Open Office is a program similar to Microsoft Office. It is a very robust software suite that can not only read Word and Excel files, but write them, as well. This makes it almost completely compatable the often expensive Microsoft product.

AVG ANTIVIRUS:

AVG Antivirus is a virus scanner. In addition to pay solutions, Grisoft offers a free version of their software. It offers automatic e-mail and system scans, just like the big boys, but at no cost to you.

WINZIP:

WinZip is a program that allows you to compress files. This allows large files to be stored on media that would normally be to small to fit them as well as to save bandwidth when e-mailing or transfering files. WinZip can also be used to decompress files that have been "zipped."

QUICKTIME:

Quicktime is a media player created by Apple. It can be used to play Quicktime video files as well as view still images.

MUSICMATCH JUKEBOX:

Musicmatch Jukebox not only allows you to play back Wav and MP3 files, it also allows you to "rip" audio tracks from CDs and burn them to a recordable CD. Audio files ripped to your hard drive are automically sorted by artist, track and album. Musicmatch Jukebox offers preset compression levels as well as custom settings.

FIREFOX:

Firefox is an open source Internet browser program that is an alternative to Microsoft's Internet Explorer. It is based on the Netscape Navigator browser (listed below) and is part of the Mozilla browser suite, which is no longer being developed (Firefox developement continues, though, along with other individual components of the original suite). Firefox offers one very important feature for today's Internet: it blocks just about all unrequested pop-ups.