Here are some more free alternatives to commercial software:

Remote Access

Do you need remote access to your computer?  Do you have friends and family who want you to help fix their computers, but you live in Costa Rica and they live in Canada or Arizona or somewhere else far away.  You could buy GoToMyPC for $20 per month for one PC or $30 per month for two PCs. LapLink Gold is $80.  Symantec pcAnywhere is $200 for one PC.  Here are some good free alternatives:

• LogMeIn can be downloaded for free from https://secure.logmein.com/products/free/, and will do the job for you.
• Ultra VNC. You can find this one at http://www.uvnc.com/
• Tight VNC. Download this from http://www.tightvnc.com/

Utilites

Symantec offers Norton SystemWorks in three different “flavors”, with prices ranging from $50 to $100. Fix-It Utilites Professional is currently marked down to $30 from $50. System Mechanic is $35 for a one-year subscription.  Here are my free recommended alternatives:

• Glary Utilities. According to http://www.glaryutilities.com/, “Glary Utilities is the #1 free, powerful and all-in-one utility in the world market! It offers numerous powerful and easy-to-use system tools and utilities to fix, speed up, maintain and protect your PC”.  I use this myself, and it works great!

• Advanced System Care  claims to be “[t]he best system utility in PC history”.  (These utility developers seem to all think a lot of themselves”).  Anyway, this one does, indeed, work well. Download it at http://www.iobit.com/advancedwindowscareper.html.

Partition Managers

Symantec sells Norton Partition Magic for $70.  There are a bunch of free alternatives . . . this is probably the best known:

• Partition Logic. This is a free hard disk partitioning and data management tool.  It can create, delete, erase, format, defragment, resize, copy, and move partitions and modify their attributes.  It can copy entire hard disks from one to another. It boots from a CD or floppy disk and runs as a standalone system, independent of your regular operating system.  Partition Logic is intended to become a free alternative to such commercial programs as Partition Magic, Drive Image, and Norton Ghost. Get it at http://partitionlogic.org.uk/about/index.html.

Disk Defragmenter

A disk defragmenter is included with Windows, but it doesn’t do a particularly great job. There are also commercial products for sale (see the chart below); however:

• Smart Defrag bills itself as “The World’s Most Efficient Defragmenter” and it’s free. You can download it at http://www.iobit.com/iobitsmartdefrag.html. Here’s an application comparison chart from Smart Defrag’s Web site:

Well, that’s enough for today. I’ll be digging up some more for you, in the near future.