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A must for instant messaging and chat users, Trillian simultaneously supports AIM, Yahoo messenger, MSN, ICQ, IRC and Apple Rendezvous — all in a single chat client. Even if you use just one type of chat — say, AIM — Trillian provides a superior, skinnable interface free of ads, pop-ups and spyware. It offers advanced chat features like audio chat, chat rooms, group chats, contact message history, tabbed messaging, mobile messaging, systray notification, emoticons, sounds and buddy icons. Simultaneous multiple connections to the same network enables server-side contact importing, global status changes, typing notification and direct connection for file transfers.

Note: Chicky doesn't go a day without using Trillian.

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As the name suggests, Real Alternative can play RealMedia files, freeing you from dependence on Real Networks' Real(One)Player. Real Alternative supports RealAudio (.RA, .RPM), RealMedia (.RM, .RAM, .RMVB, .RPX, .SMI, .SMIL), RealText (.RT), ReadPix (.RP) and DirectShow formats, as well as RealMedia content embedded in web pages. The user-friendly, customizable installation allows you to install only the components you want. The RealMedia Browser plug-in supports Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Netscape and Opera. Real Alternative is a work in progress, so it's updated fairly often with new features and fixes — and the FAQ (available in both English and Dutch) is impressively comprehensive.

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Ever since my daughter was three years old, she's been noodling around with the Paint program that's built into Windows. Drawing circles, filling them in, scribbling. Now that she's the wise old age of seven, she sees Paint for what it is: pretty much useless. Dad, it doesn’t even have layers. For her, and everyone else who's been underwhelmed by Paint, there's Paint.NET.

This open-source graphics editor is particularly useful for editing photos, with red-eye removal, scanning support, and special effects. And, yes, it does support layers. The download is only 5 MB (you'll need to have Microsoft's .NET framework pre-installed) — making it a handy, lightweight photo editor.

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Are you hooked on Post-It notes? If your desk is cluttered with thousands of little yellow flags, you may want to consider AtNotes. This neat little gem features a digital version of your favorite sticky notes. It goes one step further by making them interactive and customizable. The application takes up only 708kb of hard drive space and gives you the ability to send notes to others on your network. You can easily change the color, size, and font of your notes to match your wallpaper or to highlight important to-dos. Throw in customizable alarms, filing options, and the ability to translate text into any language and you have a tight little program that delivers. Save a tree and download AtNotes, you won’t be disappointed.

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Inexplicably, your computer is running slowly, a new toolbar appears on the Internet Explorer browser, or your browser crashes — these are all indicators that your system might be infected with spyware. Some of the most insidious spyware can infect your computer without any symptoms at all, making it difficult to detect. Like mutated insects that are invulnerable to pesticides, spyware programs can become "smarter" than even your strongest antivirus tools. They can stealthily lodge into your computer system and monitor your web browsing behavior — information that can be sold to marketers. Even with symptomless invasions, Spybot Search & Destroy (which is constantly updated to keep up with the latest threats) detects and removes a multitude of adware files, cleans web usage tracks from your computer and fixes some registry inconsistencies and extended reports — great for both regular users and I.T. professionals alike.

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Microsoft Office, ubiquitous as it is, may find itself competing with OpenOffice.org, which is both an office suite and an open-source project. Like Microsoft Office, OpenOffice.org allows you to create dynamic documents, access and analyze data, and design illustrations and presentations. Work can be published in PDF and Flash (.SWF) formats without additional software. The current version of OpenOffice.org supports complex text layout for non-Roman character languages like Thai, Arabic, Hindi and Hebrew. Perhaps the biggest benefit to OpenOffice.org is that like other open-source projects, you'll find myriad manuals, add-ons and other resources — all freely available to the public.

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If you are a home user needing a simple graphics viewer to dote over family pictures, or a professional in search of a powerful image converter, take IrfanView for a spin. It is a fast, compact and innovative image processor. Features include the ability to capture images from your TWAIN scanner, display slide shows, and do batch conversion. Need a directory full of images rotated by 90 degrees, sharpened, and converted from PNG to JPG? No problem. Name an image file format and you can bet IrfanView supports it, including BMP, JPEG, GIF, PNG, and a multitude of obscure graphics formats.

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Let the news come to you with NetNewsWire Lite, a powerful RSS and Atom newsreader for MacOS X. It gathers and displays news from your favorite web sites and blogs, delivering the latest updates quickly and displaying them in an easy-to-read, three-pane interface. The version of Safari that ships with MacOS 10.4 supports RSS, but NetNewsWire Lite trumps Safari with more options for sorting and displaying newsfeeds. New in version 2 is the ability to synchronize feed subscriptions with other Macs on your network, and support for style sheets.

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