Software

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There are many thousands of software programs available. This site is limited to the following:

  • Programs that are Windows XP , Vista and Windows 7 compatible (but they may also be compatible with Windows 98SE, ME, 2000 and NT)
  • Photography and Digital Imaging - this is becoming very popular with the fast growth of Digital Cameras.
  • Audio Editing - record, convert, improve, change audio files such as MP3 and WAV.
  • Useful Miscellaneous programs often called Utilities. These programs are often free. Includes many security oriented programs.
  • Links to sites with free Games, clip-art and wallpaper.

Topics covered

Office Software

Microsoft Office

Business users generally use one of Microsoft's bundles in their Office series. Depending on the year of purchase and the amount paid, you will end up with one or more of the following:

Word - essential - if you want to send documents by e-mail to others who might want to edit the document, there is no other option. One tip - if Word one day fails to start, it may be that the file normal.dot has become corrupted. Go to Start>Search and find this file. Then delete it. Word will re-create it next time it starts. The settings for your normal style will revert to the default and if you had changed them you'll have to change them again.

Excel - essential for spreadsheet users - for the same reasons as for Word if you share spreadsheets with others. 

Power Point - the standard for Business presentations. Most home users will not need this. However there are e-mails that are distributed that use PowerPoint format . To read these (.ppt, .pps or .pot) PowerPoint Presentations, Microsoft has a free PowerPoint Viewer available here.

Outlook - the big brother of Outlook Express, Windows mail and Live Mail. As well as e-mail, includes a good Contact manager (good because it's integrated with e-mail), a Task list, a Calendar with reminders etc and a Notes feature. For a comparison with other e-mail programs, see E-mail on our Browsers page.

Concerning management of attachments: If not configured correctly, all attachments will be barred from being received. To receive any attachments, be sure to configure as follows:

Outlook 2010: Go to File>Options and select Trust Center Settings then select Automatic Download. Uncheck Don't download pictures automatically in HTML Email messages or RSS items

Outlook 2007: Got to Tools>Trust Center to access the same screen. Select Automatic Download and Uncheck Don't download pictures automatically in HTML Email messages or RSS items

Older Outlooks, select Tools>Options>Mail Setup>Send/Receive>Edit>Download complete item including attachments.

More on Downloading in emails. For details on email security settings, go here.

Add a Contact when sending emails
One disadvantage of Outlook is that when you reply to someone, it does not allow you to automatically add this person and e-mail address to Contacts as can be done in Express. But then Express only stores name and e-mail address and nothing else. However, you can buy an add-on ($15US) to Outlook that does automatically add names and addresses.

Moving e-mail data between Outlook versions: If you just bought a new computer, you will want to move your Outlook data to the new one. For e-mails, that's easy, just copy the .pst file (which is typically in the location: C:\Documents and Settings\<user name>\ Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\ ) and paste into the corresponding location in the new Computer. But although you'll see the contacts in the new location, you can't use the contacts for your address book for e-mail. That's because the 2 contact books are incompatible. To transfer Contacts, Export the Contacts from your old computer using File>Import and Export... Choose Excel as the file format. Copy the resulting file to the new computer. Now select all the contacts (you may want to use a list view) and delete! Then while viewing "Contacts", use File>Import and Export>Import from another program or file to import the Excel file you just created. You may have to map one or more fields (e.g. e-mail addresses) to be sure that all data gets imported. When complete, the contacts are now available and in the new format and can be made available as a source for the address book.

Access - if you want a data base and you are not a full fledged data base programmer and you like Reports to look good, then Access is for you. Like Power Point, many people you want to send reports to will not have Access. The simple solution to that is to "print" files in pdf format.

Other Office Programs. There are several other Microsoft Office Programs that have the advantage of being integrated with each other and having the same "look and feel". However, since they are fairly specialized, only a very brief description is given here.

  • OneNote - Computer version of Yellow Post-its! Integrated with Outlook - best for hand-helds.
  • Project - Project Management, Pert charts. (Has been the standard in the work place for a while).
  • Publisher - Desk top Publishing - if you do a lot of newsletters intended for printing, makes life easier.
  • Visio - Drawing program. Often too large and expensive so try Smart Draw which is faster, cheaper, simpler and better for many users or ConceptDraw which is cheaper, Visio compatible and runs on Macs as well.

Converting formats. If you bought a new computer, you might have saved money by not buying Microsoft's office suite. But other people will often send you files in Office formats e.g. Word [.doc], Excel [.xls], Powerpoint [.pps or .ppt]. To read these files - but not modify or save the new version - get the Microsoft readers. More here.

Word Perfect.

Lowest priced full feature Word Processor - includes a WORD compatible mode. Functionally it is fine - the only problem is that when saving in WORD format, it's the older .doc format, not the more recent .docx. Not a big problem. Word Perfect also manages pdfs better.

Free Office Software

The best known (and loved!) free Office Software is OpenOffice. Although there are many people who have tried this and swear it is a great program - or collection of programs - it is still not in widespread use. The latest version is 3.3 and includes a data base program, word processor, spreadsheet, presentation program etc. There are two reasons why you might want to use this program: 1. you want to save money even if there's a learning curve; 2. You don't want to use a Microsoft product.

It also exports to pdf which is useful. But it's not quite up to Micosoft Office - notably the Data Base program is not relational. It also does not include an email or contact manager program - you'll have to use Windows Mail, Thunderbird or Gmail.

It will save in many other formats although the compatibility is not always clean. Note that your friends will be unhappy if you forget to save in Word format.

Adobe Reader

Adobe .pdf format is universally used to transfer documents around the Internet. The advantages are:

  • Cannot be modified and be mistaken for the original
  • Never has macros so cannot hide a virus (although there are occasionally security vulnerabilities)
  • Relatively compact even when including graphics (Note that if you are creating a pdf, there are several options which affect quality of images versus file size)
  • Virtually everyone can read it since the Reader is free (Download Adobe Reader 10.1.1 here - remember to uncheck the Free MacAfee scan)
  • It's fairly easy to generate a pdf file - for example recent versions of Word and all Word Perfect versions can "publish to pdf". Or you can use Adobe Acrobat 9.0, full featured and costing from $300 to $500US. But if you just want a simple conversion this is too expensive so you should use a free program like PrimoPDF. This is better than many of the alternatives and totally free as well.
  • To edit a .pdf file or convert it to Word, you need a pdf to Word converter. But what all of these programs do (but often don't tell you up front) is scan the document and use OCR (Optical Character recognition) software to reconstruct the original but in Word format.

When installing, be careful to uncheck any extras offered - trust me, you don't want them.

Notes
If you would like Microsoft's OneNote but are reluctant to pay the price - try EverNote - it's free.