Advertisments
The Serpent Recommended Software Guide
Created: 2nd March 2011
Long term users of Microsoft Windows will know that Windows itself isn't very useful. To really make your PC do all kinds of things, you need to compliment it with many third party applications, each tailored for your individual needs, weather paid for or given away for free.
This guide details the software I've settled on over the years, as well as other alternatives laid out by friends and others in the IT industry. They all come with my seal of approval (if that means anything to you at all ;), and are well worth a look.
First up, we'll go for the obvious tasks of Office based applications, involving the oldest of computer chores - word processing, email and other rather boring office based roles.
Office Based Productivity
It was a tuff choice... but if you're a newbie when it comes to computers, there's usually no choice at all...
As much as I'd hate to admit it, Microsoft Office still beats Open Office. Not by much, but it still is simply more compatible with the rest of the world, and large scale tests of Open Office performed by governments and the private sector show that eventually you will suffer from compatibility with others who exclusively use Office.
If you're a new user, MS Office is quick to learn. Unfortunately it's not cheap, and contrary to popular belief - does not come with MS Windows!
The runner up, Open Office is free - and is a quality product. If you're looking to knock up some quick letters and spreadsheets, it's certainly worth a look. However MS Office does provide support for the business user which can be an attractive feature to some.
Antivirus
If anything is likely to change often, it's our choice in Antivirus protection, the winner is...
Microsoft release Security Essentials was release in 2009, and since then – it has gain widely accepted use across the world. Maybe because it's so well integrated with Windows or maybe because it's free – either way it certainly knows how to catch some very slippery attack vectors (we tried it against many different types of encoded and obfuscated Trojans, in fact – the only one which got through was a method using Visual Basic!).
It's free for home use only, corporate customers will have to pay out for the Microsoft Endpoint Protection suite which offers the same functionality, but more focus on reporting and management. This little gem of an application is perfect for most home needs.
Web Browser
Almost as personal as your own car, a good web browser can change your Internet habits in quite drastic ways. All modern browsers now sport the usual features such as tabbed browsing, "super fast downloads" and other fancy things which sometimes add to the complexity rather than aiding the user, but our choice was simple. We're die hard Opera fans here at The Serpent...
Opera is a great browser, not only is the company behind Opera innovative, thoughtful, and just oozing with that Eastern European friendliness that's so warming - they made quality software. Opera just works. Not only that, but it works fast, in fact it's technically the fastest browser out there (well, actually its dead even with Chrome, but we think there's a tiny bit more class in Opera).
Nice little features include the speed bar, built in download manager which allows pausing and restarting, extensions which add to the browser (the best being the dedicated Facebook Ad blocker) and a built in Mail client\RSS feed manager.
Text Editor
So simple, but I'm afraid Notepad just doesn't cut it. Get yourself a decent text editor if you find yourself dabbling in code, tables, comma separated values or just large chunks of text - Notepad still pretty much uses the same code it did in Windows 95, the world of text has moved far beyond that...
ConTEXT is not only a geek's editor; it's a perfect balance between powerful, and simple. It doesn't over do it with useless features that exist because they can, but provides all the basics an advanced computer user looks for when handling text.
Other Software
There are other categories we could cover, but these really are a matter of taste. Applications for chat, music, video and all other tasks require a little research, trial and error, and eventually a bit of patience before you find the application suited best to you. There's no clear winner when it comes to basics such as music storage\playback and video (with the exception of codec's, check out our article on that mess!).
