Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.9

Platform Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista
Type freeware
Manufacturer Mozilla Corporation
Size 5.55MB
Free Download

Mozilla Firefox, the popular web browser, caused a stir with the original release, but apart from minor changes, visual improvements and security fixes, there haven’t been a wide range of new features since the original 1.x release. This is all about to change, with the release of Firefox 2.0. Windows version available to download from this page.

Current new 2.0 features include anti-phishing support, useful for acknowledging the difference between a legitimate website and a fake site set up for the purposes of obtaining your personal information.

Other new features include enhanced tabbed browsing, the ability to open tabs closed accidentally, spell checking within web forms, a search plugin manager, combined and enhanced Add-Ons manager and much more, including support for new web standards.

You can download other language editions of the Windows Firefox 2.0, as well as Linux and Mac OS X versions from the Mozilla website.

CCleaner 2.02.527

Platform Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista
Type freeware
Manufacturer www.ccleaner.com
Size 2.51MB
Free Download

Just as regular exercise is good for your health, a regular workout for your hard disk is recommended. Windows has its own tools for doing this, but CCleaner makes a slightly better job of it.

The application is free to use and shows the door to all kinds of temporary files, from temporary internet files to old automatic back-ups from application such as Office XP and file sharing software. It also shakes out old entries from your computer's registry, such as unistallers and invalid shortcuts. The makers guarantee that it contains no apyware or adware.

CCleaner is one of the more popular system cleansing and optimisation tools available. This is the major v2 release incorporating a number of new enhancements. For instance, the new version is completely re-written and is much faster and analysing and cleansing your system. It ships with a brand new user-interface and is available in a compact version, so you could take it with you on a portable USB stick and use it to cleanse a PC that you've used in a web cafe or other location. Of course, there are also a number of other tweaks and improvements.

AntiVir Personal Edition 7.06.00.270

Platform Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista
Type freeware
Manufacturer Avira
Size 21MB
Free Download

Virus attacks are all too common and Avira AntiVir can protect against these menaces and others including worms, trojans and dialers.

The AntiVir Guard is constantly working in the background and checks every file as it is used by Windows or other software. This includes heuristic scanning to check for viruses that have not been formally identified.

Scans can also be started manually or scheduled at daily or weekly intervals.

Should a virus be found, it can either be removed or moved to a quarantine area.

This download will only work with Windows 2000/XP/Vista. A separate program for Windows 98 and ME can be downloaded from the AntiVir website.

Maxthon 2.0.5.7845

Platform Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista
Type freeware
Manufacturer Maxthon International Limited
Size 2.46MB
Free Download

In the past, Internet Explorer has received a lot of bad press for lack of updates, security issues, poor CSS support and more. However, since the release of Internet Explorer 7, we now have a web browser that offers tabbed browser, a much improved web engine and enhanced security features.

When you install Internet Explorer 7 on your system, the installed HTML web core is built in to Windows (and this element is very hard to remove), there have been a number of attempts to create a replacement for Internet Explorer that take this core HTML engine and add additional features to produce a even better web browser.

Maxthon is one of the more popular Internet Explorer replacement browsers and is constantly updated.

The newest version Maxthon 2 contains a new streamlined interface, which looks a bit like a mix of the Mac OS X Safari web browser and Firefox. Other features include multi-user support from the same web browser, so each user has their own preferences. There are tons of other minor updates, too.