I am going to be doing a solid review in the future on Micro Niche Finder once I get a chance to try it out. If you have done your research and would like to purchase the product yourself, here is where to get it ... Get Micro Niche Finder

As I read internet reviews and talk to various folks, I hear a lot of feedback about how great AVG Free is for virus and spyware protection. I used to use AVG Free myself but I decided to go with another software package (BitDefender, Internet Security Suite 2009).

Before upgrading from AVG Free, I noticed that my computer's performance was starting to get a lot slower. After I installed BitDefender, I ran the BitDefender's virus and spyware scan, and it turned out that my computer was infected with various trojans which were undetected by AVG Free. Based on my experience with BitDefender, I wouldn't necessary recommend the software because it's kind of buggy and has various issues but that's not really the purpose of this post.

What I would like to discuss here though is some areas that you are not protected with AVG Free just to make sure that everyone in the know if they happen to be using the AVG as their virus and spyware protection strategy.

So, here are some of the areas which you are not currently protected from with AVG Free (version 8.5).

• Download Protection
  
• IM Chat Infections
• Rootkit Protection
• Identity Theft
• Hacker Protection (via Firewall Pentration)
• Spam

In my opinion, you really should have protection from the above items and I really wouldn't recommend using AVG Free with that in mind. AVG does offer protection from the above threats although that requires that you purchase the AVG Internet Security version instead of the Free version which is going to set you back about $55. I have never really used the AVG Internet Security software so I am really not able to give feedback on it.

I just wanted to let everyone know that your protection is limited with the AVG Free version. If you want to leave feedback on your favorite virus and spyware protection software, I would love to hear your comments...

With everyday use of your computer, over time more and more unnecessary junk gets stored on your hard drive. Many times this can result in a slower/less stable computer that is also could be more prone security attacks. As you can see on the screenshot to the right here, the checked boxes list examples of junk files that are typically accumulated on your computer over time. CCleaner is a really cool program that you will definitely want to install on your computer to clean up the junk.

The program has four sections (as you can see on the screenshot) which are Cleaner, Registry, Tools and Options. The screenshot to the right illustrates the Cleaner section with the defaults checked.

At the bottom of the Cleaner section, you can see there is an Analyze button. The Analyze button will scan your computer and show a detailed list of the findings in the blank section to the right. When I ran the Analysis on my computer, it found 1.7G of junk files that I didn't need (and it only took about 197 seconds). Then I was able to click the Run Cleaner button (which is to the right of the Analyze button) and in only 53 seconds all the junk files were removed.

Besides CCleaner being a great junk file cleaner, you can also use it to clean out issues with your Windows Registry. You can also remove unnecessary installed programs although I have not used CCleaner for those 2 purposes. I just love the file cleaner. I have heard good reviews on the registry cleaning functions but I get nervous using registry cleaning products and stay away from those for fear of breaking some part of my operating system.

CCleaner also has customization options but I don't really mess with those. Here's a cool feature that I really like though... If you go to the Tools button (with the wrench shown), there is a button called Save To Text and if you click it, a simple txt file will be generated which lists all of your installed programs in Windows. That is way cooler than writing them down by pencil if you need that information.

Anyways, I think CCleaner is a must-have tool that does a lot, but in my opinion it is CCleaner's ability to quickly clean up your computer and keep it that way that makes the program a real jewel. If you get a chance to try out the Registry Cleaning option, let me know how that works. Maybe I will give it a try...

CCleaner is available at CCleaner Download. You should give it a try!

This is going to be a very short review because there is, in my opinion, one Windows zip program that really stands out from the crowd. That program is called 7-Zip.

What makes 7-Zip the best of the best?

Here are a few reasons why 7-Zip rocks...

• 7-Zip is very easy to install
  
• It's very simple to use whether you are a beginner or advanced techie dude like myself
  
• 7-Zip is totally free
• 7-Zip's compression ratio is incredible and far exceeds that of other zip programs such as WinZip, PKZip, etc.
  
• You can easily password-protect your compressed files
• It makes sense when you are using the application. It's not complicated at all to make it do what you want it to do
  

7-Zip can compress files into various formats. The 2 most common formats are the 7z archive format and the ZIP format. If you have a file that you want to compress, just Right-Click the file and you then choose the 7-Zip submenu and from there you can choose your compression choice. The 3 choices that you will have will be either 7z, zip or archive compression. The menu screenshot above shows what you would see if you chose the archive compression option. Notice the compression level is set at Normal. Instead of Normal, you can also choose a higher compression (such as Maximum or Ultra), although it will use more of your system resources and the decompression will be slower. I recommend using Normal compression for best overall performance.

Also on the above screenshot, you can see the Encryption box (on the right side) where you can enter a password to protect your compressed file. Another really cool feature is you can split your large files onto multiple CD's or DVD's. I like that feature when you have really big files that are beyond a single media's capacity.

7-Zip will also decompress tons of different file formats which include ISO, rar, cab and exe files.

I highly recommend 7-Zip and I have never found anything at all that I do not like about the program. Once you try out this program, you will wonder why you ever tried any other zip programs.

With all this in mind, 7-Zip easily gets the 5 of 5 stars award for the best Windows Zip program. 7-Zip can be downloaded at 7-Zip's website. Give it a try. It's the one I use. Also 7-Zip can be installed on computer running Windows 98 and above.

I would love to hear your feedback. Thank you!

PrimoPDF Review

Here is a brief overview of how to use PrimoPDF along with my personal review:

After installing PrimoPDF, you will notice that along with your regular printers, you now will have a PDF printer called PrimoPDF. Normally when you want to print something, you go File, Print, etc. and you get a paper document. With PrimoPDF, you do the same print procedure as usual (File, Print, etc) and select PrimoPDF for the printer. After you do that, PrimoPDF's magic starts to happen. Instead of getting a paper printout, you will get a lot of really cool options to help you make an electronic PDF output.

The five options that you can select are Screen, Print, Ebook, Prepress and Custom.


I am not going to go through all of the output options except to say you can generate whatever PDF format you need whether it be a computer-screen optimized PDF or an PDF that is totally optimized to be used as an Ebook. This is really an amazing software application! You got to give it a try.

Let's say you want to have a copy of your online transaction receipt in a PDF format. In your Internet browser, instead of printing to paper, print the receipt to a PDF file and save it in a folder. This is very simple to do with PrimoPDF. Just choose PrimoPDF as your printer. Another cool thing with PrimoPDF, you can password-protect your PDF online receipt if you want so that only you could open it. Or maybe you want to allow someone to open the file but you want to restrict who can print the PDF file or maybe who can make changes to the file. These are just a few of the very simple things you can do with this software.

Whatever application allows you to print (from within Windows), you can easily make a PDF file with PrimoPDF. This program works flawlessly and is very easy to use. After you have installed PrimoPDF on your computer, you will also get a easy to read instruction manual which explains everything clearly. I highly recommend this program to anyone who does wants a great free alternative to the Adobe's products such as Acrobat Standard.

I was not able to find any negative attributes and I give PrimoPDF 5 stars (out of 5). Try it out!

PrimoPDF download

After reading a few great online reviews for BitDefender Internet Security 2009 (BD 2009) from places like TopTenReviews.com and PCWorld.com, I had pretty high expectations. So I went and purchased a 3 license version of BD 2009 to give it a try on my home computers. Well, my experience was not nearly what I was hoping for. I am not sure how to say it in a nice way but have to say that BD 2009 has some serious issues (bugs).

I basically got a chance to install the software on 3 different types of computers which gave me a good opportunity to evaluate the software on different hardware platforms. All three of the computers were running Windows XP.

Cons:

Here are some of the issues that I encountered:

1. BD 2009 does not always install correctly. The result is the software is not able to update (eg definitions) to their server properly. An error message will display indicating the BD server is not reachable. If that happens you will need to remove and reinstall the BD 2009 application. (This happened on 2 of the 3 machines for me).
2. BD 2009 seems to have problems working with Internet Explorer. I have seen this on all of my computers. I have noticed that if you try to get your gmail using Internet Explorer, your computer will freeze (25-30 seconds) with the CPU usage pegged out at 100%. At that time there will be nothing you can do at all to break out of the freeze state but wait until the running process lets go of the CPU. Then your gmail inbox will come up. This problem does not happen with FireFox which is my preferred browser.
3. Parental Control does not work correctly. I had parental control setup for my kids and it was constantly blocking tons of pages which it was not supposed to. I ended up just turning it off.
   
4. Poor Customer Support. I emailed BitDefender's customer support (documenting issue #2 above) and never got a single response. The problem is still happening after many months.
   
5. BD 2009 slows down your bootup significantly. I noticed that if you are running BD 2009 than your bootup is going to take almost an additional minute to boot up.
6. The hard drive scans take a long time and are not automated by default. It seems like every 7 days you will be prompted to scan your hard drive manually of malware which seems to take a really long time. It seems like they should have that be automated be default.

Pros:

1. BD 2009 is the probably one of the most inexpensive of the Internet Security Suites available. Mine was about $40 for the 3 license version
2. It seems to do a pretty good job at keeping the computers clean of malware if you don't mind the issues 1-6 above.

Conclusion:

I honestly say that I wouldn't recommend this software for anyone to use based on what I have experienced. I am going to have to give BD 2009 a 1 rating (on a scale of 1-5 with 5 being great) based on the bugginess of the software, the software performance and poor customer service.

Would you like to provide a software review and possibly have it posted here on our website here at Free Software N' Reviews?

You can do a review on either free software or paid software. Write one up for us and try to make it from 250-500 words. Include the pros and cons and your overall feeling about the software, whether you would recommend it or not to others. Also, at the end of your review, please include a line or two about yourself with your own or companies URL if you have one. If we choose to post your review, we will include your URL backlink. Or if you have had either good or bad experiences with certain software products, we would love to hear about that. Also include a rating on your review from 1-5 indicating your evaluation with 5 being great and 1 being horrible.

I am looking forward to reading the your reviews. Send your reviews to Reviews@pchelptogo.com.

Thank you. I am looking forward to reading your reviews. With no further ado, let's go forward...

I could not be more excited about this free software that I found! It's called Snapshot Screen Capture Tool. It's sad but I have been looking for a snapshot tool like this for over a year now. Get the Snapshot Tool here.

Do you ever need to take a quick snapshot of anything on your desktop? With this tool, you can capture full screens, active Windows, or even use a rectangular selector tool to grab what you want to copy. The software application is easy to install and even saves the screen shots automatically in whatever format you choose. This software tool runs on all Windows Operating Systems from Windows 98 to Vista.

This is definitely one software utility that you will want to have. Thank you, David De Groot for providing this great tool.

My name is Michael H. I have been a Desktop Support Technician since 1997 providing both software and hardware support. There is so much great free software on the Internet to do just about anything you need. The problem is you never really know how good it is until you download and try it out. And then there is the risk of infecting your computer with malware which can sometimes be really expensive to remove.

I really enjoy free software myself. My friends might say I am cheap but I like to use the word "economical". (That feels a lot better). For a long time, I have been using a free Microsoft alternative to Microsoft Office (which is great BTW) as well as free Internet browsers, and tons of great free software utilities.

I thought, wouldn't it be great to collect some of my favorite free software packages and share where I got them as well as my opinion about it with others? What do I like about it, what's some of the issues that I have experienced, etc. I will also share feedback on some of the popular software paid applications that haven't worked so well for me. Then I might end off the software review with maybe a thumbs up recommendation or maybe thumbs down. A review from a techie dude but in layman's language. Also, I would love to have you send me your software reviews (either free or paid software) and if I post your review, I will include your URL backlink in the post.

Anyways, I hope that this site turns out to be beneficial to many and I would love to hear your comments also on various posts. As well, if you like, you can subscribe via email or just use a RSS reader to get my blog entry updates.

Thank you for stopping by and I hope your stay is pleasurable and useful! Here we go...