There are other free packages that do this, but Gaim is stable and clean and simple.įrom their website, "BitTorrent is a peer-assisted, digital content delivery platform that provides the fastest, most efficient means of distributing, discovering, and consuming large, high-quality files on the Web. This is a very clean instant messaging program that allows you to be on AOL Instant Messenger, Windows (MSN) Messenger, and Yahoo Messenger simultaneously with one program. That's pretty much all I want from a package, so why pay money for McAfee to keep bugging me all the time? In fact, I actually prefer their Excel and PowerPoint replacements to the real thing.ĬlamWin is a slick anti-virus software that's quite easy to manage and is unobtrusive while keep your system free of viruses. It includes very nice replacements for Excel and PowerPoint (and workable replacements for Access and other Office elements). If you want to replace the rest of the Office suite, your best bet is OpenOffice. Replaces Microsoft Excel and Microsoft PowerPoint It's lightweight (meaning it runs quickly) and includes pretty much every feature that I use regularly in a word processor, plus it can save files in formats that you can exchange with Word and WordPerfect users, plus open any of their files, too. Want a good word processor but find Microsoft Word too expensive? AbiWord is my favorite replacement for Word.
I consider a calendaring tool to be essential if you're using a laptop, and this is no different. It's extremely easy to use (I figured out everything I needed in a minute or two) and easy to share your calendar with others. Might as well get the Mozilla trifecta out of the way by mentioning Sunbird, which is the Mozilla Foundation's calendaring program. Replaces Microsoft Outlook's calendaring functions If you're not already using a web-based email solution, Thunderbird should be your client.
Thunderbird is an email client that has five big things going for it: it's free, it's full featured, it's lightweight and runs quick, it has an unparalleled spam filter, and it protects you from those ridiculous phishing attacks by clearly indicating which emails send you to a bogus website. I could evangelize all day about Firefox, but one thing's for sure: the first thing I do on any new Windows machine is run Internet Explorer just long enough to download Firefox. It stops annoying popups and it has tons of amazing plugins that can make surfing the web even better. If you haven't switched to Firefox for your web browsing needs, do it now.
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