Software Recommendations

We'll try and list the software we recommend here, so if you need for any reason to download it yourself it's easy to find. We will try to recommend free software, and where possible, check that it's legal for use in businesses. Where this isn't the case we'll let you know.

AVG Free

This free anti-virus and anti-spyware product is ideal for all home users. For business users, the paid version is competitively priced and provides features to remotely install and monitor over a network.

Spybot - Search and Destroy

A free for personal use anti-spyware and malware software, ideal for cleaning up after problems arise. I now also recommend it as a preventative measure due to an increasing number of problems. There is also a reasonably priced version for businesses.

Real Alternative

No longer offered as a separate product, now part of the K-Lite Mega Codec Pack.

K-Lite Codec Pack

Produced by the same people as Real Alternative and QuickTime Alternative, this is a fast and clean codec pack to make almost any video play in your favourite media player. I recommend the mega pack, which included the Real Alternative code and for those on Windows Vista x64 or Windows 7 x64, I also recommend install the 64-bit pack.

QuickTime Alternative

A trimmed down version of QuickTime that contains only the essentials, resulting in better performance.

VLC player

A wonderful simple video and audio player, which is actually quite powerful. It will play almost any video or audio, including incomplete and damaged files.

CD Burner XP

CD/DVD burning software, equivalent to Nero or Roxio. Easy and intuitive to use.

DVD Flick

Video DVD authoring software, allowing for basic editing and also burning to DVDs.

7-Zip

A file archiver that supports many compression formats and offers high compression ratios.

PDF Creator

Creates PDF (also known as Adobe Acrobat) files from almost any program on your computer.

Adobe Reader

A free PDF view created by Adobe.

Adobe Flash Player

Allows the playback of Flash video and use of Flash controls.

Adobe Shockwave Player

Allows the use of Shockwave controls, though these are becoming increasingly rare.

Sun Java

A full Java runtime which enables the use of Java applications and webpages.

Picasa

An easy to use photo editing and organisation software, with several powerful features.