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Buying a New Laptop: Must-Have ProgramsBY: Maya Ballesteros | Category: Technology | Submitted: 2010-09-04 06:56:49
In this age and time, laptop is no longer a luxurious item to indulge in but a necessity. With demands for workers to be able to work on the go, portability in a computing machine is a must. What's more, with the way technology develops, laptop computer actually offers you everything the good old desktop does and more, in an even better packaging to boot. People use laptops differently but when it comes down to the wire, they are used for surfing the Internet and to edit work. Whether you are a student, an accountant, a graphic designer, a comic strip author, the laptop is there for you to help do your job. As technology advances even further, laptops grow to be a better choice than desktops that people have left the latter behind and use laptops the way they used to use desktops, to store large files like music and movie collections, as well as work data backup. Not to mention numerous game software. It is thus clear that laptops are a must have for most people these days. For those of you who have just decided to buy one, you might wonder if the types of software you need are going to be different with the ones you used to have with the good old desktop. Well, as things stands, some of them stay but there are some to add. Operating System (OS) This is a no brainer, you are going to need this in order to have all your other program up and running. There are plenty of operating systems to choose from but the most popular one is of course Microsoft Windows. In fact, 80% of computer users grew up with and still use Windows. This OS is rich with feature while equipped with good application and game support. Most computers are sold bundled with Windows OS but separately the OS is expensive and this is mostly caused by the support. Compared to the money you pay for it, some people think Windows OS is not that good when it is not as fast as it can be, uses lots of power, has a strong tendency to crash and easily infected by viruses. When it comes to application and games, Linux, a rival OS, lacks support but it is free, fast and it doesn't tap out your power. Since its first launch in early 90s, there have only been 36 viruses threatening the operating system and Linux has a good record of rarely crashing. For those of you who place a lot of importance in optimization, fast performance and light usage of power, Linux operating system is a very good choice for your laptop. Internet Browser Just like its distant cousin Microsoft Windows, Internet Explorer is the most well known browser. Coming bundled together with Windows, that is not that much of a surprise, of course. Unfortunately, seeing that they have most of the market in their hands, IE doesn't feel the need to optimize the product. For people who browse first before buying, Firefox comes up as top choice. Especially when the 'buying' part is nonexistent. Firefox is free and can be downloaded from their website. The browser is considered one of the best because you can customize it to suit your browsing needs down to the ground. Installing plug-ins and add-ons are no hassle and they make your browsing experience so much better. Chat Client Yahoo Messenger and MSN are two of the most popular chat clients available. Most people you know are going to be on either one of these, so it is recommended that you have both of them. If you end up having many accounts on different chat clients, you can always use Pidgin to open them all in one window. Pidgin is open sourced and has one of the nicest and cleanest user interface, making it the most attractive choice to advertisement wary users. You can use Pidgin for MSN, Yahoo, AIM, ICQ, Google Talk, Myspace IM, QQ, SILC, SIMPLE, Bonjour, Gadu-Gadu, Sametime, XMPP, IRC and GroupWise. Audio and Video Players Work or not, there are always audio or video files that need to be played and/or stored. The best playing audio software to date is WinAmp. It is free and the features cater to just about every need there is. Plug-ins are numerous and the standard codec library it has it very big. You can also set your WinAmp to allow web based audio playing, accessible from any PC in the world. This means any audio file you have in your laptop can be opened by someone browsing half a world away. When it comes to video player, VLC is the best program available. The codec library is big; it supports an amazing variety of file formats, both the well known and the lesser known ones. It is also free, simple, small and easy on the eye. Download Software The Internet has a wealth of audio and video files to enjoy. In order to read and play them though, you need to download the files. Popular download clients are Kazaa and Limewire but you also have the choice of Torrents, specifically uTorrent. The good thing about Torrents is that any Torrents client "seeds" back downloaded files back to the Internet so even when there are a lot of demands for a specific audio or video file, there is no chance of a single website or dedicated server going down. This also enables the file to be available at any time. Go to Mininova to get started with download clients. Office Software Back to the working needs that you originally buy your laptop for, you are going to need software to create corporate files, in other words, work. Microsoft Office offers a full set of office applications, including word processing, spreadsheet, publisher and database. The program is good and the only drawback is the fact that it is expensive. Open Office is a much better alternative. The program is free and it offers you everything you need for office work except for a publisher application. To remedy this, you can easily download Scribus, a free publisher application. Anti-Virus Surfing the Internet opens up your laptop to the threats of viruses, worms, trojans and other malware. AVG is one of the most popular choices out there when it comes to anti virus software. The program is free and it works well. They regularly update their virus database and you can customize the scanning process the way you want it to be. The program runs silently and does not tap too much resources from your laptop. There are also plenty of anti virus programs that are well worth the price they ask for. To find out more, try Kaspersky anti virus database. Article Source: http://www.writearticles.org/ About Author / Additional Info: Comments on this article: (0 comments so far)
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