Welcome to Day 2 of my series Tools & Tips for Profitable Productive Blogging. Today I am bringing you some great free software that will help keep your computer running smoothly and efficiently so you can blog at peak productivity. I have given a brief explanation of each program below. None of these are affiliate links! I personally use all of this software and find them to be among the best paid or free software available.
What are some tools you use to keep your computer running efficiently? Do you use any that you could recommend that aren't on the list? Is the software you are running Free or Paid? Do you Feel more safe using paid software or does it matter?
Keep Your Computer Working Efficiently
Virus and Spyware
Having good and up-to-date anti-virus and anti-spyware software and a good firewall is critical for those of us spending lots of time on the web. There are lots of programs you could by but in my opinion the FREE programs that I use are much better than many of the commercial products often included with new PCs or sold in stores. Here is some great FREE software.ZoneAlarm
The best free, and arguably better than many paid, firewall on the Internet. Like the AVG software below it really seams to run much more efficiently than some of the big name brand firewalls that cost a pretty penny. I have been running ZoneAlarm on my computers for years.
AVG Anti-Virus, Anti-Spyware, Anti Rootkit
I use all three of these great Free tools from AVG. The Anti-virus, and spyware run for constant protection. The anit-rootkit I run weekly. The anti-virus and spyware programs don't bog down the computer like the big two anti-virus(mac and nort) or windows defender anti-spyware. The virus and spyware programs are updated pretty much daily.
Spybot Search & Destroy
I run this as an added layer of protection, and also really like the immunize feature. I usually run this once a week. They also offer a program called RunAlyzer that I talk about in the next section.
Utilities
Registry CleanersHaving a clean efficient registry does wonders for your computer. Don't forget that backing up your registry before making changes is extremely important.
CCleaner
An overall PC cleanup tool. It cleans the registry, duplicate files, temporary files and more. I run this weekly.
Abexo Free Registry Cleaner
Another great cleaner. Not as robust as CC but it works great. It simply cleans the registry.
Start up
Having a clean and efficient start up is the best way to start any blogging session. Not only that, eliminating unwanted and unnecessary software from loading at start up will improve the efficiency of your machine. By not having tons of unnecessary programs running and being able to eliminate hard to delete programs from the taskbar does wonders for the speed and efficiency of our computer.
RunAlyzer
Over time programs that start or run each time you start windows can accumulate and really slow down your load time and also how your computer performs once windows has loaded. This great utility, sorta for advanced users(you don't want to fiddle too much unless you know a bit about what you are doing), allows you to identify all programs that load on start up and eliminate the ones that shouldn't be or you simply don't want. This helps to find things that have been forgotten and is also another line in the defense against spyware.
MSConfig
This little utility actually comes with windows. You can access it by selecting run from your start menu and then typing in msconfig. This will allow you to see what is loading at start up and remove the things that you don't want or that shouldn't be there. Not nearly as thorough or robust as RunAlyzer but it is included in Windows and works well for inexperienced user.
What are some tools you use to keep your computer running efficiently? Do you use any that you could recommend that aren't on the list? Is the software you are running Free or Paid? Do you Feel more safe using paid software or does it matter?
Related Posts:
5 Days of Tools & Tips For More Productive Blogging - Day 1
later all and have a profitable and productive blogging day
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Comments
and while mac does not have a central "registry" so to speak you can still get a large buildup of pref files that can cause some problems and deleting them is necessary.
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