Essential Windows Freeware
My mom needs a new PC. Of course it's my task to build and set it up. My mom runs Windows and I won't argue with that, because giving her something new would cause even more support hassle for me 
. But because I don't run Windows myself, I'm somewhat out of know what should be installed on her new system.
Here is a list of freeware and Open Source tools I installed so far:
- Thunderbird – Mail client
- 7-Zip – versatile archive handler
- Adobe Reader – PDF viewer
- AVG Free – Anti-Virus tool
- FastStone Image Viewer – image viewer with a few simple editing tools
- InfraRecorder – CD and DVD burning application
- Pidgin – multi protocol instant messenger
- Spybot Search & Destroy – Anti-Spyware tool
- VLC media player – video player
Did I miss something? What else would you recommend?
- Digg this post
- Save to del.icio.us
- Subscribe to my feed
- Stumble it
- Leave a comment
- Follow me on identi.ca
Comments
2
3An audio player is a good idea. I guess I'll add Winamp (http://winamp.com) to the list then.
4
5
6
8BTW: gVim is probably last software she'd ever use ;-)
9The trick was to getting her to focus on the tasks she actually wants a computer for, at a fairly high level, without specifying Windows, and then making sure she could successfully do the same on Ubuntu.
For example the task list was like "I want to write documents. I want to store and edit pictures from my camera. I want to connect to my bank online. etc.". Once Ubuntu was up, went through the list again to confirm she could complete each task happily.
10http://www.foobar2000.org
(yes I know : my english sucks ;)
11«ntsvccfg» service-configuration-script, http://www.ntsvcfg.de/ntsvcfg_eng.html
«Privoxy» secure websurfing (all browsers), http://www.privoxy.org/
«Keepass» password safe, http://keepass.info/
«Truecrypt» protecting data against 'Bundestrojaner' ;-), http://www.truecrypt.org/
«Eraser» secure deletion of data, http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/
«xplorer² Lite», 2 panel file manager http://www.zabkat.com/x2lite.htm
«CLCL» very nice Clipboard Tool, http://www.nakka.com/soft/clcl … x_eng.html
«sudo for windows» for noadmin-account, http://www.lostcreations.com/s … in/sudowin or
«WinSudo↔, http://remnant.ath.cx/winsudo/ … ndex.shtml
«Startup Control Panel», absolutely great, http://www.mlin.net/StartupCPL.shtml
«JKDefrag», defrag win-partitions, http://www.kessels.com/JkDefrag/
you don't need that at all if you convince your Mom to have a debian based distribution next to windows at least for the internet stuff.
Blog
Older Weblog articles are available in the Archive, subscribe to the
Full Content RSS Feed
to stay tuned. (learn more)
Recent Blog Entries
This is the personal web site of Andreas Gohr
- human being, blogger and web geek from Berlin, Germany.
This page was last updated at
2007/07/08 15:44.
Imprint/Impressum
Tagged at del.icio.us:
No tags, yet. Why don't you bookmark it?
Most popular:
Recent readers:
i'd go with foxit pdf reader (http://www.foxitsoftware.com/p … _intro.php) instead of acrobat reader.
also consider building your own modified windows-iso with nlite (http://nliteos.com/)
did you just forget about an audio-player?