Maintaining my real estate investment software requires a lot of time on the computer. As a result, in addition to a wide-range of software applications for my web, I need a ton of computer utilities to keep my computer optimized and operating in peak performance.

Since you’re reading this article, it’s safe to assume that you do, too; therefore, I thought it needful to share 5 utilities that I found on the web and use that don’t cost a cent. These quality utilities are FREE! Moreover, they work perfectly.

1. Secure Zip Express – This free utility software by PKW zips and unzips files. There is an upgradeable version that does cost, but this free download works very well.  http://www.pkware.com/software-data-security/free
2. Glary Utilities – This is a suite of utilities including customizable cleaning tools for your hard drive, Registry, and shortcuts. I found this in “Smart Computing – Oct 2008″ and really like it. http://www.glaryutilities.com
3. PDF Creator – This free utility software creates PDF files from nearly any Windows application. This is a great alternative to other PDF utilities costing hundreds of dollars. http://www.pdfforge.org/products/pdfcreator/
4. AVG Free Anti-Virus – This free utility software offers very good protection against viruses and spyware. http://free.avg.com/homepage-appf8
5. Mozilla Firefox – This browser is far better way to browse the web than with Internet Explorer. If you still use IE, dump it for this free browser. http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/

Hopefully you will check these FREE utilities out and find them as useful to your computing experience as I have. As I said earlier, my business is real estate investment software; I’m not associated with these companies in any way. It just seemed like a friendly thing to let you know about them.

About The Author

James R. Kobzeff is the developer of ProAPOD® - leading real estate investment software since 2000. Create complete and professional cash flow, rate of return, and profitability analysis presentations in minutes! See it at => www.proapod.com

In an effort to keep ProAPOD real estate investing software customers and subscribers to this real estate investing blog informed, we have created a new page on our ProAPOD website filled with real estate industry links to helpful real estate resources.

Here is what we’ve included thus far.

Real Estate News
Inman News
RIS Media
Realty Times
Real Estate Forum
…and MORE

Trade Associations
American Real Estate Society
National Association of Realtors
California Association of Realtors
Illinois Association of Realtors
…and MORE

Real Estate Research & Education
Real Estate Center at Texas A&M
Council of Residential Specialists
…and MORE

Loan Underwriters
Fannie Mae
Freddie Mac
…and MORE

Real Estate Consumer News
Real Estate Journal from Wall Street Journal
New York Times Real Estate
…and MORE

Government Sites
Department of Housing and Urban Development
Federal Housing Authority
Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight
Federal Cititizens Information Center on Housing
Federal Home Sales
…and MORE

Real Estate Information
Wikipedia Article on Real Estate
DMOZ Open Directory Real Estate
…and MORE

You can navigate to this page from our home page at ProAPOD Real Estate Investment Software, then clicking Real Estate Industry Links at the bottom of the page. Please feel free to suggest others, and report back to me if you find any broken links.

All ProAPOD® Real Estate Investment Software reports can be emailed. This does, however, require a third-party software program capable of creating a PDF document.

Adobe Acrobat is a PDF software program, but it is rather expensive (several hundred dollars). PDFCreator is a free PDF software program and in my opinion works just as well as Adobe Acrobat. For this reason ProAPOD® Real Estate Investment Software does include a link in its menu that will take you to the PDFCreator download page.

This link is provided in all ProAPOD® real estate investment software solutions as a convenience to our users. We are not connected with PDFCreator in any way and receive no compensation for referring their software to our real estate software users.

To access PDFCreator from our toolbar, click Help > Online > PDFCreator. This will take you to their download page. Simply follow the online instructions.