Advice on new laptop software

Mutley

Mutley

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I'm buying Mrs Mutley a laptop for her to use at university and I'm looking for some advice on software please oh lords of the tech forum :bow :

1. I'm buying Office 2007 (Student edition) but I've just discovered it doesn't include Outlook. Is there an alternative as Outlook alone seems to be £72 :eek:

2. Security: we have a firewall so do we need the full Norton 360 or will just the internet security do? Is McAfee just as good? :confused:

3. I was thinking of buying this: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Toshiba-Satellite-L350-170-Pentium-2-00GHz/dp/B001JQMNG8/ref=pd_rhf_p_t_3 A Toshiba L350, seems a reasonable deal? :nenau

Before you go suggesting loads of really complex stuff I am a bit of a numpty when it comes to computing (I have support desks at work for my laptops :P ) and Mrs. Mutley has very basic skills. We need this thing to be simple to set up, easy to use and very reliable :toungincheek

Your comments are appreciated :beerjug:
 
1) Use Googlemail (Gmail) instead of outlook- you can set it up easily to work with all of your old accounts and it works superbly- you can use in with Google Calender and docs and syncronise it with a lot of PDS type phones- I use it for all my accounts including all the Moto Morocco Email stuff- nobody will ever know (IE My email still says its from moto-morocco.com, not my main gmail account) and it's free.

2) Norton has got better but it's still bloatware and very difficult to get rid of- don't se it and certainlydon't buy it!!

I use Zonealarm as a firewall (free) and AVG as my anti virus software, also free.

3) Looks like a good spec laptop, but I'm not right up on the latest specs TBH- It'll certainly do anything you need for normal applications- good price I'd say but as before, I'm no expert on them :)

PS Do you have any option to get XP rather than Vista?
 
1) use outlook express, it's part of windows

2) use AVG free & windows firewall

3) dunno
 
Fanum ...is the avatar a cryptic mark of respect to Tony Haart?
 
Do you work for a firm that buys lot of MS software? If so, you might be able to do what I did and buy the full Office suite for £15 under their "employee purchase scheme" (or whatever its called). If you do, worth asking your IT peeps.

If not, that's my coat over there......:aidan
 
Mozilla Fire Fox and Thunderbird for your internet browsing and email options.
AVG for anti-virus
Zone Alarm for your firewall
SpyBot for finding miscrent programs or files (schedule it to run late at night)
C Cleaner to get rid of other nasty
Schedule Disk Clean Up and Disk Defragmenter to run once a week.
jZip or WinRar for your compressed files.

Then if you know what you're doing use 'msconfig' to clean up your start up programs and keep the boot time reasonable.

Most if not all of the above programs are free on the net.
 
If she's at Uni then I presume she's a student. In which case, try here

http://www.software4students.co.uk/

Or if someone else in the family is entitled to the term "student" you can get it for them - if you want to use the "legit" mode ;)

(I unfortunately had to get some for my grand-daughter to use :augie )
 
On the laptop I use Open Office instead of MS Office. You can open and edit Word files easily enough and save in MS's bloated format.ell

I also use webmail for my mail and use Yahoo in general. Although the tower at home is the "main" pc and every so often I download email to Outlook that came with Office Pro 2003 to "save" it.

I am lucky I guess as I have Office loaded using the company licences as I work from home once every couple of years... ;)

I use AVG on my tower, the laptop and my wife's old Packard Bell laptop. As the laptop is owned by the company it should have Sophos but upgrading id shit as it needs to be on the company network to get upgrades and since July it has been in the office twice!

Also have CCleaner on all machines. At work we install it on all the smart working laptops as part of the image.
 
Use opera for web browsing and email :thumb.

GMail is free

windows firewall and windows defender are free.

zonealarm is bad now - don't use it.

AVG 8.0 is free and good.

thunderbird is also free for email

portable apps - all programs can be run off a USB stick
 
Nippy Normans supply Touratech, Wunderlich, Desert Fox and many other makes of accessories.
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