My Favorite PC Applications

This is just a quick list of the software I have installed. All of them can be used for free.

On-line backup: MozyHome

This service is free for up to 2 Gb automatic on-line backup and only 5$/month for unlimited! The photos, documents, and other media stored on my PC is invaluable to me. From the three aspects of security (availability, secrecy and accuracy), availability matters most for this data. I evaluated different systems for data backup and figured on-line backup is the best fit. Once it has been setup, on-line backup services provide the most robust protection against data loss. MozyHome provides one of the most competitive services for on-line backup. It’s really much easier and error proof to sign up for the service than setting up remote backups to a friend’s place or storing your data on an external hard drive or NAS at home.

Browser: Mozilla FireFox with adblock and X-Marks

FireFox is getting more competition from Google Chrome and Apple Safari, but both lack good plug-ins. The problem is that both browsers are based of the WebKit engine, which doesn’t have a good plug-in architecture. I use FireFox with adblock and X-Marks. Adblock removes ads which improves the readability and speed to load Web pages. X-Marks synchronizes my bookmarks between the my five computers (PC, Mac and Linux). Whether I’m at work or at home, I can always access all of my bookmarks.

E-mail: Mozilla Thunderbird

I keep all my e-mails (since 2004) in this e-mail client. I haven’t noticed any performance problems, even with about 4000 messages in my inbox. And it’s totally free.

Virtual Machine: Sun VirtualBox

I had a great experience with this tool. I’ve used VMWare in the past, but VirtualBox is a free alternative that works at least as well as VMWare. The feature I like most is the integration with memory paging in the host system. In older virtualization software, a chunk of memory in the host system is reserved for the guest system. With memory paging integration, the virtual machine will only take the amount of memory from the host system that is really used by the guest.

Communication: Skype

Perfect, for chat and PC-to-PC or PC-to-Phone calls. I use this extensively for calls with my family in Europe. PC-to-PC is free, and PC-to-phone is charged, but much cheaper than via a regular phone line. I’m no longer using MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger or Google Talk. The only problem I’m seeing with Skype now is that recent versions of the application take a while to load on start-up.

Photos organization, editing and publishing: Picasa

This works well for me to manage my photo albums. It is easy to use and photos can be published directly to picasaweb from the application.

Virus scanner: AVG

The free edition is good enough and seems to work well.

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