Free Software

The university has negotiated a contract with Symantec, makers of Norton Antivirus, to provide a free version of their corporate antivirus program to all students. It can be downloaded here and the update subscription will never expire.

If Microsoft Office is not preinstalled on your computer, try OpenOffice.org. This is a free software suite designed to mimic Office functionality. Alternately, try using Google’s Docs feature. This allows you to access and edit any of your documents from the internet.

For other useful free software, check Source Forge. All of the programs available on this website are open-source, allowing for freedom and collaboration between the software designers, and many work on all computing platforms.

Windows

Antivirus: AVG Free
A reliable, less system-intensive alternative to Symantec

Anti-Spyware: SpyBot
Utility for cleaning malware not backed by any corporation

Cleanup: CCleaner
Automatically deletes temporary files and cleans up after programs that don’t uninstall properly

Unarchiving: 7-zip
Can create or unzip any kind of file archive

Audio / Video: ffdshow
Allows you to play any audio or video file you come across

Mac

There is a limited amount of Mac-specific free software, although several of the projects hosted at SourceForge are available for all computing platforms. The good news is that OSX has a hefty amount of media software built-in. This includes the iLife suite: iPhoto, iMovie, iWeb, GarageBand, and iDVD.

Linux

All of your software is free! Enjoy!