We live in a hierarchical world in which we defend ourselves ....from our eternal infancy and childhood by insisting on a graded, necessary elevation through learning and technological sophistication out of the child into the adult. This is not a true initiation that values both the previous form of existence and the newly attained one; it is a defence against the humiliating reality of the child. - Thomas Moore
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ICT /
EssentialSoftwareEssential Software A brief list of what I consider to be essential software. * TextPad - a Notepad replacement which supports regular expressions
* WinZip - never seem be get by with out this.
* IrfanView - Image viewer and manipulator
* Adobe Acrobat - viewer for PDF files
* AntiVir Personal - free anti virus program
* OpenOffice - A free Word processor, Spreadsheet, Presentation and HTML Editor, interoperable with MSWord, Excel.
* FinePrint - Will save you paper by printing double sided, and 2, 4 or 8 pages to a pages to a page, prints double sided booklets, I use it all the time, if you orten print web pages you will love this program.
* Putty - SSH and telnet client
* cygwin - a linux/unix environment running on win32
* Xmanager - X window manager
I install most of these products after installing a new operating system, I generally map the CDROM to the Z: drive so that it is always las drive in case I need to add a new partition or additional hard drive or cd rom. I then create a DATA partition which is separate from the C: Drive, (preferably on a separate hard drive) you may want to consider calling it it H: for Home L: for local D: for Data or P: for Private/Personal, I do this so that if I ever need to reinstall windows on the C: drive may data remains safe on the L Drive. If you have a spare computer knocking about, you may want to consider installing and running Linux, current releases of Linux are increasingly user friendly and rival the features of proprietary operation systems. For more information about linux please read Linux in the home and office SpyWare and HiJack Software Be aware the spyware and hijack software is rife on the internet, use and any of the products below which will completely remove most spyware and hijack software, unless it is one which has just started spreading. * Spybot S&D [recommended]
* Ad-aware
* Aluria Spyware Eliminator
* Zone Alarm - Firewall Software
* Microsoft anti-spyware software - Microsoft have at last developed a anti-spyware program which appears to work as well as any. Free for MS users.
Games
CMT Solitaire is free and small (less than 550 kilobytes of disk space) and versatile--it plays 40 different card games, and is extensible--new games can be added by defining their layout and rules in a text file.
Cool Software Programs I have reviewed some of my preffered software here Cool Software Programs The software described and reviewed in include * Moneydance - Home Financial software and budgeting
* Snagit - Screen capture software
* SceenPrint32 - Screen capture software
Web Softare / Applications gMail - a web email account, that currently provides about 2.6GB of email storage, it hinges on the idea that you should never need to delete an email due to space restrictions. Email is searchable so you can easily find email. Skype - talk to anyone anywhere using your computer and an internet connection. Flickr - store a selection of your photos online, so that you can share them with family and friends.
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