Some great software I use

I was recently on the search for a new firewall after having so many people complain about it (and having a few issues myself). I asked a forum that was very happy to criticise ZoneAlarms what they recommended to use as people were quick to flame and not explain.

Sadly, despite making very clear I wasn't interested in flaming, the majority of the responses I got back were still flames about ZoneAlarms but there were a couple of nice people who responded with useful suggestions. I thought as there seems to be very little advice about suitable firewall replacements to ZoneAlarms I would post what I've got installed as well as a couple of other useful programs in the process.

Firstly let me explain why I feel the comment "If you've got a hardware firewall you don't need a software firewall" is a ridiculous statement. My reasoning dates back to Greek times -notably the Trojan war when seeking entrance to Troy, Odysseus had a large wooden horse (the sacred animal of Poseidon) made as a gift. As I'm sure everyone is aware, the horse was hollow and filled with a load of soldiers which popped out after the Trojans were done celebrating the end of the siege and let the rest of the army in through the front gates to slaughter all the drunk Trojans. Anyway, back to my point, yes you may have a hardware firewall that will stop nasty attackers getting in but what happens if you unwittingly invite one in? The likelihood is it'll invite a load more in after it which will end up crippling your computer. So for that reason I have a software firewall to monitor the traffic in and out on my machine.

The software

The first thing to note here is that all this software (at time of posting) is free -what can I say? I'm a cheapskate ;) The links are to the file download page so please let me know if they've broken since posting.

• Firewall: Comodo Firewall Pro (www.personalfirewall.comodo.com)
• Virus Scan: avast! 4 Home Edition (www.avast.com)
• Spyware: SpyBot Search and Destroy (www.spybot.info)
• Spam Detector: K9 (http://keir.net/k9.html) -previously I got on very well with SpamBayes (http://spambayes.sourceforge.net/) which was very good but appears to conflict with Comodo Firewall Pro
• Screen grabs: Gadwin PrintScreen - Screen capture software (http://www.gadwin.com/printscreen/) or Cropper in C# which just gets better and better (http://blogs.geekdojo.net/brian/articles/Cropper.aspx)
• Blogging: Although in the past I've tended to use the built in WYSIWYG editor of dasBlog I've recently been trying out Windows Live Writer (windowslivewriter.spaces.live.com) I've got a few issues with it -like the fact it refuses to close tags -or even leave your code alone, but on the whole it's a really useful utility that massively reduces the amount of time taken to post.
• Desktop Search: Windows Desktop Search (www.microsoft.com) -I'll have to post separately about this as it's a superb replacement to Google's Desktop search which I ran into issues with.
• Log file parser: Funnel Web Analyzer (www.quest.com) -loaded with a modified Funnel Web Analyzer custom settings file which includes additional browsers, bots and search engines.
• Keeping track of files on CDs/DVDs: Catalog Now 2.0 -not bad for a CodeProject project, I was going to get a CD Stakka from Imation but this has saved me around £80, really easy and simple to use. I would name your archives with a number and then the reference, then write this number on the CD itself, that way you'll quickly be able to find it.
• Identifying on screen colours: In FireFox I have a little colour picker but in Windows I use ColorPix which is a free screen colour grabber from Color Schemer