1. Firefox
   It has been my Web browser for year, and unless they do something extremely crazy – don’t think I’ll be moving away for one of the other browsers anytime soon.
2. NoteTab Pro
   NoteTab Pro is another program I have been using forever and have never found anything better. Three reasons I love it are: basic text editing, spell checker and word count. If your a text editor without those three don’t bother me.
3. WinRAR
   Out of all the zipping and un-zipping tools out there, I think WinRAR does the best job and stays out of my way unless I need it. Good stuff all around.
4. VLC Media Player
   I mainly have this one loaded up to play all the wacky video downloaded from the Web that doesn’t play right in your standard video players.
5. CoreFTP Lite
   I am not deeply in love with this FTP client – but it does the job without choking much. If I could find a better client – I’d probably use it instead. Alternatives welcome!
6. Audacity
   A must have for any podcast that is working with a $3 budget. Totally free and easy to use even for a beginner in the audio editing arena.
7. CDBurnerXP Pro 3
   Toss out your old CD burning software because you no longer need it. CDBurnerXP Pro 3 does for free what some of the other burning packages can’t even get done for $50 or more.
8. XNeat Windows Manager
   This is one I just ran across not too long ago. It allows you to hide things on your taskbar, send anything to the tray, show and hide windows, and a heck of a lot more.
9. Foxit Reader
   Adobe can bite my Web hosting butt. Foxit Reader gives me a PDF reader that doesn’t ask to update itself every five minutes with crap I don’t need. Thank you Foxit!
10. OpenOffice.org
    Anybody who says you can’t live day to day inside of Open Office is wrong. For me, at least – it does what it needs to do when I need it to do something. Usually I only use it for editing and creating invoices though so maybe I’m not the spokesperson they are looking for.

What about you? What do you think of these suggestions – or can you suggest a replacement for one? Let me know and make sure to leave some links for them as well.

Those people are not the ones needing help. The people needing help are the ones that just spend a few hours Online each night and want to find something and happen to stumble across a few bad links and get themselves infested with badness. If you find yourself in this camp, read on.

Surf the Web Like You Have a Brain

The number best thing you can do for yourself is to surf smarter. Don’t go looking for crazy midget midnight cracks for your favorite image editor. Stay away from places that just do not seem right. One tool that will help you tell the good places from the bad places is McAfee’s SiteAdvisor. It will give you the red light and green light warnings for good and bad places Online.

Be More Careful With Your E-mailing Ways

Another helpful tip for folks who might not be in the know would be to be careful what you open in your E-mails. We have all heard the “don’t open E-mail attachments” rule. It is a good one.

Follow it!

I don’t care if you know who sent it – still, do not open it. If you really want to check it out, call the person on the phone or E-mail them real quick and ask. If the say, “Yeah, I sent you those naughty photos of (insert your favorite celebrity here)” then go ahead and open it. If they say, “Hu?” then get rid of it as soon as possible.

Don’t Search Google for Free Crap

Remember that old saying, “If you have to ask, you’ll never know”? Well it is true as well. If you type in to Google “give me free music downloads of (insert famous recording artist here)” you are going to get yourself into trouble.

The days of the old Napster ways have come and gone and it is time to find new ways of finding your free stuff. Look into indy bands, find free tunes on the artists’ Web sites that you actually know, or break down and buy the damn music.

Hopefully this will be a good beginners’ guide for getting around the Web without getting yourself in trouble. The best thing you can do is use common sense – and if you don’t have that, then make sure that you browse the World Wide Web with a friend who does.