Utilities

These are a few of programs we use at Geeks Are Us. These are all free alternatives to otherwise pricey pieces of software and they are most cases just as good if not better.

Open Office A free office productivity suite similar to (and compatible with) Microsoft Office. Create documents and spreadsheets with nearly the same look and feel to Microsoft Office with none of the cost.
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Adobe Acrobat Reader Provides the ability to open and read those oh-so-common PDF files.
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GIMP An amazing alternative to Adobe Photoshop is Gimp. Another free utility that allows nearly the same scope of tools for image creation and photo editing. Photoshop users will have to learn new tool names, but other than that...it's very similar in its abilities.
download

AVG Anti-virus AVG is a free anti-virus program that will protect your system against many forms of virus attacks, including realtime e-mail protection. AVG also has the ability to run scheduled scans so you can more effectivly utilize your computer time.
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Firefox Firefox web browser empowers you to browse faster, more safely and more efficiently than with any other browser.
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Opera Opera is another great web browser, while not as easily customizable as Firefox it provides much more "out-of-the-box" features and security.
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Thunderbird Thunderbird gives you a faster, safer, and more productive email experience with implementations of features such as intelligent spam filters, built-in RSS reader, quick search, and much more.
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VLC A powerful and completely free video playing utility that can handle almost any format of video file you try to play including DVDs (on systems with DVD rom drive installed).
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CDBurnerXP A CD/DVD burning utility that has all the functions and features of expensive burning suites, but is much less resource intensive.
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