The World of Freeware
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You just bought a computer for $2000 and don’t want to spend another $1000 for applications for it. What should you do? You could download them off Bit Torrent or any peer-to-peer network. While this is an option, it isn’t a legal one and could get you into serious trouble. Fortunately, there's a better alternative.
There are in fact many FREE applications out there that do almost the same things as the applications you pay for. While downloading pirated applications for free is illegal, the programs in this article are free and LEGAL! Before you go run to the store and buy Norton, Microsoft Office, or Adobe Photoshop, read this article on how to get free alternatives to these programs.
Many of these programs are "freeware" and many are open source. What does that mean? In simple terms it is software a developer created, decided to make free, and allowed the source code to be released. When they do this, anyone can add to or change features in the program. The catch is that those who make modifications need to make their version open source and free too. This is why you may find different flavors of a program that are nearly the same.
One of the biggest threats to your computer is viruses and spyware. It seems like you can't be on the Internet for five minutes before you'll get some nasty bug. Sure you can run out and buy Norton Antivirus for $40 a year and be safe, but there is a much cheaper way. There are other antivirus programs out there from other companies like Microsoft and McAfee that offer antivirus programs at a lower price, but still charge a yearly fee to continue getting updates.
One of the popular alternatives to these antivirus programs is AVG. AVG offers its antivirus program free for personal use. If you want to install this onto a network, you'll need to purchase a license. But for personal use, it's free! "Great," you think, "free, that means it's going to install other crap on to my computer that I don't need." Nope, it just installs the antivirus program and that's it.
This is my personal day to day anti-virus program. It does a great job; in my opinion, even better than Norton, Microsoft, McAfee and anyone else out there. I've noticed that installing a program like Norton bogs down my system with all kinds of processes. AVG is very clean and its impact on the system is minimal. Not only would I recommend it as an alternative to Norton and others, but I would recommend it as THE antivirus program you should use.
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