The 88 Best Freeware » Home & Office Software

Do I need to buy antivirus software for my PC?

admin — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 13:40:24 +0000

It depends.

If you have budget constraint, you may like to try anti virus free software. I have been using AVG Free Anti-Virus software for years. It works really fine so far.

Updates are always available. AVG Free Anti-Virus can be downloaded from http://free.avg.com/.

Maybe one of the drawbacks of freeware is limited or no technical support available. However, for personal usage, I do think that AVG Free Anti-Virus should be more than enough.

Anyway, if you are worry about technical support to the software you use, do consider fully supported commercial products from Trend Micro, Symantec, McAfee and so on.

Ghostscript helps print to non-PostScript printer

admin — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 13:18:42 +0000

Ghostscript, an interpreter for the PostScript language and for PDF. Ghostscript can be used as a raster image processor (RIP) for raster computer printers – it helps converting PostScript language files or Portable Document Format (PDF) files to many raster formats. The raster format is usually a page bitmap which can then be sent to an output device such as a printer or display. Anyway, many of the printers today are having PostScript embedded.

This will enable user to view PostScript language files on displays, and print them on printers that do not have PostScript language capability built in.

Ghostscript is also able to convert PostScript language files to PDF (with some limitations) and vice versa. A number of utility scripts like ps2pdf are available to convert a PostScript document to PDF.

There are other utility scripts besides ps2pdf, including pdf2ps, ps2epsi and ps2ascii. These applications call Ghostscript with the appropriate set of options.

Ghostscript is also used as a general engine inside other applications like CutePDF Writer, a virtual printer software.

To get a brief help message of Ghostscript, execute the gs command with the -h or -? switch:

gs -h
gs -?

The output from invoking this command are

the version and release information
the general format of the command line
a few of the most useful options
the formats it can interpret
the available output devices
the search path
the bug report address

Visit the Ghostscript web page at http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost for more information about this great software!

Read PDF using Adobe Reader

admin — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 06:09:10 +0000

Adobe Reader, a product from adobe.com, is a freeware that lets you view and print PDF files. As the open standard for worldwide electronic document distribution, Adobe PDF files preserve all the formatting, the graphics and the colors of the original document. As such, user can transfer documents from one media to another without losing important formatting or the document becoming completely garbled. The document itself is platform independent.

It is very easy to use Adobe Reader. A user may use it to view, search, digitally sign, verify, print, and collaborate on Adobe PDF files. However, the free Adobe Reader cannot be used to create PDF files. You may like to use freeware like CutePDF Writer to do that instead.

Due to its big size, the start up of this freeware takes a few more seconds. Anyway, though there are other PDF readers available that may take up less space or work at slightly faster speeds, none offer as much of a tool set as Adobe Reader does. Adobe Reader has remained at the top of the list since creation. You may download this excellent software from Adobe.

What is Firefox

admin — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 13:44:23 +0000

Firefox is just another type of web browser created by Mozilla for you to access the web pages available on the Internet. It is the second-most popular browser in current use worldwide, after Internet Explorer. If you have ever use Internet Explorer, you should be easily master how to use Firefox.

You can download Firefox from: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/

Many additional functions like Google Toolbar can be add on to Firefox.

Firefox runs on various versions of Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and many other Unix-like operating systems.