I use WinRAR for compression, or Doozler is another good one, from the makers of WinRAR I believe.
I’ve had my computer with WIN98 for 5 years. And only 4 gigs! I have had a few unique problems that I’ve had to go to tech bulletins to fix, but the rest of the time I use RegistryHealer and defrag once a month; I use PopUp Killer. I regularly clean out the cache and run Norton CleanSweep for more esoteric cleanups, like cookies and DLL’s and duplicates. Last spring I had the Klez virus and started using AVG. I got a popup last week telling me that a Trojan Horse type had been detected attempting to gain access. After that, even though it didn’t get through, or so I thought, my computer was freezing and acting weird, so I went to this site: http://vil.nai.com/vil/stinger/ and ran their virus detector. It doesn’t tell you if it finds anything it just fixes it automatically. I did this because some viruses mess up your Virus program and it won’t be able to detect it. Since I ran that program, my computer has been much faster and no more freezing; faster than it has been in months. Every few months I go through my Favorites and weed out; also programs I no longer use. Whenever possible I use the uninstall program that comes with any programs I download because they do a better job of removing everything. All these are free except the Norton CleanSweep which I got free with another program I bought. I’ve been thinking I should install a firewall but haven’t yet.
I have used a host of AntiVirus programs. Norton is not very good in my opinion. Had a sweep a HD with 6 viruses on it. Norton, Norman, PcCillin and McAfee all failed miserably. Panda Platinum and FProt were the only ones to work.
Panda is very nice with XP or Win 2000 but can cause problems with 9x machines. I havent used it in a while so I dont know how effective it is now. F-Prot is kind of bulky and not very user friendly. It also fails to protect the computers its installed on but it is the ultimate scanner. I recommend it specifically to corporate users. F-Prot was at the time the only virus scanner to be able to find Michaelangelo and was the first to detect Tjernobyl IRC.
I recommend IZArc, which I think is the best freeware file Zip program available today.
And IrFanView, for viewing, converting and tweaking pictures. This program easily replaces half a dozen bloatware utilities.