Computer software recommendations (mostly freebies)

[momopi]

* If you're buying a new PC, I recommend ordering it with Windows XP Pro instead of Vista Home. Most new PC's use multi-core CPU's, which require XP Pro for full support. Many current software doesn't work on Windows Vista and, ask yourself why pay to be a beta-tester for Microsoft.

* Many people install MS Office by default, when they rarely use it, or only use Word for word processing. It's a complete waste and installing MS Office will make your Windows run slower. If you only need occasional word processing, try AbiWord (free):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AbiWord
http://www.abisource.com/
http://www.abisource.com/download/ <-- don't forget to get plug-ins

Alternatively, you could install Openoffice:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenOffice.org
http://www.openoffice.org/

If you want a lot of cliparts, try Oxgenoffice version of Openoffice:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooop

* For web browsing, I recommend Firefox:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Firefox
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/

I also like K-Meleon for browsing mostly text pages:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-meleon
http://kmeleon.sourceforge.net/

* For anti-virus, my favorite is Norton/Symantec Anti-Virus, Corporate Edition (never expires). I don't like Norton 360 or their internet suites, those are processor hogs.

If you cannot get a copy of NAV Corp Edition, there are other, free products avail like Avast, which has a great Boot-Time scan feature:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avast!
http://www.avast.com/

I also recommend Spybot S&D for anti-spyware:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spybot_-_Search_&_Destroy
http://www.safer-networking.org/en/home/index.html

Google pack also has a good program called PC Tools Spyware Doctor:
http://pack.google.com/

Make sure you only select what you want to download from there. They also have a free norton AV scanner, but it's a bit clugy. You can also get Skype to make free computer to computer calls. I usually install Spyware Doctor, then uninstall Google Pack Downloader utility to save memory.

* For registry cleaner, try Eusing free registry cleaner:
http://www.eusing.com/free_registry_cle ... leaner.htm

It's free and you can clean up to 1,000 registry entries at a time. They have a couple other goodies that you might find useful:
http://www.eusing.com/Products.htm

* For image editing, try Photo.net:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paint.NET
http://www.getpaint.net/

* For CD Burning, I like DeepBurner, which supports ISO's:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeepBurner
http://www.deepburner.com/

I like Deep Burner better than CD Burn XP, but you can try both:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDBurnerXP
http://www.cdburnerxp.se/

Many commercial CD burning software install a lot of memory-resident crap, like Roxio. I'd recommend staying far away from those.

* For video codecs, I recommend K-Lite "mega" pack:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-Lite_Codec_Pack
http://www.codecguide.com/

* For accounting, you can try TurboCash or GNU Cash. I'm not an expert at either of these so you're on your own:
http://www.turbocash.co.za/
http://www.gnucash.org/

* If your computer is running slow, check how much memory is installed. If it's less than 1 GB, consider a memory upgrade. If you're running an older system and need PC133/2700/etc memory, check pricewatch.com. Make sure your motherboard/system support the memory upgrade first.

I had to upgrade an old HP Pavilion 510N recently and found it that it only supports 2 x 256MB PC100/133 DIMMS. Check with Crucial.com to see what kind of RAM your system supports.

[Winston]

Wow, now you folks can see why I dub Momopi as my "computer advisor"

For anti virus, I use AVG, is that ok? It's one of the few free anti virus programs. It doesn't spot all the viruses, but it's better than nothing. Some say it slows down your computer though, but others say it doesn't slow down your computer at all.

Don't forget to chkdsk and defrag your computer occassionally too. You go to My Computer, right click on drive C or any other hard drive that you have, select "Properties" and then the "Tools" tab. From there you will see buttons for checking errors in your hard drive and defragmenting it too.

To check your computer's system memory, click Start, then Run, and type in "dxdiag" and it will show a system tab with the specs for your computer's memory.

If you have less than half of the hard drive memory available, try freeing up space by uninstalling programs you don't need.

You can also free up a lot of space by using Window Washing programs that delete unnecessary internet files and your cache folder.

Here is a free windows washer:

http://www.eusing.com/Window_Washer/Window_Washer.htm

Here also is a free registry cleaner:

http://www.eusing.com/free_registry_cle ... leaner.htm

And another free registry cleaner:

http://www.ccleaner.com/

Oddly, every registry cleaner finds different errors, never the same ones. I don't know why. So it's best to use both programs above.

[Winston]

Momopi,
I have a question. Does OpenOffice edit web pages better than MS Word does? I find that Word inserts pictures a lot easier than other HTML editors, and it keeps the quality of the photos intact while with other ones you have to size the pictures exactly, not just insert them, or else they look distorted.

But the HTML from Word is horrible and probably prevents a lot of Google bots from indexing the page properly.

Also, can I edit my Word documents with OpenOffice smoothly?

I also don't get something else. A lot of reviewers say OpenOffice.org is better than MS Office. For example:

http://www.techsoup.org/learningcenter/ ... ge4765.cfm

If so, how can OpenOffice be free and MS Office costs about $100 retail? How do the makers of OpenOffice make money?

[momopi]

Open Office has a long history, dating back to 1984 as a word processor. It was originally developed in Germany as commercial software, then purchased by Sun Microsystems. Sun founded OpenOffice.org in 2000 and has since spin off to become a community developed software:
http://contributing.openoffice.org/

Anyone can volunteer to join the OpenOffice team, though it's up to them if they want to accept you. They also accept $ donations.


Both AbiWord and Open Office Writer supports HTML editing and MS Word format import/export:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HT ... processors

However, being different products, there will be some minor quirks when converting documents between them. Since both products are free, you can download and try them out.

For HTML editing, try KompoZer:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KompoZer
http://kompozer.net/

Many open source software projects have sourceforge pages like this one (for KompoZer):
http://sourceforge.net/projects/kompozer

If you click on "forums" tab, you can access the on-line forum where you can ask questions. Since these are unpaid projects, don't expect prompt response.

[Jackal]

Another web browser that people might want to try is Opera. It's made by a Norwegian software company and it's been around since 1996.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera_(web_browser)
http://www.opera.com/products/desktop/

It loads webpages much faster than internet explorer and the company provides patches to fix new security risks much faster than Microsoft does.

I'm so irritated with Microsoft over all of Windows Vista's problems that I now try to use as little of Microsoft's software as possible. However, I'm not ready to make the jump to Linux yet. I don't want to spend 3 weeks compiling my kernel. I want an operating system that just works efficiently and stays in the background. I've seen all these computer science professors who love to tweak with Linux and treat it like their personal garden: putting in new things, taking things out, re-sorting, re-arranging, but I don't share their fascination.