Good programs to use!

Post by **DeadPoolX** » Sat Jun 26, 2010 5:42 am

I recently found a company called Piriform that has four completely free programs that are extremely useful. They do ask for donations, but that's not unreasonable considering the usefulness of these programs and that they're continually updated.

All four of these programs have also won CNet's Editor's Choice award in April 2009. They're also Microsoft certified for use on Windows 7 in addition to WinXP and Vista.

Here's the list:

The absolute best two of the bunch are CCleaner and Defraggler.

CCleaner is an extremely user-friendly and powerful registry cleaner. Unlike most registry cleaners, this one has multiple options and lets the user decide what to remove and what to keep. It even asks you to make a backup just in case something goes wrong.

Defraggler, despite having a silly name (Maia says it makes her think of Fraggle Rock), is the best disk defragmenter I've ever seen. It's far more thorough that the one that comes with Windows and a lot more versatile.

The last two -- Recuva and Speccy -- are useful, but aren't nearly as important in most cases.

Recuva is a tool used to recover data you've deleted. This doesn't always work since it depends on whether or not the sector has already been overwritten, but it seems to do its job most of the time.

Speccy is a tool that lets you see every piece of information regarding your hardware setup. While this is hardly a necessary program, it's a good one since it can provide detailed information. This is particularly good if you're looking to upgrade parts or requesting help.