If you recently picked up a new computer, consider yourself one of the lucky ones. The rest of us are still waiting for our chance to justify the expenditure.

To mitigate the cost of ownership, there are some free goodies out there you may want to consider installing while your computer is still fresh out-of-the-box. And though ‘free’ in the computing world doesn’t necessarily equate to ‘good’, all of the software listed below has been thoroughly geek-tested and is wholly SuperGeeks-approved:

Install Firefox. Assuming you bought a Windows machine, it will come with Internet Explorer pre-loaded. There are better browsers than Internet Explorer. Firefox, for example, is both faster and safer than IE. Use it instead. You can download it for free here: www.getfirefox.com.

Install PCDecrapifier. As you probably know well, new PCs come with a bunch of trial software pre-installed. This includes trial subscriptions of Norton and McAfee antivirus software. We geeks call this stuff crap-ware. Basically, it’s useless and hogs your computer’s precious resources. Remove it all asap. Here’s a free tool to help you get the job done: www.pcdecrapifier.com

Install Avast. There are several good, free antivirus programs. There is also a lot of bogus software masquerading as legitimate solutions when – in reality – they are fake and sometimes malicious apps. For a list of rogue software, go here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_security_software It’s big business! For real protection from viruses, install Avast. It’s free. You can get it here: www.avast.com. Run it weekly. Delete or quarantine everything it finds.

Install SpyBot Search & Destroy. Everyone has their favorite anti-spyware solution. I like SpyBot Search & Destroy. There are other good ones out there, but if you’re unfamiliar with those, just stick with this: www.safer-networking.org. Run it daily. Delete everything it finds.

Install CCleaner. Remember the crap-ware I talked about earlier? New computers come laden with crap. But old computers will accumulate crap over time through standard use. That crap will bog down your system and may even make it unstable. To keep your computer healthy, run ‘Crap Cleaner’ daily. It’s free. You can get it here: www.ccleaner.com. Delete everything it finds.

Enjoy your new computer. Take good care of it. Let me know if I can help with anything.

James Kerr is Chief Geek at SuperGeeks. You can reach him at (808) 531-GEEK and www.SuperGeeks.net. Twitter: SuperGeeks

They say the best things in life are free…But on the internet, ‘free’ is a whole different world.

With hackers always searching for new ways to con the innocent, ‘free’ on the web usually means ‘potentially dangerous.’  It’s no secret that free downloads of music and video, for example, often contain malicious software secretly embedded inside.

However, when it comes to Microsoft and the fierce battles to gain market share, free can mean access to a pretty darn good product.  As you may know, Google Docs is a suite of online tools that can do just about everything Microsoft Office can do.  Google Docs is free.  The idea is to offer the software for free so everyone will jettison Microsoft Office and migrate to Google Docs.

Zoho (www.Zoho.com ) is another player in this market space.  They, too, offer a set of free online tools for a wide range of applications.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been playing with their Wiki and I must say I like Zoho a lot.  It’s intuitive, user friendly and useful for both home and business.

One of the challenges we face as a company is how can we efficiently capture and disseminate knowledge.  Standard operating proceedures are critical to ensuring quality of service and smooth operations.

In the old days, we would have created a 3-ringed binder describing how to do specific tasks.  New and veteran employees would reference the manual as-needed.

Using Zoho Wiki now as an internal, password protected handbook, we’re able to accomplish everything we need plus two new benefits:

1. It’s readily available anytime/anywhere online
2. Anyone can contribute to it anytime, so the content is fresh and relevant.

We also use Zoho for our corporate clients.  Instead of having each employee send troubleshooting request to us via email, we have employees post action items on on an internal, Zoho-based bulletin board.  They can now assign levels of urgency, management can help prioritize requests, and the SuperGeeks can post messages next to each action item.  The bottom line:  The whole support process is now infinitely more effective and efficient.

To learn more about Zoho and how it may fit into your home or office, see:

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoho

Tools for teachers: http://zohochallenge.com/OnlineTest/Candidate.do

Gadgets for geeks: http://gadgets.zoho.com/zc/index.do

CRM for business: http://crm.zoho.com/crm/login.sas

Planner for families: http://planner.zoho.com/login

Have fun exploring Zoho.  I am confident you will be pleasantly surpised.