Wiz Picks Wiz Picks are selected software, web sites and on line services that I have found to be personally very useful and am happy to share with you. They are in no particular order. Any difference in quality between similar items will be minimal and more a matter of taste than function or reliability. In my opinion they are excellent value or would not be on this list. Most of these items are, in fact, FREE! I have been asked several times now which of the listed programs I use personally. Note that just because I use it doesn't make it best, and you should find the program that works best for you, however I will now mark the ones I currently use with a gold star: Anti-Virus and Security Software AVG Anti-Virus - Pretty good stuff! F-Prot Anti-Virus - I've used this one for years. It's the best I've found! Ad-Aware- Great spyware removal software. A must! Zone Alarm - Excellent firewall protection. Easy to install. Easy to use. Eraser - advanced secure data removal tool. Popup Stopper/Pro - the original one from Panicware. Zero Popup - another good pop-up killer. Messenger Utility - control IE Messenger pop-ups. E-Mail Programs Pegasus Mail - Secure. Powerful. Feature Rich. Free! I use this one. Eudora - An excellent choice. "Lite" version is still free. Mail Commander - An alternate for those who handle lots of mail. The Bat - An interesting e-mail alternative! Popcorn - Lightweight but powerful e-mail client! Incrdimail - Animations, emoticons, anouncements - annoying, but FUN! Calypso - The final freeware version of this oldie but goodie! Mutt - Small, powerful e-mail solution for the UNIX environment! File Transfer Protocol (FTP) Software WS_FTP and WS_FTP LE - An old favorite that I've used for years! AceFTP Freeware - I really like this one! FTP Explorer - Free and powerful, a great combination! NewsGroups - the other 'e-mail' Free Agent - A different place for information! yProxy - Secure handling of yENC compressed files. Telnet/SSH Clients PuTTY - Telnet and SSH in one. Simple to use. Excellent! Web Design Software 1st Page 2000 - The best! Free and as good as anything you can buy! Ace HTML Freeware - Perhaps a little less complex, but very good! NoteTab Lite - I used this one until I found 1st Page 2000. So Think - another great little HTML editor. Graphics Design Software JASC Paint Shop Pro - The very best value in graphics software! Irfanview - Free and limited but very good. Graphics Workshop - Worth a look if you are serious about graphics effects. Eye-Batch - Excellent batch conversion software. PSP v3.12 - Older version of Paint Shop Pro that I use extensively. PaintStudio Lite - great free graphics program. EyeDropper - a great utility for finding color numbers (HEX and RGB). Color Cop - another number for finding color numbers. Some Helpful Web Sites Gibson Research Corporation - Learn about the workings of your computer. Trend Micro - On line anti-virus scan and software. Driver Guide - For those hard to find replacement drivers. Task List Guide - find out about drivers and such running in your task list. LINUX Online - Everything LINUX - worth a look if you're tired of Windoze! AnalogX - A great source for system utilities and such! Xenu's Link Sluth - Check your web pages for broken links. Belarc Advisor - a detailed provile of your system and software. You Send It - File too big for email? Try this! Alternate Web Browsers Opera - A great new look at browsing! Netscape - Not quite the original but still good! Amaya - The W3C browser - still not ready for prime time! Mozilla - So much good stuff - worth the look! FireFox - From the people at Mozilla - smaller, faster. NoTrax - secure annonymous web browsing. Alternate Operating Systems Red Hat LINUX - One of the very best LINUX installations! LINDOWS - Commercial ($59.99) but an interesting idea! OpenBSD - As an old BSD guy myself, I gotta say, "Way Kewl!" FreeBSD - Another leader in the free O/S game. OpenBeOS - A great concept and fun to play with! Web and Other Servers Snug Server - web, e-mail, ftp, and more - commercial but worth the price. Tiny Web Server - powerful, easy to use web server for your computer. Simple Server - another small but powerful web server for personal use. Internet Relay Chat (IRC) mIRC - More live chat than you can shake a stick at! mIRC tutorial - from the Paint Shop Pro Users Group (PSPUG) Data Encryption FineCrypt - Great file encription a click away! PGP - Pretty Good Privacy - one of the best public key systems around! Bulletin Board Systems Synchronet - the best free BBS software available. Wildcat! - commercial product and expensive, but you get what you pay for! Various Utilities Keyboard Manager - Great for mapping function keys, etc. Useful Stuff for Mac Users Camino - Web browsing for the Mac! GIFfun - for animating .gif slides. It's always the right time to use good code! [ main help menu ]