New year, new PC

Computing hope springs eternal every new year. Certainly 2008 will be the year we finally get our ducks in a row, right? No more in-boxes filled with hundreds of unread messages. No more junk files from apps uninstalled long ago. We'll keep adequate free space on our hard drives, and even defragment them regularly! (Well, at least for a month or two.)

For those of you who scored new PCs for Christmas or your year-end holiday of choice, it's literally a year of new computing. Your top-of-the-line, screaming-fast, quad-core machine is only as good as what you can do with it, however, and that requires quality software.

Luckily for you, we've collected some of our favorite downloadable software for Windows in two collections perfect for new PC owners. Our Security Starter Kit ensures that your pricey investment is properly protected, and the Windows Starter Kit provides a bevy of top-rated products from a wide range of categories that are free or free to try. Start editing pictures, chatting online, swapping files, or burning music mixes with this collection of essential apps for new PC owners.

If you weren't lucky enough to get a new PC for the new year, there are a variety of methods for making your old computer run like new. Along with the aforementioned optimizing your hard drive, the new year is always a good time to put those external hard drives and DVD burners to use, backing up photos and old music that you don't need to keep on your local drive. If you're archiving photos or compressible media formats, check out Jason Parker's Killer Download column about top file-compression alternatives to stash your files away as tightly and securely as possible.

Another program that can sometimes provide performance benefits (and save your sanity) is the free security utility CCleaner. It lets you quickly and easily remove "junk files" on your machine, i.e. items that CCleaner suspects you no longer want or need. It's critical,to only remove files you positively know are safe to delete, but the software also provides backup functionality that should prevent you from wrenching up your Registry works. For me, the easy ability to remove unwanted installers from my Add/Remove Programs panel is a major bonus.

Jason Parker explains a bit more about CCleaner and other useful performance utilities in another Killer Download column titled Get the most out of XP.

Do you have any New Year's PC resolutions, or yearly rites of passage to help your aging machine through another productive year? Tell me about it in the comments.