HardwareCentral's Top 10 Software Downloads

Even the finest, fastest PC is landfill without software, so I've decided to do something a bit different for this month's Top 10: to salute the top 10 programs seen behind the scenes here at HardwareCentral. By the time a PC review is posted on the site for you to read, I've usually used most of these applications on the system.

Four are for analyzing a PC's components and benchmarking its performance. Two are for protecting a system from malware. Four are for keeping it running smoothly and securely. Best of all, all ten are free for personal or noncommercial use.

Disagree with my choices? Want to share a toolkit favorite of your own? Jot a note in the comments. Now, check out these ten titles.

SyncToy (4MB): When you move from one PC to another as often as I do, you're setting yourself up for chagrin as you discover the file you're looking for isn't on the PC you're at. Microsoft's free SyncToy is a utility that keeps folders -- those on a home PC, work PC, and USB flash drive, for instance -- in sync, duplicating and updating file additions, deletions, and renames.

Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware (6MB): It's hard to trust a new computer when you don't know where it's been. Malwarebytes' is my favorite free, fast, and simple scanner to check for, detect and clean up most virus or other infections. A $25 upgrade bolsters the manual scanner with an automatic real-time protection module, but for that level of security I prefer ...

Avast 5.0 Free Antivirus (138MB): One of two titans of the free antivirus/antispyware world (the other is AVG), Avast combines a friendly interface (a cheerful voice informs you of updates) with multiple layers or shields against malware attacks. I'm a fan of the $40/year Pro version and its safe-surfing "sandbox," but the free-for-personal-use edition is deservedly a classic.

Speccy (1MB): Curious about what's under the hood of your PC? Speccy offers a handsome set of screens that reveal every detail about your CPU and its caches, memory, motherboard, graphics, hard and optical drives, peripherals, and other components. It's an at-a-glance alternative to poring through Windows' Device Manager to make your PC give up its secrets, and the second thing I run on a new system after Malwarebytes.

Geekbench (6MB): Double-click on the best icon in benchmarking (a pair of glasses held together with adhesive tape) and you'll launch a sophisticated but simple tool that simulates a score of single- and multithreaded application functions en route to a cross-platform ranking of your PC's CPU and memory performance. Registering Geekbench for $20 gets you access to 64- as well as 32-bit benchmarks.

Cinebench (138MB): Another easy-to-use system benchmark, Cinebench combines a CPU-churning multithreaded test (rendering a 3D scene) with a graphics challenge (playing an OpenGL animation). It's a quick -- well, not so quick if you're plodding through the tests on a netbook, but you know what I mean -- and simple way to ballpark a computer's overall performance.

Heaven (230MB): Game benchmarks are valuable ways to judge a system's processing and graphics power, but are complex and a chore to run. Enter Unigine's Heaven 2.1, a benchmark whose richly tailored and textured scenes challenge even the fastest DirectX 10 and 11 graphics cards but which virtually runs itself. A straightforward startup menu lets you specify DirectX or OpenGL features to focus on; after that, you sit back and enjoy the show while your PC gets flogged to within an inch of its life.

CCleaner (3MB): Piriform's famous freeware removes unused files, sweeps away your Internet history and related cache files and cookies, and best of all, prunes away deadwood from that tangled overgrowth of underbrush known as the Windows Registry, all within seconds. Worth the suggested $20 donation.

WinPatrol (1MB): If there's one thing that can bring a powerful PC to its knees, it's the boatload of junk that many programs (I'm looking at you, Acrobat and Java) install and run without your permission at system startup, usually via commands buried in the Registry instead of an easily deleted entry in Windows' Startup group.

CCleaner has a module that lets you review and disable startup items, but WinPatrol combines that with the ability to intercept and say yes or no when a program tries to hijack your startup sequence. Simple, compact, indispensable.

Eraser (9MB): Sometimes deleting a file isn't enough -- you want to shred the sucker, making sure that its sensitive data won't be prey to prying eyes with file undeletion functionality. In my case, it's usually my cheat sheet of various account info and passwords, which I put on any PC I'm using but definitely don't want still there once the system's out of my hands.

Eraser is a free and formidable file destroyer, able to scrub, overwrite, and obliterate files and folders in a dozen different ways, including some that go beyond what the wimps at the Department of Defense consider secure. Don't put personal or business information on your PC without it.