I’ve blogged before about free software. I just wanted to provide some updates on what I’m working on in this realm.
First, FreeNAS is still going. I’ve not upgraded to the latest release yet because my older version is still working just fine. It was up for over three months till a power outage knocked the box offline. It came right back up when I powered it back on. Still, I will be upgrading very soon.

Ubuntu has gone to version 8.04. Hopefully, this will fix those problems people experienced with the 7.10 release. (Remember, Ubuntu version numbers consist of the [year.month] of release, thus October 2007 release was 7.10 and April 2008 is 8.04). I’ve upgraded my laptop to this version, but haven’t used it much as my main PC is now my low power desktop box I built some months ago.

I have several new products to try out. I’ve gathered this list based on good things I’ve read about each product. I haven’t tried them yet mind you!

For personal firewalls on Windows based PC’s, it looks like my old friend Zone Alarm is an also ran. It’s still better than the Microsoft products, but I just read a review in which the top performer was Commodo Personal Firewall. I have a hardware firewall in place, but I plan to try this one out to give an extra level of protection. It has new features that can protect a computer in novel ways, including protection against rootkits, malware, and viruses.

I’ve been a long time user of AVGFree for free anti-virus, but Avira AntiVir Personal is scoring much better so I’ll be giving that a whirl.

The next product I’ll be looking into is Mint Refreshing Money Management. This is a Quicken-like product, but free.

It’s important to mention a couple of things about Commodo and Mint. Despite being free, these companies do make money… they are for profit entities. They just use unique business models. Commodo’s primary business is providing eMerchants with digital certifcates to secure online transactions. They provide free personal computer software to consumers to instill more confidence in online transactions among the public. This is turn should, in theory, drive more eMerchants to do business with them.

Mint uses a referral fee based model. This one is a little suspicious. Basically, when you enter your financial data into Mint, it looks for ways to help you save money, such as putting savings into higher yield accounts, or moving credit card debt to a lower interest rate card. In some cases, Mint earns money from referral fees. They claim that they list all of the ways you can save/earn more money, and list the best ones first, regardless of any referral fees they may or may not get.

I’m always on the lookout for great free software so drop me a line if you havea recommendation.