge for it. *cough* bill gates *cough*. man, developing quite a cough there ;)

often, the best free software is also open source software. it's created by people who are good at writing code, who are passionate about it, and want to make it available to everyone.

examples of good free software:

firefox
smartFTP
azureus (bit torrent client)
iTunes
gimp (and many, many other programs for linux)

[Sligachan14]

When you mention Norton, there are other very good anti virus freeware programmes - AVG, Avast to name but two. Also, Adaware anti spyware is good. You need to remember to update the databases for these at regular intervals though.

[PatTheRat]

the free version of avg is supposed to be a better anti-virus than norton. I have it and have no complaints. get it at the bottom of this page:

http://free.grisoft.com/freeweb.php/doc/2/

[ceebee007]

Avast (www.avast.com), who produce anti-virus software, offer it free to home users since they take the view that it is possible to stop the spread of computer viruses with efficient prevention but they realise that not all users can afford (or want to pay for) antivirus software - a very commendable philosophy, don't you think!

They also have a whole range of products available for purchase as well.

It seems to be that in a lot of cases, manufacturers of free software also offer more 'all-singing-all dancing' products for sale as well.  I used to have Zone Alarms firewall which was the basic free one (which was fine for my purposes) but there was a bigger and better product available to buy.

[KJN]

I have been runing AVG,  ZONE ALARM, AD-AWARE and SPYBOT all freebies for a very long time now with no problems. I have relations in the IT game who also  use these same programmes, if installed and used correctly these will suffice, I used to run Norton and had many conflicting problems whereas I am sure others will say its the best it really is a game of try and see.

[jean88]

Thank you all.

KJN - you are using 4 different programs, do I need that many? Could I just use avg and ad aware?