As a university student, I’ve been conditioned to like free things. Free samples, free school supplies, free computer programs. All of these suggested programs that’ll make life a whole lot easier with your computer are free. Free like free speech, freedom of the press, free as in zero fees. Each program includes a link to where you can find out more information (and where you can download it). Happy downloading.
- For anti-virus protection: AVG.
AVG should be more than enough to fit your needs. It also has daily updates and scans frequently. Free. - For blogging via a domain or subdomain: WordPress.
I am a huge fan of WordPress. It has all sorts of neat plugins that you can easily install to use and plus it’s just a very simple program. If I can figure it out, you can definitely figure out how to use it as well. There is also a forum on the WordPress website where you can ask for help if you need it. Free. - For blogging via the internet: Blogger.
Blogger is an easy-to-use online blogging program. You get an URL like “http://username.blogspot.com”. It’s simple and there are perhaps about a dozen templates that you can choose from for your blog when creating one. Free. - For coding: Notepad2.
Notepad2 is an easy-to-install and easy to use alternative to Notepad. The difference? It’s open source and it is free to download. It’s an easy switchover from MS Notepad and is incredibly easy to use (especially if you’ve used Notepad before). Free. - For e-mail: Mozilla Thunderbird.
Thunderbird is a lot like Outlook Express only it’s done by Mozilla. It is very simple to use and you can import your contacts from Outlook into Thunderbird. Free. - For FTP: Leech FTP.
Leech FTP is an incredibly user-friendly FTP client that is easy to use for uploading files as well as CHMODing any file that you need to change the attributes of. Free. - For graphics: GIMP.
I am an avid Adobe Photoshop fan and I myself use Photoshop CS3. But I understand that not everyone has access to the program and people do like free alternatives. And a great alternative is GIMP. It is a free software program. There are many different functions are available with the program and is a great (and free) alternative to Photoshop. Free. - For music: Winamp.
Winamp is the answer if you don’t want to use iTunes or Windows Media Player. It can play all common music file types. It is skinnable – meaning you can download assorted skins to customize it to your liking. Free. - For web browsing: Mozilla Firefox.
Firefox is considered to be safer for use than Interner Explorer plus the name is just ten times more cool. There are also multiple plugins that you can download to use with Firefox to make it work better for you. Free. - For word processing: Open Office Writer.
Open Office Writer is adaptable to Microsoft Word documents. Open Office is an open source program that also comes with its own equivalents to Microsoft Access, Excel and Powerpoint that use the same file extensions. Free.