Franciscan Computing

or

How to do Useful Stuff on a Computer Without Spending Any Money

Updated 2008.05.21

Essentials

 

Anti-virus. You must have an anti-virus program on your computer. Any of the first three below will work.

·         AVG Antivirus.

·         PC Tools

·         Avast

·         Online virus scans: BitDefender, Kaspersky Lab, Trend Micro

 

Firewall. You must have a firewall program. A firewall monitors all Internet traffic both coming in to and going out of your computer.

·         Zone Alarm. Keep the bad guys out of your computer.

·         Jetico

·         Outpost

·         More firewalls at PC World

 

Spyware removal. You must have a spyware removal program. Run it once a week to check for and remove spyware.

 

Other security

·         ShieldsUp! Check to see how secure your computer really is.

·         McAfee Site Advisor

·         Startup. Monitor your startup programs with Autoruns from Microsoft. For more info on what the many startup programs do, check this startup applications list.

·         Drivers. Check at Driver Agent (for free) to see if you have any out-of-date drivers. But you’ll have to pay to get them downloaded automatically.

 

 

 

Office applications

·         Word processor that does everything Word does, even creates PDF files (something Word 2003 doesn't do, but Word 2007 will do if you download an add-on from Microsoft).

·         Spreadsheet that does everything Excel does

·         PowerPoint-compatible presentation program

·         Word processor: AbiWord

·         Online office suite: ThinkFree

·         Online spreadsheets: AjaxXLS, Google

·         Online word processors: AjaxWrite

·         Office Accounting Express from Microsoft.

 

Browser: There are better browsers than MS Internet Explorer.

 

Pages for Teachers

 

Multimedia

·         Online photo sharing, printing, etc.: Shutterfly, Flickr

·         Editors: GIMP, very powerful photo editor; Paint.Net, replacement for Windows Paint; Picnik, online photo editor

·         Irfanview and Multiple Photo Resizer. Graphics utilities. Can resize/reformat an entire folder of pics at a time.

·         Picasa. A photo organizer from Google

·         Classroom Clip Art.

·         Corel Photo Album Starter Edition

·         Online sharing: YouTube.

·         Yahoo free radio. Others: radio.aol.com, www.live365.com, www.pandora.com

·         Apple iTunes. Download music (99 cents) and videos, rip songs, burn CDs, organize your music

·         Audacity. A sound recorder and editor

·         BonkEnc. Translates audio files from one format to another.

·         Mega MP3 Splitter. If your MP3 files are too big to email, you can split them with this tool.

·         Findsounds.com: Free sounds

·         Orb. "MyCasting"

·         Juice. Free podcast receiver.

·         Video

·         MovieMaker. A video editor from Microsoft

·         Photo Story. This makes PowerPoint slide shows look like the work of amateurs!

·         Producer. Turns PowerPoint presentations into movies

·         Quintessential Player. Multimedia viewer.

·         Windows Media Player. Multimedia viewer.

·         Misc

·         Omniformat. Graphics utility.

 

Search:

 

Desktop search:

 

Email:

 

Instant Messaging

 

Zip Utilities

 

Travel

 

Web page editor

·         Nvu

 

Books & Reference

·         Project Gutenberg. Project to put thousands of books online.

·         Columbia Encyclopedia

·         American Heritage Dictionary

·         Roget's Thesaurus

·         Quotations

·         American Heritage Book of English usage

·         Elements of Style

 

Calculator

 

Linux

 

Misc

·         Darwin Awards. Stupid dead people.

·         Scrappleface. Political humor.

 

General Security and Maintenance info (these are NOT programs – just web resources):

·         Tips for solving common driver problems

·         Optimize your computer for peak performance

·         Speed Up Your Computer's Performance

·         Speed up your computer's performance: eliminate visual effects

·         Speed up your computer's performance: adding memory

·         Remove programs you no longer use

·         Back up your computer

·         Organize your files

·         Home Network Security. Security info from CERT.