Home users really need not fork out for good software. Freeware and Open Source software are available all over the Web..... one simply needs to do a little homework. Here are just a few of the better "gems" to be found out there:
LibreOffice: This Office Suite started its life as StarWriter back in 1985. Later it would change its name to StarOffice. In 1989 it became freeware and within a year was acquired by Sun Microsystems who had decided that it was far cheaper to use StarOffice than MSOffice. In 2010 Oracle Corporation bought out Sun Microsystems and renamed StarOffice as Oracle Open Office. In that same year LibreOffice was formed as a derivative"fork" of OpenOffice, this as there was much concern and unhappiness about Oracle taking ownership of the product. Since then LibreOffice has become a huge success and by far the largest Open Source Office Suite available today. About 10 million users have already downloaded LibreOffice.
Thunderbird: This easy to use email client was developed by the Mozilla Foundation (same folk who developed the Firefox browser - see below). It is provided for free as Open Source software. Like Firefox, Thunderbird too can be expanded by using add-ons such as a Language Translator or Google Calendar etc. Thunderbird is a popular, secure and highly expandable email client.
FireFox: A highly popular Free, Open Source Web Browser that is from the Mozilla Foundation. Its strong feature is that it offers the flexibility of a huge range of add-ons including ones such as "Facebook Container" that isolates your Facebook activity from the rest of your web activity in order to prevent Facebook from tracking you from outside of the Facebook website. There are many other very useful add-ons such as "uBlock Origin" & "NoScript" etc. Personally, I don't trust the the standard built-in browsers, nor those from the Google's of this world as they certainly have a vested interest in accessing your browsing history for advertising purposes. Firefox has shown itself to be far more circumspect!
LastPass: A Password Management Service that is easy to install, as well as incorporating a web service. Basically LastPass is Packed with features to automatically fill in passwords and access the passwords from anywhere. In a world where we all have far too many accounts and services we need to access, a secure and encrypted Password manager is a necessity.
Gramps: Highly acclaimed Open Source Genealogy (Family Tree) software that is intuitive for hobbyists and feature-complete for professional genealogists. It is a community project, created, developed and governed by genealogists.
MalwareBytes: Spyware, Adware & Malware scanner. Although the Free version of MalwareBytes does not offer real-time live protection, it does provide an excellent scanner and remover of malware.
Making the effort to run a MalwareBytes scan from time to time is going to be well worth the effort, specially in an era where PUP's (Potentially Unwanted Programs) are often unknowingly installed, often hidden within legitimate software too! An Anti-Virus solution will usually never find these unwanted pieces of code that have the potential to flood your PC with adverts and other unwanted "gumph"!
Avast: Excellent Free Antivirus software. Avast is very light on system resources and the only free antivirus solution that gives the user the option to customize the installation, so that you can install only the "protection modules" you really want. Its detection capability is highly rated and includes a rescue disk capability.
Update: I have recently migrated from Avast to Avira Antivirus. Not because Avast was not performing, but rather due to the fact that Avast was alleged to be sharing (selling) customer data to 3rd parties! Avira is also a very resource light solution with a solid reputation.
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