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2006 is almost over, and 2007 is set to roll in like a lion Are you prepared to make the most of it?

Another one of the tools I use on a daily basis is two-fold… they work together and make a killer team, one that helps deter some viruses that are created for Microsoft applications (those viruses won’t affect my computer running these programs).

So here are my #6 Tools:

Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird

Mozilla Firefox is a web browser and over the last 2 years it has rapidly risen to be one of the major competitors of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. Thunderbird is it’s companion Email Client.. just like IE has Outlook Express.

Firefox was one of the first browsers to include the awesome Tabbed Browsing & RSS Feed capabilities built right in. Several other browsers including Opera also had tabbed browsing long before IE’s version 7 was on the table… Microsoft has really lagged behind in updating IE.

And let’s talk price here for just a second…

Microsoft Windows XP Home with Service Pack 2 = $169.99 US (according to staples.com). This software includes Internet Explorer 6.0 & Outlook Express. If you want the latest version of IE, you’ll have to manually download it after buying Windows. Other add on programs will also cost you your hard earned moolah…

Mozilla Firefox & Thunderbird isn’t available for sale in any store. It’s not even available for sale online. Firefox and Thunderbird are available 100% free .. it takes seconds (ok, maybe minutes on dialup) to download and install. This software is what is called ‘Open Source’ which basically means that any developer can contribute to the Mozilla project… and many do, in the form of themes and plugins which are available by the 100’s now.

Sometime soon I’ll write down my list of favorite Mozilla plug-ins and add on’s, but for today.. here are the links to the repositories:

• https://addons.mozilla.org/
• https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions.php?app=thunderbird

I should also note here that IE & Outlook can only be run on Window’s machines, leaving Mac’s out in the cold .. or left to buy even more software to allow them to run Window’s software on Mac’s. Mozilla’s software can be run on Windows, Linux and Mac operating systems.

Spam and Viruses

For some reason totally unknown to me, ‘bad people’ have fun writing viruses and sending spam. Many viruses are written specifically for Windows software.. meaning that if you visit a website using Internet Explorer and that webpage has a virus embedded in it, your computer is highly susceptible to ‘catching’ that virus, where Firefox will be immune to it. Personally, I’ve received far fewer viruses than I ever did while using IE full-time. I was constantly being affected by viruses of every shape and size even while running 3rd party virus programs while using IE and Outlook Express. Email viruses are even worse.. just viewing the email can spread the virus throughout your computer and even send the virus to everyone in your address book.

Using Firefox and Thunderbird won’t make you 100% immune to these, however they sure do help cut down on the work that your virus software needs to do

As far as spam goes, you can actually teach Thunderbird about spam.. it will automatically mark email that it believes is junk, and with one click, you can have all that junk email sent to the trash can. If it misses some, you just click on a little button to mark the email as junk, and the next time an email is received from that person, Thunderbird will remember that you tossed it in the garbage the last time, and will mark it as garbage for you. It’s a very slick system.