Software Trends

Software makes things happen. PC Pitstop scans thousands of PC through their on line diagnostics each month. Part of the data that is collected in the scans are the software titles found in the software add/remove section of the Windows registry. By compiling the information, we are able to see the prevalence trends of specific software titles.

We have identified a few titles for our software trend analysis. Many of these selected titles are open source or freeware. It should be noted that the prevalence of these titles only mean that the software was installed on a PC. It does not necessarily reflect if the software is being used by the user.

Selected Open Source Software


Skype

Skype is freeware that lets users make fee exempt VOIP calls to other users of the service. An extremely popular alternative to common landlines and Major VOIP’s like Vonage.


opera

opera is an innovative Internet browser with features that make browsing the web an experience. Currently more than 20 million people have chosen Opera as their preferred internet browser.


Ad-Aware

Ad-Aware remains one of the most popular open source applications because it provides a free spyware removal tool that scans your memory, registry, hard, removable and optical drives for known data-mining, aggressive advertising, and tracking components.


Spybot-Search & Destoy

Spybot-Search & Destroy is a popular proprietary spyware and adware removal program that is applauded for its ease of installation, free updates, and excellent features. However, over the last few years its popularity has been on downward trend because when compared to competitors like Ad-Aware, its cleaning-up skills have been called mediocre.


AntiVir

Avira AntiVir is a free application that was designed for easy to use reliable antivirus protection for home-users only. In 2008 www.AV-Comparatives.org rated Avira number one in having the highest detection rate compared to its major competitors, Norton, AVG, Eset, and many more.


Chrome

Google Chrome is a recently released free web browser that was created to make the web faster, easier, and safer. Another alternative to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, the public stable version of Chrome was just released in December 2008, and by the end of January 2009 it had a share of 1.12% of the web browser market.


Firefox

Mozilla Firefox is a free and open source web browser. Developed as an alternative to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, it currently ranks as the second most popular web browser in use.


Thunderbird

Mozilla Thunderbird is a free and open source email and news client developed by the Mozilla Foundation. Although the basic programs lacks full PIM functionality, the email and news client is an alternative to Microsoft’s Outlook.


OpenOffice.org

OpenOffice.org is a free and open source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets presentations, graphics and databases. The OpenOffice.ord project is primarily sponsored by Sun Microsystems.


VLC Media Player

VLC Media Player is a free and open source multimedia player developed by the VideoLAN project. It can play various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3.ogg,…). It can also be be used as a server to stream unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high bandwidth network.


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