The best free software that money can't buy!!!

Yes it's true. I am a cheap bastard. I hate spending money on things, especially software... especially software that should have come with the operating system (anti-virus software). Now most people get their software (such as Office and Anti-Virus packages) with their new computers so they don't worry about the cost of said software. I however build and trouble shoot my own computers and I have done so for years. In that time I have tried a variety of free software packages and I can honestly say that the crop that is out right now are some of the finest pieces of software that you can find. Some of these actually rival their very expensive commercial rivals.

Fat Joey's Free Software Picks -

CDBurnerXP... (just click on the link to get it) This is a robust CD/DVD Burning program that takes the place of Nero or EasyCD Creator. The main difference is that Nero is the 800 pound Gorilla that comes with 2 applications that you use regularly and 48 that just don't seem to have a point. CDBurnerXP is small... uses almost no resources... and is easy to use. Try it.

OpenOffice... (once again, just hit the jump to get it) Sick of giving your hard earned green backs to Microshaft for their craptacular office product? Open office is what your looking for. I use it as my primary office application. The program is robust, customizable and constantly improving. After you set the program up remember to go into each program's options and set it to save to microsoft compatible extensions such .doc and .xls... no one will ever know your not using microsoft products.

Threatfire Free Edition... I used to use threat fire in conjuction with AVG 7.5 Free Edition. Now I use Threatfire all by itself because the current version features a virus scanner. Threatfire is a small peice of software that actually detects virus behavior and alerts you with a warning notice. This makes up for the short comings in Windows XP's Firewall application. I no longer recommend AVG products as the current version 8 seems to be flakey and is also more intrusive and resource hungry than previous iterations of AVG's software.

Windows Defender... Download it, use it, love it. Good software from Microsoft that's free. You'll have no combatibility issues here. Though I wouldn't recommend using it alone. That's where my next pick comes in.

SpyBot S&D... Good software. Robust. Good Hueristics. Detects and removes some viruses as well as adware and spyware. Use this in conjunction with Threatfire and Windows Defender and you should be in good shape. (remember to run update once you install this software). Also remember that you can avoid a lot of spyware and viruses just by using good browsing habits. This includes avoiding porn sites, websites that ask to install ActiveX controls and opening e-mail attachments (even from people you know) I never open attachments, ever.

BitTorrent... Ummm... I use this to download legal copies of free Linux distributions. Yeah... that's right... Linux distributions ;) If you download... Ummm... Linux distributions too then you should just download this little gem. It is vastly improved in the past year and is a superior product compared to other torrent downloading programs. If you use a nVidia motherboard then no torrent program will work the way its supposed to until you uninstall the firewall software that automatically installs when you install your drivers... hit the forums at nVidia.com to see how to disable that nightmarish program and make your torrents work flawlessly. I also have a batch file executable program that I wrote that will disable it for you if you can't figure it out. I'll only post it if someone asks for it though.

I'll have more free picks later. Right now I gotta go... L8r.