7 Essentials For Your New Personal Computer

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Since I am having a few moments before I board for my flight which is being indefinitely delayed, I thought I'd use this time to say something for novice computer users or new computer owners, which I hope will be of help. I would welcome some form of alternative suggestions and / or more constructive feedbacks for my recommendations here. Again, let me assure everyone including the administrators here that this is not an advertisement or some marketing ploy for some software(s) and I do not represent any of these companies or have vested interests in any of them. However, I am a happy end user for all of the recommended apps here. So, once you have your Personal Computer be it a desktop work station, laptop, notebook or tablet computer - you may want to consider what is best for your computer and you. Most of all, all these apps are FREE OF CHARGE! So, besides that pre-installed Operating System in the computer I would recommend the following: 1. Anti-Virus Program First on the list should always about security and I know there may be some out there that just says that it is unnecessary. AVG Antivirus is by far a raved recommendation in the computer community and if you are not looking forward to spending a single cent on this app, then AVG Antivirus is really the app for you. Ref: http://free.avg.com/ww-en/homepage 2. Browsers I am sure many of you are aware of the various browsers available in the market namely, Chrome, Firefox, Opera or etc.. And if I may add here, just don't merely go for the browser that comes with your Operating System if you can help it. For me, I'd just say look no further just download SeaMonkey which contains the raved about Firefox browser, email & newsgroup client with an included web feed reader, HTML editor, IRC chat and web development tools. With the latter apps SeaMonkey is sure to appeal to the advanced users, web developers and corporate users as well. If IRC and web page editor is not in your interest then I'd recommend FireFox for browsing and Thunderbird for your emails. Ref: www.seamonkey-project.org/ 3. Office Suite Now before you dump a couple hundred of your hard earned dollars for your office suite apps like word processor, spreadsheets, visual presentation, graphics and database. I'd recommend that you consider OpenOffice which is also available in many languages and it works on all common computers. It stores all your data in an international open standard format and can also read and write files from other common office software packages. Most of all, it can be downloaded and used completely free of charge for any purpose. The only drawback I did observe is its spreadsheet app which unless you are a SUPER Excel user, I just do not think you will have any issue with Open Office. Besides, if you are in that category, I am sure a standalone Excel software off the shelf is much more economical in comparison to the whole office suite package. Ref: www.openoffice.org/ 4. Entertainment VLC player - so you've experienced or heard instances like your DVD player does not play the disc you've just inserted in or your media player does not play the downloaded format of your favorite song. Where, conflicts and incompatibilities will just add on your hair loosing sessions. Well fret no more, download the latest version of this VLC media player and throw in everything you've got, sit back and enjoy. You will be glad to those days are over. Ref: www.videolan.org/vlc/download-windows.html 5. IM Client I am sure you would already be impressed with the recommendations so far that by now you feel it is time to start telling or start raving to your friends. What better way than to do it on line with an IM Client where you just need to have a universal chat client that supports every client from A to Z literally. Seriously, look at the list and be impressed here: * AIM * Bonjour * Gadu-Gadu * Google Talk * Groupwise * ICQ * IRC * MSN * MySpaceIM * QQ * SILC * SIMPLE * Sametime * XMPP * Yahoo! * Zephy With this software, you do not need to download a host of different clients and flood your desktops with these clients to chat with your friends online. Ref: www.pidgin.im/ 6. Graphics Editor How else can you place your friend's face on a celebrity body? Paint.NET is a free image and photo editing software for computers that run Windows. It features an intuitive and innovative user interface with support for layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools. An active and growing online community provides friendly help, tutorials, and plugins. Ref: www.getpaint.net/ 7. Anti Spyware Like AntiVirus Software, the brands are all over and I am sure you have your preference over a list of brands like, Adaware, Spybots Search and Destroy, Window Defender and many others available both online and off the shelf. Now over the years, I did use Adaware before but ever since the emergence of Trend Micro's Hijack This, removing a cocktail of spywares on the cyberway has just taken on another new level, which can be found reliable just running it alone as compared to the rest where sometimes you will need to run 2 different brands simultaneously and get into mundane and conflicting issues. Ref: http://free.antivirus.com/hijackthis/ Lastly, I am sure there may be a lot of other apps that you may need like registry cleaners, torrent downloaders, FTP clients, Zip and so on but these various clients have their niches and preferences varies with user levels, habits and most of all experiences. But I am sure most advanced and expert users will agree with me that the above are essentials for every user, here. So, I am going to stop now and welcome more suggestions and feedback here. Have a nice day.