Do you guys like ccleaner????

Thumbs up or down???

Same here also. CCleaner is a nice product.

I would have like to try out AutoPatcher but it seems it is out of circulation right now.

Some problems occurred with Microsoft. Hope it will get back soon.

I use a free encryption tool to create encrypted files to keep things like password spreadsheets (I've never found a password-storing program I liked). The one I use is Cryptainer LE. It's free and creates a folder (they call them "vaults") of up to 25 mb using 128 bit encryption (a Blowfish cyper block chaining algorithm). You can create as many of those files as you like, but they can't be larger than 25mb, and just drag and drop things into it. You can also create encrypted folders on removable media. Besides the size limitation, like other free encryption products there's no way to create an administrative key, so you have to be sure to remember the password.

Cryptainer

maddiebeagle said:Thanks...I've been a big fan of the open-source TrueCrypt for a few years now. It works in a similar manner, and is probably open to much more inspection (looking for flaws) since it is a very popular open source program. You can also make much larger containers...no 25MB limit...

Very nice Maddiebeagle. Blowfish is open also, so is sound. However, TrueCrypt appears more flexible and uses stronger encryption. I googled it and Bruce Schneier, cryptographer and security wonk par excellance, even recommends it. I'll try it out this weekend.

Spybot Search and Destroy wins my all-time favorite freeware award.

It's FREE.

No, let me say that again...

TOTALLY FREE.

No "lite" version. No annoying ads. No constant appeals to "register" your product. It's totally free. I was so happy at the performance, service, and complete lack of pushiness to donate that I did donate a fair sum of money to them (more than I would've paid for a similar off-the shelf program).

It works, they update it weekly, and it's easy to use.

There are NO spyware/adware removal programs that get them all, so I always recommend using another as a back-up, but Spybot S&D is always my #1.

maddiebeagle said:Thanks...I've been a big fan of the open-source TrueCrypt for a few years now. It works in a similar manner, and is probably open to much more inspection (looking for flaws) since it is a very popular open source program. You can also make much larger containers...no 25MB limit...

Just a FYI though - I wouldn't use it to encrypt an entire drive, because if anything is written to the drive (especially in the header), you lose most / everything on the drive.
Much easier to just format the drive and create a disk image that fills it up.
I moved an internal IDE drive to an external usb caddy and lost ~200gb of stuff because something wrote to the drive header somewhere in there. Not cool. And the "support" folks in the truecrypt forums don't see this as an issue and you'll get an unhelpful "yeah, you should of have made a backup of your header".
So yeah... backup the header or make a container that fills the drive.

Thanks for the great list of softwares. I do IT work myself for a living and being able to find this is a real blessing. Do you guys know any backup softwares w/o the bells and whistles that would do basic scheduling? I just want something simple to backup to external hard drives.

I'm using my Acronis for my backups since it can do Full, Incremental and Differential backups along with imaging my hard drive.

breaux124 said:I use LogmeIn.com for remote login, but this is mostly for family and close friends.This works well. Since it's hosted it can work with only outbound connections, so other than giving the two key programs permission to connect out to the 'net - no firewall settings or port forwarding to fiddle with.

Free version probably does enough for most people, especially if you're experienced enough to use alternative ways to get files from one PC to the other and print stuff.

The main sticky thread has links to some more concise lists. Lots of this is repetitive to lists that already exist, like the pricelessware list.

One of my favorite is KiXtart It's easy to use to automate a majority of tasks. It makes my life easier by turning tedious tasks into one click.