With all of the Trojan viruses and spyware that are on the internet, it is mandatory to always have an active antivirus installed onto the computer. Many of the antivirus programs that are found on the market can be a burden on a computer system. Many of them slow down the computer while they run. AVG Antivirus is not one of those programs.

AVG can be found for free across the internet, but to get the most out of the software, it is important to purchase full protection. The small fee that is required to protect the computer is small in comparison to replacing the whole system.

With the free version of AVG being more effective than many paid software’s, it is fair to say that the paid version will only improve on the free version. With the full protection of AVG, a user will receive full antivirus and antispyware capabilities with the added feature of link scanner and e-mail scanner.

With the link scanner, a user will know for sure whether the link they are about to click is secure and will not provide any problems for them. Overall, AVG Antivirus is a very effective protection system and does its job faster and more efficient than many other programs on the market.

I came across this very interesting piece of software recently called Tune Up Utilities 2008.

It is a computer tweaking application that can help you improve almost any aspect of your system. The software comes with One-Click optimization software that I feel is really its core. Just by running it, you clean up your registry, delete temporary files and even eliminate junk data. Apart from that it includes a powerful disk defragmenter, permanent file shredding, file recovery, system optimization and can even help you tweak all aspects of your Windows UI, including the boot and logon screens It is shareware and a free trial can be downloaded. The software costs $49.95 at the time of writing, but I’m sure that after using the trial, you will find that it is well worth the cost.

At work, we recently began using Ninite.com to automate the install of many popular programs, browsers, and plugins.

Ninite allows you to choose from a variety of categories as many different installs as you’d like. Their software automatically chooses the version most appropriate to your installed operating system and silently installs the programs without any accompanying toolbars. It skips any already installed software that is up to date which is a nice time saving feature. There is a pro version but we’ve not investigated what further options it offers as the free versions has more than met our needs.

Are you tired of mousing through your Windows Start menu, looking for the right program to run, frustrated because there are so many folders and items appearing?

Then here’s something that may help you! Launchy is a nifty utility for Windows that lets you launch a program with just a few keystrokes, without having to use the Start menu. Just hit a special key (which you can define) and a small window appears where you type the program’s name. As you type, the program’s icon appears. If it’s correct, just hit Enter and Launchy will start the program.

Launchy even works by typing just a few letters of the name (eg ‘power’ for PowerPoint) so you can be up and running in no time! It even learns from your past requests, displaying your most frequent programs first.

Now that’s a time-saver!

Miranda IM is an open-source instant messenger.

It’s a multi protocol messenger meaning you can login to AIM, Yahoo, MSN, GTalk, Jabber, IRC, ICQ, Gadu-Gadu and many more networks from this single software. It has a very robust and dedicated development team with a wide user base and a very active forum. I have used other multi-protocol IMs in the past like GAIM (now pidgin) but this one is the best in terms of expandability and customizability.

It has a HUGE range of plugins including skins, themes and functional plugins for upcoming protocols, chat history management etc. In addition to chat, it also supports file transfer and web page sharing. The Miranda IM setup file is pretty small, around 1.4MB, and can easily fit on a floppy disk. Miranda stores all its profiles, settings, history in a single encrypted database file which makes it portable and can be easily copied into and used from a USB thumb drive and the like.

Miranda also has extensive support for skinning and themes which is a good thing for people who like to make their IMs unique looking. Their addons page is a good place to start for plugins and customizations like sounds, skins, themes etc. All in all, it’s the best free multi-protocol messenger I have used.