How to Build A Computer
A Step
by Step Beginner's Guide on Building a custom computer.
We make it easy with a detailed step by step instructional guide.
No prior computer experience necessary, anyone can
do it.
Go from intimidation to fun, and understand how a PC
works!
Pictorial guide to give you an overview of every
major step in the process.
Use the information to start your own customer
computer business.
104 page guide written in plain English that is
designed to be easy to read, no technical jargon!
Bonus software included to help you get started
(scroll below).
Designed for all ages and all skill and experience
levels!
Original publication from ADV Plans, LLC.
Learn how we do it! |
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Have you ever thought about building your
own PC? Actually buying a motherboard and a case along with all the
supporting components and assembling the whole thing yourself? Are you
tired of going into your local big box store and finding out that the store
bought off the shelf computers are either of very poor quality or very
expensive? The only solution is to buy the components you want and put it
together yourself. Our guide can show you how to do that. |
Here are three
reasons why you might want to consider taking the plunge:
1. You will be able
to create a custom machine that exactly matches your needs.
No more settling for what some company thinks you want.
2. It will be much
easier to upgrade your machine in the future because you
will understand it completely. The process will also
help you understand how to troubleshoot it and fix it later.
No more waiting on the phone for tech support in India
3. You may be able to
save some money. Spend the money on what components
are important to you, and don't spend any on components that
are not.
And, if you
have never done it before, you will definitely learn
a lot about computers. But if you haven't done
it before, the biggest question is where to start.
You need to know how to pick out the right
components so that everything is compatible, and you
want to make sure you buy everything you need.
In this 104 page
guide, with step by step instructions, with color
pictures, we'll take you through the entire process
of building a computer. |
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You'll
learn how to choose the parts you will use, how to buy them
and how to put them all together. When you're done, you will
have exactly the machine that you need.
This guide will arrive to you on a
CD-ROM, in PDF format. This guide consists
of the following topics:
Introduction and
Game Plan
Choosing the parts
The Heart of your PC
The Secondary Parts
Accessories and Peripherals
Buying your parts
Building your System
Preparation and Safety
Tools you need
System Build
CPU, Motherboard and RAM
Motherboard and Power Supply into the case
Installing the Video Card
Installing the drives
Expansions and other accessories
Power it up
Choosing the Operating System
Installing Linux
Installing Windows
Additional Software Needs
Drivers
Updates and Security
Productivity
Optimizing and Overclocking
Wrap up
Will
this guide make you a computer expert? No, of course,
not. But what this step by step instructional guide is
intended to do is to set you down the path of being able to
confidently buy the parts for your own computer and teach
you how you need to assemble them properly. If you
have never built a computer before, but are up for the
challenge, this guide is a must have starting point for any
new computer builder.
Once you finish building your new computer, the first thing
you will need is some software!
We are
also including the below software FREE
on this CD-ROM that this guide will arrive on.
Gnu-Cash
Built as
an alternative to Microsoft Money and Intuit's high dollar
Quicken Suite, GnuCash is personal and small business
financial accounting software. Designed to be easy to
use, yet powerful and flexible, GnuCash allows you to track
bank accounts, stocks, income and expenses. As quick and
intuitive to use as a checkbook register, it is based on
professional accounting principles to ensure balanced books
and accurate reports.
Double-Entry Accounting
Stock/Bond/Mutual Fund Accounts
Small-Business Accounting
Reports, Graphs
QIF/OFX/HBCI
Import, Transaction Matching
Scheduled Transactions
Financial Calculations
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The
GnuCash checkbook-style
register provides a custom, convenient and familiar
interface to entering financial transactions.
The
register supports common checking and credit-card
transactions, as well as income, stock and currency
transactions. The following features are also
provided:
- The ability to
enter split transactions
- The ability to
mark a transaction as cleared or
reconciled
- Autofill
of entered transactions
- The ability to
display multiple accounts in a single
register window
- A summary bar
that displays all of the relevant account's
balance information
- Many options to
customize the appearance and the display
style
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You
can create recurring transactions with a high level
of customization of amounts and timeline. You can
also set an automatic reminder when a transaction is
due.
An
assistant that runs when
GnuCash is started allows scheduled
transactions to be postponed without canceling or
entering them before the due date.
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GnuCash has an
integrated module to display graphs of your
financial data in the form of:
- Barcharts
- Piecharts
- Scatter plots
GnuCash also comes complete with a full suite
of standard and customizeable reports, such as:
- Balance Sheet
- Profit & Loss
- Portfolio
Valuation
- and many others.
Graphs
and reports can be highly and easily customized in
appearance and contents, in order to fullfill every
user's need.
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Account reconciliation allows the user to
compare the transactions entered in an account
against a bank statement. This operation is very
useful to spot untracked transactions or data entry
errors and ensure that your books match the bank's.
The
GnuCash reconcile tool
with running reconciled and cleared balances makes
reconciling against bank statements an easy task.
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Professional Photo Editing Suite
New
Release!!!
Why spend
$699 for Photoshop, when you
can have professional grade photo editing for a fraction of
the price?
We are including the
FULL INSTALLATION SOFTWARE PROGRAM
of The Gimp Photo Editor
designed to work on Windows XP or Vista, as well as a
version design for Mac OSX (all included). This
software is the full version, not trial or limited in
anyway.
Some of the things you can do:
Touch up and
edit all your photos
Fix Red Eye
Crop, Zoom,
Spin your picture, make it larger or smaller
Colorize or
digitally enhance minor problems in your pictures
SIMPLE AND
EASY PHOTO EDITING! |
Professional Grade Photo Editing Suite
includes the following features:
This program was designed
as a low cost alternative to Adobe Photoshop. It has all the
complex features of Adobe Photoshop, but also tries to simplify the
process of photo enhancement.
Primarily, this is used
as a tool for photo enhancement. Typical uses include resizing and
cropping photos, altering colors, combining multiple images, removing
unwanted image components, and converting between different image
formats, as well as creating graphics and logos. It can also be used to
create basic animated images in GIF format.
The product vision for this software suite is to become a high-end
graphics application for the editing and creation of original images,
icons, graphical elements of web pages and art for user interface
elements. It may also be used as a platform for the development of
cutting-edge scientific image-processing algorithms. But don't let
that intimidate you. You can do the easy stuff, as well as the
hard stuff with this.
Edit your favorite
photos, share them with your friends, save them for future use.
Do you like to Paint?
Not only can edit your photographs, but
you can also use this package as a fully loaded paintshop. All the
basics are there. Brushes, Pencils, Airbrushes, etc. Edit it down
pixel by pixel if you wish. All the regular file formats are
supported. BMP, JPG, GIF, PCX, PNG, TFF, TGA, XPM, and a ton of
others. Convert among many formats at your leisure.
Complex Tools Made Easy
Tools used to manipulate images can be
accessed via the toolbox, through menus, and dialog windows. They
include filters and brushes, as well as transformation, selection, layer
and masking tools.
Perspective
Transformation and Selective Colorization
This makes it easy!
Convert Color to
Black and White EASILY
Restore an old photo:
Convert to Sepia
Add motion to any picture
Correct the exposure on
any picture
Selective Colorization
Sharpen your ordinary
snapshots to turn them into pictures
Change the background on
your picture
Remove objects from
pictures
Remove Red Eye
Tons of text effects
Just good 'ole photo fun,
cropping images
More technical stuff for
the brave
Color: There are several ways of
selecting colors including a using an eyedropper to choose an existing
color, palettes with a limited and color choosers. The built in color
choosers include an RGB/HSV selector or scales, water-color selector,
CMYK selector and a color-wheel selector. Colors can also be selected
using hexadecimal color codes as used in HTML color selection. Indexed
color and RGB color modes are supported natively, other color spaces are
supported using decomposition where each channel of the new color space
becomes a black and white image. CMYK, LAB and HSV are supported this
way. The blend tool can apply a gradient to the surface of an image or
for use with blending, gradients are also integrated into tools such as
the brush tool, when the user paints this way the output color slowly
changes. There are a number of default gradients included, a user may
also create custom gradients with tools provided.
Selections and paths: There are
several tools that can be used to create selections including a
rectangular or circular selection tool, free select tool, fuzzy select
tool (also known as magic wand). More advanced selection tools include
the select by color tool for selecting contiguous regions of color and
the scissors select tool which creates selections semi-automatically
between areas of highly contrasting colors. This also supports a quick
mask mode where a user can use a brush to paint the area of a selection,
visibly this looks much like a ruby lith overlay whilst painting. The
foreground select tool, is an implementation of Simple Interactive
Object Extraction (SIOX) a method used to perform the extraction of
foreground elements, such as a person or a tree in focus. The Paths Tool
allows a user to create vectors (also known as Bézier curves). Paths can
be used to create complex selections around natural curves, paths can
also be named, saved, and painted (or "stroked") with brushes, patterns,
or various line styles.
Image editing: when editing images
there are many tools that can be used, the more common tools include a
paint brush, pencil, airbrush, eraser and ink tools used to create new
or blended pixels. Tools such as the bucket fill and blend tools are
used to change large regions of space in an image and can be used to
help blend images. It also has a selection of smart tools, which are
tools that use more complex mathematics to enable a user to do things
that otherwise would be time consuming or impossible; these smart tools
include the clone tool that copies pixels using a brush, the healing
brush which copies pixels from an area and corrects the tone and color
where it is being used. The perspective clone tool works in a similar
way to the clone tool previously mentioned but also allows a user to
correct for distance changes. The blur and sharpen tool is a brush that
blurs and sharpens. Finally the dodge and burn tool is a brush that
makes target pixels lighter (dodges) or darker (burns). A list of
transform tools include the align tool, move, crop, rotate, scale,
shear, perspective and flit tools.
Layers, layer masks and channels: an image being edited can
consist of many layers sitting in a stack, the user manual suggests that
"A good way to visualize an image is as a stack of transparencies" where
in this terminology each transparency is a layer. Each layer in an image
is made up of several channels, in an RGB image there are normally 3 or
4 channels these consist of a red, green and blue channel individually
these would each look like slightly different grey images but when put
together they make a complete image. The fourth channel that may be part
of a layer is the alpha channel (or layer mask), this channel measures
opacity where a whole or part of an image can be completely visible,
partially visible or invisible. Text layers can be created using
the text tool, allowing a user to write on an image. Text layers are
able to be transformed in several ways, such as converting it to a path
or selection.
Automation, scripts and plugins: It has approximately 150
standard effects and filters, including Drop Shadow, Blur, Motion blur
and Noise. Program operations can be automated with scripting
languages.
There is no need to
purchase another photo editing suite when this professional grade
package will do the same thing for a fraction of the price. A full
manual in pdf format is included on the disk.
Professional Office Suite
(The Office Suite is included for Windows only)
The new alternative to Microsoft Office
for pennies comparatively! 100% compatible with MS Office files
and formats. The menus and interface is what you are used to after
using Microsoft products. Documents can be saved in MS Office
format, and your old Office documents can be opened in Open Office.
A license of Office Professional will cost you over $500. Try Open
Office for a fraction of that and watch it do nearly everything that MS
Office does!
Compatible with all old versions of Office. Will run on ANY
version of Windows.
Writer (Alternative to Microsoft Word)
WRITER has everything you would expect from a modern, fully
equipped word processor or desktop publisher.
It's simple enough for a quick memo, powerful enough to
create complete books with contents, diagrams, indexes, etc. You're free to
concentrate on your message - while WRITER makes it look great.
The Wizards takes all the hassle out of producing standard
documents such as letters, faxes, agendas, minutes, or carrying out more
complex tasks such as mail merges. You are of course free to create your own
templates.
Styles and Formatting puts the power of style
sheets into the hands of every user.
Trap typing mistakes on the fly with the AutoCorrect
dictionary, which can check your spelling as you type.
Reduce typing effort with AutoComplete, which
suggests common words and phrases to complete what you are typing.
AutoFormat takes care of the formatting as you
write, leaving you free to concentrate on your message.
Text frames and linking give you the power
to tackle desktop publishing tasks for newsletters, flyers, etc. laid out
exactly the way you want them to be.
Increase the usefulness of your long, complex documents by
generating a table of contents or indexing terms, bibliographical
references, illustrations, tables, and other objects.
Email your documents - WRITER offers direct connection to
email software.
Make your documents freely available with WRITER's HTML
export to the web, or publish in Portable Document Format (.pdf) to
guarantee that what you write is what your reader sees.
Save your documents in OpenDocument format, the new
international standard for office documents. This XML based format means
you're not tied in to WRITER. You can access your documents from any
OpenDocument compliant software.
WRITER can of course read all your old Microsoft Word
documents, or save your work in Microsoft Word format for sending to people
who are still locked into Microsoft products.
Calc (Alternative to Microsoft Excel)
CALC is the spreadsheet program you've always wanted.
Newcomers find it intuitive and easy to learn; professional data miners and
number crunchers will appreciate the comprehensive range of advanced
functions.
Advanced
DataPilot technology makes it easy to pull in raw data from corporate
databases; cross-tabulate, summarise, and convert it into meaningful
information.
Natural language formulas let you create formulas
using words (e.g. "sales - costs").
The Intelligent Sum Button inserts a sum function
or a subtotal automatically, depending on context.
Wizards guides you through choosing and using a
comprehensive range of advanced spreadsheet functions.
Styles and Formatting makes it easy to apply
flexible cell formatting options, including freely rotating contents,
templates, backgrounds, borders, and many more. You can be your own
spreadsheet expert thanks to templates with built-in functions,
allowing you to concentrate on your real work.
Scenario Manager allows "what if ..." analysis at
the touch of a button - e.g. compare profitability for high / medium / low
sales forecasts.
Hide or reveal Design Themes with a single click -
use CALC's defaults or add your own.
Save your spreadsheets in OpenDocument format, the new
international standard for office documents. This XML based format means
you're not tied in to CALC. You can access your spreadsheets from any
OpenDocument compliant software.
Of course, you are free to use your old Microsoft Excel
spreadsheets, or save your work in Excel format for sending to people who
are still locked into Microsoft products. If all they want to see is your
results, then use Portable Document Format (.pdf) - no need to buy any extra
software.
Impress (Alternative to Microsoft Powerpoint)
IMPRESS
is a truly outstanding tool for creating effective multimedia presentations.
Your presentations will stand out with 2D and 3D clip art, special effects,
animation, and high-impact drawing tools.
Master Pages simplify the task of preparing your
materials.
A complete range of Views are supported: Drawing /
Outline / Slides / Notes / Handouts to meet all the needs of presenters and
audiences, plus an optional multi-pane view to put all the tools at your
fingertips.
IMPRESS has a complete range of easy-to-use drawing and
diagramming tools to spice up your presentation.
'Park' your most commonly used drawing tools around your
screen ready for single-click access.
Slide show Animation and Effects bring your
presentation to life. Fontworks provides stunning 2D and 3D images from
text. Create lifelike 3D images with astounding speed and response.
Save your presentations in OpenDocument format, the new
international standard for office documents. This XML based format means
you're not tied in to IMPRESS. You can access your presentations from any
OpenDocument compliant software.
Of course, you are free to use your old Microsoft PowerPoint
presentations, or save your work in PowerPoint format for sending to people
who are still locked into Microsoft products. Alternatively, use IMPRESS's
built-in ability to create Flash (.swf) versions of your presentations.
Draw (Alternative to Microsoft Visio)
DRAW
- from a quick sketch to a complex plan, DRAW gives you the tools to
communicate with graphics and diagrams.
'Park' your most commonly used drawing tools around your
screen ready for single-click access.
Use Styles and Formatting to put all your graphics
styles at your finger tips.
Manipulate objects, rotate in two or three dimensions; the
3D controller puts spheres, rings, cubes, etc. at your disposal.
Arrange objects: group, ungroup, regroup, and edit
objects while grouped. Sophisticated rendering let you create
photorealistic images with your own texture, lighting effects, transparency,
perspective, and so on.
Smart connectors make short work of flowcharts,
organization charts, network diagrams, etc. Define your own 'glue points'
for connectors to 'stick' to.
Dimension lines automatically calculate and display
linear dimensions as you draw.
Use the picture Gallery for clipart; create your
own art and add it to the Gallery.
Save your graphics in OpenDocument format, the new
international standard for office documents. This XML based format means
you're not tied in to DRAW. You can access your graphics from any
OpenDocument compliant software.
Import graphics from all common formats (including
BMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG, TIFF, and WMF).
Use DRAW's free ability to create Flash (.swf) versions of
your work.
Base (Alternative to Microsoft Access)
The new way to access databases
New to Version 2, BASE enables you to manipulate database
data seamlessly within OpenOffice. Create and modify tables, forms, queries,
and reports, either using your own database or BASE’s own built-in HSQL
database engine. BASE offers a choice of using Wizards, Design
Views, or SQL Views for beginners, intermediate, and advanced
users.
Maintaining your data
With BASE, you can:
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Create new tables for your data - and also change them
as your needs change
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Maintain indexes on the tables to make data access
faster
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View a table in an editing grid and add, change, and
delete records
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Use the Report Wizard to produce impressive reports from
your data
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Use the Form Wizard to create 'instant' database
applications
Using your data
Using BASE, you can not only browse your data, but also:
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Perform simple (single column) or complex (multi-column)
sorts
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View subsets of your data with simple (one-click) or
complex (logical query) filters
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Create powerful queries to show your data in new ways,
including summaries and multi-table views
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Produce reports in a wide variety of formats using the
Report AutoPilot
Technical footnotes
BASE includes a full version of the HSQL database engine,
storing data in XML files. It can also access dBASE files natively for
simple database work.
For more advanced requirements, BASE supports many popular
databases database natively (Adabas D, ADO, Microsoft Access, MySQL), or any
database through industry-standard ODBC and JDBC drivers. It also supports
any LDAP compliant address book, as well as common formats such as Microsoft
Outlook, Microsoft Windows, and Mozilla.
Math (Create equations and formula for your
documents)
MATH
is OpenOffice's component for mathematical equations. It is most commonly
used as an equation editor for text documents, but it can also be used with
other types of documents or stand-alone. When used inside WRITER, the
equation is treated as an object inside the text document. Similarly, one
can also insert these into other OpenOffice programs like CALC and IMPRESS.
Using MATH, there are three main ways of entering a formula:
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Type markup in the equation editor.
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Right-click on the equation editor and select the symbol
from the context menu.
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Select a symbol from the Selection toolbox.
Media Portal Media Center
(The Media Portal Media Center Software is included for Windows only)
What is MediaPortal?
MediaPortal
is an application ideal for turning your PC in a very advanced Multi-Media
Center / HTPC. MediaPortal allows you to listen to your favorite music &
radio, watch your video's and DVD's, view, schedule and record live TV and
much more.
Turn your PC into the ultimate Media Center with Media
Portal. You can store, share, and enjoy all of your phoos, all of your
music, your home videos, and even live TV in one package.
Designed to function with the XP operating system, you will
get the same power and reliability you've come to expect and demand.
Media Portal is cheap alternative to Tivo, or Microsoft's
Windows Media Center Edition (WinMCE). Media Portal, is a media center
software that runs on Windows XP. To run Media Portal, you will need
Windows XP with Service Pack 2 installed and with .NET enabled, a computer
capable of playing multimedia content, and, if you want to play and record
live TV, you will need a compatible TV Tuner Card. Media portal allows
you to turn your PC into an advance Multi Media Center PC, DVR. A
remote control is not included. You can listen to your favorite music
& radio, watch all your videos and DVD's, view and record live TV, and so
much more!
General
My TV
My Video / MyDVD
My Pictures
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Watch your pictures/photos
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Slideshow support with nice transitions
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Zoom in/out, rotate pictures (rotation is remembered
next time)
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Pause, previous/next picture
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Delete picture(s)
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Background music, either songs from my music, or radio
from my radio
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Auto thumbnail generation
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Sort in Name, Date, Size
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View in List, Icon or Big Icon display
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Ken Burns effect slideshow
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Filmstrip view
My Music
My Radio
My weather
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Show the latest weather information
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Support for multiple cities
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Current temperature, 3 Day Forecast
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Temperature (in degrees C/F)
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UV Index, Humity (%), Wind (mph/kph), etc
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Support for live images from internet, like:
- Satellite images
- Temperature images
- UV Index images
- Winds images
- Humidity images
- Precipitation images
More features!
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Launching external programs like:
- Games
- Emulators
- Email application
- Internet Browser
- IRC client
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Burner let's you burn all type of files and folders
directly to CD/DVD from within the MediaPortal interface
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Showing RSS news feeds
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Read and send mail within MediaPortal
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Monitor computer hardware:
- CPU temperature
- Motherboard Temperature
- Hard disk Temperature
- Used Memory
- Used Virtual Memory
- etc
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Allow the PC automatically go to standby/hibernation and
wakes it when there is a scheduled recording! Just like a real VCR!
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Has different alarm features
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You can even play included games like Tetris or Sudoku!
Clamwin Antivirus
(The Anti-Virus software is included for Windows only)
- Free Virus updates for life!
- Never pay subscription fees
again, ever!
- Compatible with all versions of
Windows
The ultimate in Windows Security.
Discover the new open source alternative to those high priced commercial
anti virus programs that always seem to let viruses through. For Anti
Virus users, open source is always better. Why? Because by
its very nature, open source software is developed as a consortium of
thousands of users worldwide. Some of the best programmers in the
world contribute for the greater good. This is a must have if you do
not have any virus protection on your machine or if you are stuck paying
monthly fees to some big software company. Free yourself from the big
corporations!
Main Screen:
Configuration Screen:
Update Screen
Scan Screen:
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