Geek vs Life

I will very possibly be getting a new laptop tomorrow. Which of course makes me quite pleased since the one I use most days isn’t even mine. A nice friend of mine let me borrow hers in exchange for my POS.

My father, who will be donating this new laptop to me, gave me a warning: “There is no software on it apart from Windows XP.” I said: “Good, less stuff to delete.”

It has become a current trend with me and my friends as of late, to shun anything Micro$soft related for a while now… except for Windows. For right now, it just doesn’t make sense for any type of gamer, whether hardcore or casual to NOT use a Microsoft OS. But the rest? There is always ways around it.

Example 1: Exit MsOffice, enter OpenOffice.org

OpenOffice has virtually the same components as Office does: Base (data base), Calc (spreadsheet), Draw (Image handling), Impress (slide show/presentations), Math (Advanced calculator) and Write (word processor).

The interface is simple and well done. The learning curve is simple and transitioning from one program to another take but minutes to master. The suite is but a mere 97Mb to download. Truly worth it. I must also mention for the non-Windows people here that it is also available for Mac OSX, Linux and Solaris.

Get it here:

Example 2: Delete all those annoying Chat programs and use only one

There was a time when I had Yahoo Messenger, Windows Messenger Live, AIM, Google Talk and ICQ running at once. Not anymore. After finding many glitches when trying to use Trillian on Vista, it became necessary to fins a new more compatible program. It took a few tries but luckily, Pidgin came along.

The set up take mere minutes to configure and using it is a snap. Sounds let you know when someone is talking to you and if they are logging on and off. It also tells you when you have new mail which I find highly convenient. Not only can it handle the programs listed above, but you can also use it with: AIM, Bonjour, Gadu-Gadu, Google Talk, Groupwise, ICQ, IRC, MSN, QQ, SILC, SIMPLE, Sametime, XMPP, Yahoo and Zephyr.

The program also runs on all Windows and UNIX platforms. Source codes are available as well for Fedora Core, and CentOS / RHEL.

Get it here:
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What about Mac users? I’ve got you covered as well. Adium is a perennial favorite at the office on all the Macs. It has virtually all the same features as Pidgin does. After a while, you might want to get rid of the sounds the programs makes, because it quacks like a duck, its mascot. Changing the sounds can be done quite easily and different skins are readily available online. A friend of mine converted it to the Darkside of Star Wars.

Get it here.
(No button available, sorry.)

Example 3: Web browsing

Two main choices come to mind when trying to get rid of Internet Explorer: Firefox and Flock. To be honest, I use both for different reasons.

Firefox is and will remain my main browser. It has interesting applications that can be added to it that are more than just convenient to me, they have become an almost necessity.. The incorporated Google bar for example. Recently, Mozilla the makers of Firefox, has released a different edition of the program they call: Firefox Campus Edition, which they say is aimed at students.

Get Firefox here:

But when I’m blogging as I am doing right now, Flock is the only tool I use. It allows the insertion of images to be done with an ease that so far, no other program can provide. Same goes when trying to take images and save them on my hard drive to be used in later to be published posts. The browser can be linked to your Photobucket, Flicker or even YouTube account. Look at most of my posts and they have probably been done using Flock. The characterize themselves as being the “social web browser”, I call it a blogging necessity. .

Get Flock here:

That’s enough for now, go get these and return for part II when we shall tackle the daunting task of protecting your computer from malicious viruses for free, Mail browsers and more!