Maggie Verster's List: Software

Disk fragmentation leads to system slowdowns, PC crashes, slow startups and shutdowns. Auslogics Disk Defrag is designed for fast defragmentation of modern hard disks. The new version can also consolidate free space and optimize system files placement. Disk Defrag is absolutely FREE for home users..

" Optimize, clean and boost the speed of your Windows.
Protect your privacy and security.
Block spyware, trojans, adware, etc.
Fix certain application errors.
Simple, fast and User friendly interface
For only private use "

Malwarebytes currently ranks among top 10 most downloaded software on Download.com. It's a very simple tool that does an important job, that is protecting your computer from spyware, hijackers, keyloggers and other kind of malicious craplets.

What makes Malwarebytes standout from the pack is its huge library of threats to protect against. That's exactly what it makes so effective when it comes to detecting spyware that other spyware scanners miss. This same library made the earlier recommended Security 360 a powerful tool.

Malwarebytes may not be as feature-laden as say Spybot Search and Destroy (another good spyware removal tool), which has a ridiculous number of tools, but it is a very lightweight alternative with good spyware coverage.

There are both free and premium versions. The only difference between two is real time protection. With real-time protection Mawarebytes will alert you about the spyware before even it's able to install itself on your system.

Almost everyone once in a while needs to convert documents to PDF. The doPDF is the easiest tool that does exactly that. It installs a virtual printer on your computer that you can select using the print option from any program on Windows.

Whenever you need to convert a web page, Word document, Excel spreadsheet, photo or pretty much anything else to a PDF file just go to the print option in your program and select doPDF from the 'Printer' drop-down menu.

You can set the resolution to anything from 72 dpi to 2400 dpi, and the "printed" files are text searchable.

With over 67 million downloads so far and roughly 7 downloads per second it's one of the most popular video players around.

VLC is a highly portable multimedia player supporting most audio and video formats and can play pretty much any video files you throw at it, including physical media like DVDs. Plus it doesn't need any external codec, program or codec pack to work.

The VLC can be used both by beginners as well as expert users for working with video files.

The player can also play Youtube videos, convert video files, play subtitles, etc.

"ImgBurn is a free tool that enables you to burn CD/DVD images with ease. All the latest drives are supported (including booktype / bitsetting on many of the major ones). Advanced functionality can be found in the ImgBurn context menus. "