Essential Free Software for Home user

I get pinged about “essential software”, antivirus software, firewalls … or things like that, this list below will give what I like and recommend

I assume this is

• Personal/home user
• Wants/Needs it Free of Cost
• Needs “best (near best) of breed product”
• Easy to Install, Use and maintain
• Connected to Internet

Essential Software OR “MUST HAVE” Software

1. Firewall
   This is very important and often neglected
• ZoneAlarm from Zonelabs
2. Anti virus Software
   There is no “silver bullet” for this yet, it is highly advisable to have at least two different Antivirus Software and run full Scans with both of them at least weekly (update them daily).
• AVG Anti Virus Free Edition by GRISOFT ( Primary Program)
• Avast! Home Edition by ALWIL Software
3. Anti Ad-ware Software
• AD-Aware By Lavasoft
4. Anti Spyware Software
• Spybot in http://www.safer-networking.org/
5. Browser
• Firefox by Mozilla
6. Office Suite
• Openoffice from http://www.openoffice.org/
7. Mailing Software
• Thunderbird by Mozilla
8. Compression Software
• WinZip from Winzip

9. PDF Reader
• Adobe Reader By Adobe Systems

Next Post will be “Nice to have” Software

PS : Pls download the latest versions and you could get all of this from www.downloads.com

Disclaimer: Usual, I am not responsible for anything negative. :-)