Office and Internet Tools

 

OpenOffice.org – The original free office suite, OpenOffice is a project run by Oracle and offers excellent compatibility with Microsoft Office.  There’s a spreadhseet tool, word processor, presentation tool, drawing program and database manager.  Some of the latest features of Microsoft Office aren’t supported, but the vast majority of documents will open with no problems at all.

 

 

LibreOffice – This is a shoot off of OpenOffice which offers the same level of productivity and support, while staying true to the “open source” mentality.  This is now the office suite of choice for the Ubuntu project, and the Windows version is just as usable.  It still offers compatibility with Microsoft Office, for free, but is developed by the open source community rather than Oracle.

 

 

Firefox – Possibly the best known open source web browser, Firefox is possibly the most popular browser after Internet Explorer.  The latest version, version 5, offers great new security features and promises to be the fastest ever.  It has full support for Flash as well as HTML 5.  It’s also the Tech Made Easy browser of choice.

 

 

 

Chrome - Another great web browser, Chrome has been developed by Google to be ultra fast and ultra compatible.  It also has a massive catalogue of add-ons that can help increase functionality and assist with things like web development.

 

 

 

 

Chromium – The open source version of Googles Chrome browser.  It’s more or less exactly the same, but remains open so that it can be adapted and personalised easier.

 

 

 

 

Opera – Another great web browser, it’s less popular than Chrome or Firefox but still offers a good user experience.  There are supported add ons for things like social networks, email and news feeds.

 

 

 

 

Maxthon – Less well known than the other browsers, but offers unbeatable levels of customisation.  There are some issued with things like flash support though, and certain websites simply won’t display properly.

 

 

 

Thunderbird - A great alternative to Microsoft Outlook, Thunderbird is a fantastic email client for personal use.  Most email addresses (hotmail, Gmail, MobileMe, Yahoo) will be resolved automatically by Thunderbird, but if not then you can still enter server details manually and get access to pretty much any email address.

 

 

 

Windows Live Messenger – Originally developed as MSN messenger, Windows Live messenger allows anyone with a Windows or Xbox live account to talk to every other user around the world via text, audio or video chat.

 

 

 

 

Pidgin – A great instant messenger tool which has support for just about every IM and social media network.  You can’t chat between networks, but it does make it easier to manage multiple accounts in one place.

 

 

 

uTorrent – A great lightweight BitTorrent client that will run quickly and easily on pretty much any Windows PC.  It lacks some of the features of other clients, but does run extremely quickly and is a great way to download torrents without any hassle.

 

 

 

 

Vuze – A better featured, but slower, BitTorrent client.  Vuze has a long list of features which are expandable even further via plugins.  You can choose to install only specific files from within a torrent as well as schedule your downloads for specific days and times.  It can be a bit slow to load, and does try and get you to install additional software, but these things aside it works well.