What applications would I need on a lap top?

[Erfolg]

Having purchased a lap top, I am now faced with the issue, what do i really need or want on it.

During the set up procedure, the machine was programmed to encourage me to load "Microsoft 365". I have declined this, for the time being. There are two or three reasons.

• The first is I only potentially use "Word" and "Excel"
• The second is that is that it is a subscription package. I prefer one of payments.
• The third it would allow me to run 7 other devices from the one agreement. I am happy with Office 2007 that I presently use and if my wife wants to do anything of the Office Package type, she uses the PC, not her laptop.

So what are my options for something along the lines of Microsoft Office.

The second issue is that I use "Google" a lot, I do not need the loaded Microsoft option. How do I load an Icon and application onto my desk top.

The third issue I want to run Yahoo in the same way< how do I do this?

The machine is running Windows 10.

[FilmBuff]

Hi Erf,

MS365 is great. It will be evergreen in that updates are continually made so you won't find yourself being 13 years behind on your apps...

There is no such things as a stand alone MS Office these days. You can ditch MS and use the Google Suite of Docs, Sheets, Slides etc. They will probably meet 90% of most users' needs and are free!  You just need to create a Google account.

You will be able to download Google Chrome browser from their site and use that instead of MS Edge.

Hope this helps.

Edited By FilmBuff on 12/10/2020 14:48:02

[Shaun Walsh]

If you have the Office 2007 installation disc it will run on Windows 10, it's what I use on my Win 10 laptop.

A good free alternative is LibreOffice.

To use Google and Yahoo browsers use microsoft Edge to access the internet and download and install the browsers, you should automatically get the icons installed on your desktop.

[Cuban8]

If it's a new machine from the likes of PC World it's almost certainly running Windows 10S. You'll probably want to load third part software from outside of Microsoft's world, so look up how to get rid of 10s - there is an option. I think 10 home edition is free, but Pro is chargeable. Annoying that you have to opt out rather than opt in to 10S.

Open Office works well instead of Office proper, all free - been using it for ages.

Edited By Cuban8 on 12/10/2020 15:55:12

[MaxG]

Libre Office for all things that MS office does but free'

After all do you really need all the fancy updates and stuff that MS Office lands on you at quite a cost. Try working out how much Office 365 will cost you over a year and think how many models you can build for that!!!

https://www.libreoffice.org/

G Mail for your email account and use Google calendar with it.

You can run several different calendars on the page with each calendar having its own identifiable colour for the items. Eg an Erfolg calendar and a model flying calendar. If there is a Ms Erfolg and you both have android phones she can also set up her google calendar and then you can set them up so you both can see all of the calendars on your own device. I have done this with a Maxg calendar, a calendar for items of interest where our holiday caravan is situated and Ms Maxg calendar. Once I convinced Ms Maxg to do that we have found it extremely useful.

HTH

Maxg

[Geoff S]

I'm still using a copy of Office 97 Professional on MS Windows 10 with no problems. I use Word a lot but probably only 1% of the features. I've seen later versions of Word and they're quite different from the version I'm perfectly happy with. I also have OpenOffice which is sometimes useful but Office is my usual go-to sw.

One advantage of the Pro version is that it has Access. I taught myself a bit SQL and used it when I was organising an international Tandem Club event bt I haven't used it for years.

I use Firefox browser and Thunderbird email. Both work well and again I see no point in changing. I'm only interested in the the browser and my ISP's service as a gateway to web sites that interest me. I have a program called Mozbackup which saves all Firefox and Thunderbird data and made it easy to move to a different PC. I also have a program called 360Amigo for cleaning up the hard drives and register etc.

Looking at the list of loaded s/w,

I have one called 'Convert' which I find useful sometimes for metric/imperial conversions etc

An old version of Photoshop

Adobe Acrobat reader and Foxit for pdf files

Then, of course there's OpenTX Companion, Phoenix Simulator, various music players, Motocalc, a couple of text to speech converters to tell my Horus what to tell me

I have a host of web sites in an organised 'Favourites' file but that's part of the browser.

After that, it depends on your interests.

Geoff

[cymaz]

Libre Office. It also changes a pdf to jpeg easily

[Philip Lewis 3]

If you are happy with Office 2007 then use it, nothing wrong with it. Works perfectly well with Widows 10 which nop doubt you have and which doesn't command a renewal.

[kc]

Avoid the expensive Microsoft stuff and use Libre Office which seems similar to Open Office which has been around for years and works just like MS Office for all normal stuff.

[Tim Hooper]

Another vote for Libre Office.

I'll handle anything I throw at it - it'll even let me insert guitar and uke chord windows into a a document!

Tim

[GrumpyGnome]

My MS Surface has:

Office 2019 (ebay, very cheap)

Audacity (for OpenTx sounds)

Chrome browser

Thunderbird email

Advanced System Care (free version)

Amazon music

OpenTx companion

All free except Office.

My desktop has the above plus several games, simulators, Cura, Blender, Tinkercad (these three for my 3d printer).

GG

[FilmBuff]

MS Office Pricing

Hardly breaks the bank.

[Kevin Wilson]

LibreOffice beats that by £80 a year and has worked for me. 10 years plus and I wouldn't even consider MS even though I use 365 at work everyday.

One thing not often considered is that I find 365 noticeably network sensitive. Even at work where we are an ISP there is a delay opening excel workbooks.

And don't even ask me about MS Edge

LibreOffice, Thunderbird and Firefox does all the routine stuff for me. All open source and cost me what I think they are worth donating.

[fly boy3]

Another one for Libre Office.

[Plummet]

Libreoffice £0.00 Word processor, spreadsheet etc.

Gimp £0.00 Image tweaking

Audacity £0.00 If you want to edit audio

(and Linux £0.00 because Windows annoys the bleep out of me. )

Plummet

[ron evans]

Hi all. I know little about computers so have a question.

My granddaughter is home from school at the moment, and gets her schoolwork in MS Office. Would Libre Office be compatible with it. thanks

Ron

[Peter Christy]

Posted by ron evans on 13/10/2020 13:11:13:

My granddaughter is home from school at the moment, and gets her schoolwork in MS Office. Would Libre Office be compatible with it. thanks

Yes. Although it defaults to its own formats (.odt, .ods, etc), it can read and write micro$oft documents and spreadsheets without issue. You just select the appropriate format when saving.

Open Document format (.odt, .ods) is actually the only internationally recognised standard, and although micro$oft pay lip-service to it their compatibility is not great, so you are actually better off with LibreOffice.

LibreOffice also makes dealing with PDF files much easier. Indeed, in Linux, PDF creation is built in as standard. I think in windoze, you still need a pdf writer for that, but don't quote me as I avoid windoze like the plague that it is!

Firefox web browser, Thunderbird for email, LibreOffice for documents, Audacity for sound editing, Kdenlive for video editing and Gimp for photo editing. All free and open source, and the equal of any expensive software - though I would accept that Gimp is not as "user friendly" as photoshop!

Have fun ( for free!).

--

Pete

 

Edited By Peter Christy on 13/10/2020 13:37:16

[Erfolg]

Hmm

Seems that is something else in addition to the External Hard Drive that did not make the move to the new home. That is all the discs for the PC, which were in a disc cartridge, the sort of thing that bulk CDs come in. So I do not have 2007 Office Disc, nor the Microsoft Flight Simulator, Drivers for the printers and so on.

It goes to show, when moving you tend to concentrate on more obvious issues, which revolve around furniture, boxes containing the minutiae of live. The individual items are pushed way into the background, as you concentrate on the big picture issues.

[FilmBuff]

I never understand the anti Windows sentiment - but hey - each to their own.

[ron evans]

Thanks for the reply Peter.

My granddaughter is getting a new laptop for Christmas, I'll try and persuade her to use Libre office this time.

Ron

[Kevin Wilson]

There is a Student discount offers by MS. It may even be free.

I was in the same situation with my daughter. Itook up the MS discount as the children will be more familiar with the common format, and it makes it easier for the teachers to support them.

So notwithstanding my personal preference for libreoffice, for a student pc I would take the MS enticement.

Although I do feel this is akin to the crack dealer by the shool gate getting them into the MS blinkers.

With regard to anti windows sentiment, I dislike any company that tries to lock you into their ecosystem. Whether this is MS, Apple or the recent trend for car manufacturers to drop ODB in favour of their own unque closed protocol.

[GrumpyGnome]

I just bought office 2019 pro from ebay for £2.49. Dowliaded and installed no problem. I had to call ms to activate it but that was just a 10 minute task that went very smoothly.

GH

[kc]

We shouldn't forget that the free software we get is like the free tuition at the flying field and the good advice here on the forum - it's largely down to volunteers who are trying to put something back into society instead of making themselves rich.

[Geoff S]

Posted by FilmBuff on 13/10/2020 15:11:16:

I never understand the anti Windows sentiment - but hey - each to their own.

Nether do I. Bill Gates has made a lot of money but he has created something useful rather being a wheeler dealer and he is trying to put something back with his (and his wife's) foundation.

When we first started using microprocessors at workback in the early 70s we had to choose between Intel (8085) and Motorola (6800/6809) and we chose the latter because the microcode was easier (particularly the interrupt structure which we used a lot). However, we were fighting CPM (remember that?) and used an OS called Flex and another called OS9. It was a lot of fun and we were all self taught programmers.

Then IBM introduced their PC. No IT manager would get the sack for choosing IBM and so it became the industry standard despite its appalling architecture. In fact the IBM PC's hardware capabilities were much worse than the old CPM systems. So I've given up - it's just a lot easier to use Windows (I started with 3.1) mainly because of the vast range of software.

Geoff

[Alex Ferguson 2]

Posted by FilmBuff on 13/10/2020 15:11:16:

I never understand the anti Windows sentiment - but hey - each to their own.

When a Windows Update deletes everything off your disk as per October 2019 update, that is one sentiment for hating Microsoft.

In the case above I'd fortunately copied everything across to another disk just before deletion. So my partner sits down at a Linux Mint desktop computer, complains the icons aren't scattered across the desktop the same way as the day before (drag, drag, drag to correct that) and carries on using her computer as if she'd always used Linux, having previously used Windows for a couple of decades or more.

That easy.

Editing a PDF. You can't do that with Microsoft Office but you can with LibreOffice. You can also read just about any format in the known Universe, something older Office installations can't do.

As for other software -

Firefox, Chrome, Vivaldi, Brave as browsers. VLC for video watching, MMC for format changing i.e. mp4 to mp3 etc. Audacity for audio projects. Thunderbird for mail (if not using Gmail). Skype and Zoom if needed Dukto for transferring files to other computers, any other computers, as it installs on everything.

Virus checker - why? We're talking Linux.

Recommended Linux version? Mint with Cinnamon desktop.