Windows 8 - What software to install

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So this is a bit of a look at the Windows software that I use on my computers.
Truth be told I tend to use Linux most of the time, and while some software is available cross-platform there are plenty of Windows alternatives for the software that isn't.

This is all compatible with Windows 8, however should also work on Windows 7, Vista and XP, so if you are still using those don't feel left out!!


My software philosophy:

Generally I tend to use well-supported and well-documented software. This has a number of benefits, but the best of which are:

  • Easy assistance if I get stuck
  • More timely updates and bugfixes
So, going for something like Microsoft Office is a good choice as pretty much everyone uses it in corporate environments, and you are almost guaranteed that any problem you hit someone will have found the same problem and documented a way to fix it. Google around and you'll find out how.

Another element that I like is when the software is free of charge! What a thought - free!
This is commonly the case when finding software from the Open Source community, although there are a lot of free programs out there that are either ad-supported or written by an enthusiastic programmer who have shared their endeavours just to be nice.
(Of course - a lot of free software exists on the internet as a trap to the unwary. It can be full of malicious code and can attack your computer or do other nasty things like stealing your personal information.)

Open Source is honestly the way to go. There is a huge community of people who collaborate on this software. This means more eyes to notice and document issues, and plenty of people to fix it.

People used to worry that if a piece of software was written by people who weren't paid for it then it was likely to be full of bugs and issues, or malicious software was hidden in it. Honestly though, this is not the case. The community fixes issues as it goes along, rolling out updates as necessary, and if a major change is not appreciated by a sizeable portion of the users then they are free to grab the code and 'fork' the software to create a separate version that follows the other path.

So, on to the software choices. I'll provide a few options for each category, so if you disagree with my choices you can take an alternative path. My choice(s) in each section are in bold - although probably quite clear from the discussions afterwards!

Office software

So, pretty much everyone knows about Microsoft Office - it is used by almost all of the corporate world, and a high proportion of home users too. The problem is the price. While I can hardly say that the software isn't worth paying for, the issue is the array of free alternatives, which have sidled up to MS Office over the last few years, and are now (at least for most users) equally powerful and compatible.

The most high-profile of these has been Open Office, which has risen up from a meagre offering to become a fully-featured and (mostly) highly-compatible alternative to Microsoft Word. However, while this software is still free to download and use it is no longer maintained by the Open Source community - it is owned by software producer Apache. While this means there is now funding for it, it also means that it is up to Apache what changes are made, and how quickly it is updated with new features and fixes.

As a direct result the OpenOffice.org source code was forked at this point and the other fork was taken under the wing of the community and is now updated and maintained as Libre Office. To date Libre Office is more up-to-date and works better (in my opinion) than Open Office, although they effectively look the same and work in a very similar manner.

While Libre Office and Open Office have different default file types (Open Document formats: .odf, .ods) than Microsoft (.doc/.docx, .xls/.xlsx), you can still save in MS Office formats; and newer versions of MS Office can even open Open Document files and edit them too.

Tip:More to the point, when creating documents for other people to read you shouldn't be sending editable versions anyway, you should save in a view-only format like PDF, which is universally compatible and doesn't lead to broken formatting in paragraphs and tables when viewed on other computers/software. All the named software above export PDF files natively.

Another alternative if you only use documents and not presentation software or spreadsheets is to download AbiWord. It is also free and works well with MS Word files.
It isn't so feature-rich as Word, but for most people it will do fine.

Google Docs (now incorporated into Google Drive) is a final option that you might like if you are online all the time. It is free to use - you just need to sign up for a Google Account in order to access it.
As a bonus, when you sign up for a Google Account you'll get a GMail email account too, which is IMHO the best email client out there.

Google Docs works through your browser and is MS Office format compatible, and while it skimps on some of the features of the premium MS package it certainly offers a great alternative if you are always on the move.
Your files are saved on Google Drive (an online storage solution), and you can access and edit them anywhere you have access to the internet - even on a smartphone using the Google Drive Android and iPhone apps.
You can also collaborate with other people in real-time (you can see what they type as they type it!); and can make the document hidden or visible online, and even choose exactly who can see it and what rights they have to view, edit or delete the file. Excellent!


Of course, as mentioned earlier, most people are familiar with Microsoft Office, and especially in the professional landscape it is important to be able to share and edit documents and files with no compatibility issues to hold you back. Although most of the other products I have mentioned are very good about MS files there are still going to be some for whom only the standard product will do. For them, they will have to shell out for Microsoft's software. Expect to pay around £100 for the standard package or £200 for the more fully-featured suite. The new online version of MS Office - Office 365 - is now available and works in a similar way to Google Docs, however Microsoft will expect you to pay the license fee of around £70 per year for the privilege...


Internet Browsers

The range of internet browsers is full of strong opinions and varying standards.
Up to last year I would have expressly forbidden you from using Internet Explorer, as it was ageing disgracefully, and was flouting the standards of web coding by interpreting things its own way and making web design a total nuisance for the wonderful people who put in lots of effort in that area.

Today I can say that IE has come a long way. Yet, still not far enough...
Yes, it is embracing more web technologies and working more cohesively with standards, however it still lags behind many of the alternatives, and is slow at updating to fix bugs and security vulnerabilities.

As the majority of security issues arrive through the browser these days, this is not a software choice to be taken lightly. That said, the options are good and easy.

First are the big fish: Firefox and Google Chrome. Both are fast at providing updates, and are always innovating, bringing new technologies and building on the existing ones to provide a more interactive and powerful experience for the internet user.

Secondly are the less used, but viable alternatives like Opera, Safari, Rockmelt and so on.
I have less experience with these, but a little Googling and you can make a nice comparison.

I personally love Google Chrome - I can synchronise bookmarks and passwords securely across browsers, plus it adds many features like drag-and-drop files to attach to emails in GMail and other websites.

Desktop Publishing

While many people still use Word  (or an equivalent) to create posters, booklets and so on, anyone who has had to fit within a professional printer's requirements (or those who have an eye for detail) will soon have realised that the software clearly isn't built for the fine level of adjustment this sort of work demands.

Once your eyes are opened to the power of professional Desktop Publishing (DTP) software, you really won't want to return to fumbling around with Word again.

The problem here, of course is the pricetag involved with publishing software. If you thought the MS Office suite was expensive then brace yourself!!

The industry standards remain as Adobe InDesign and Quark XPress, which range in price from £600 for InDesign, to about £900 for the professional version of QXP (if you're a student you can have a vastly reduced price for your license, which is really nice). The price of InDesign comes down nicely if bought as part of the Adobe Creative Suite, where you get many of Adobe's other high standard offerings to help with photo editing, illustration and a range of other graphics and design programs.

Microsoft has a product called Publisher which basically does a better job than Word, but doesn't really scratch the surface compared to the others mentioned (and is about £95 for the privilege).

Of course, as I am an Open Source fanboy I am absolutely thrilled to introduce you to Scribus. While not quote up to the same standard as QXP or InDesign it holds a massive array of options with fine-grain control and support for outputting in formats that any professional printer would be pleased to receive.
The community is large, and the documentation is pretty extensive (Scribus Wiki - Documentation).

Honestly, there is no reason to not at least try this free option before you shell out hundreds of coins on one of the professional paid packages.
I have found it to be excellent for my purposes and quite easy to get used to once you grasp the basics.
Read some of the docs, and also search for some videos on YouTube if you learn best that way.

Image Editing


Paint.Net
Next up is image editing. While at first glance this might seem like an easy subject it quickly becomes apparent that people have vastly different requirements for image editors. There is no one size fits all solution here.

Some folks take pictures on their digital camera and just want to upload them onto their computer, rotate the ones that are on their sides, and view them. Occasionally they have a desire to crop them square, or trim them to make one of the people in the shot be in the centre. Great - you don't need any additional software. Windows has provided an image viewer in every version of Windows and since XP (possibly before that - I forget?) it has the ability to view the images as a slideshow and to rotate images just by right-clicking on them and selecting 'Rotate left' (or 'Rotate right'). You can even select a whole bunch of photos first and rotate them all in one go. If you need to crop the image just right-click on it and select 'Open with... > Paint'
Microsoft Paint has come along leaps and bounds since Windows XP and it now allows you to do far more, including cropping and resizing, and even basic editing options.

For those of you with more desire to edit your pictures - adjusting brightness, easier cropping, or even batch resizing a folder of images (to make smaller images to send by email for example) then IrfanView is a wonderful alternative.
It can even give you the ability to recognise text in a scanned document (OCR), adjust colour balance, reduce red-eye, and auto-crop borders.
Of course - this is free.
Many people at this level would have had Photoshop Elements suggested to them, which as a cut-down version of Photoshop is much more affordable than it's big brother, however if you can save yourself a few quid, then do it!

For the next stage up, you may need to do some serious editing, maybe painting something out of an image, reducing blemishes on skin, tweaking the levels in an image and working with several semi-transparent layers to build up a composite image.
The salesperson in the PC shop is rubbing his hands with glee...
"You need Photoshop for that," says the bloke. "That will be all of your currency please..."
Well, he would say that wouldn't he?

Ok, so if you are not making images for print, or you don't have the same level of requirements as pro photographers then you may well be pleased to learn that actually Photoshop Elements can do all this for around £60. Sounds good eh?
Hang on, hang on. £60 still sounds like a bit o' money to me. Got anything, you know... cheaper?
Ah well, now you ask. Yes, I could let you download Paint.Net of course.
It has all the yummy editing features than most of you might fancy, plus a decidedly tasty price of zero pennies.
Honestly though, Photoshop Elements is great - and at about 10% of the price of Photoshop it has a surprising proportion of its features.
Paint.Net is rougher around the edges, but it will let you do what you need and for free it is a very attractive proposition. It is also less resource-intensive, so won't slow down your computer quite as much as the bigger pro software choices.

Speaking of which...
Photoshop is great. It looks great, it works well, it is powerful. It is the industry standard for a reason. And for £600 it has better be good.
If you need the best then there is no better option. 

My wife uses Photoshop for editing her illustration work after scanning them in. She loves the interface, and is often learning new and more powerful ways of editing.

I, on the other hand, don't use Photoshop. Mostly because I often am more likely to be batch resizing and cropping - which I prefer to do in IrfanView or the (uber-geeky) command-line alternative: ImageMagick.
But actually, when I need the power of layers and complex editing I often reach for the Open Source alternative known simply as: The GIMP.

The GIMP has built a wide following, and for a free package this is unsurprising. It has pretty much the same features as Photoshop, although most would admit that the interface is a lot less pretty and easy to use.
Once you get the hang of it though you're laughing.
Excellent stuff.

Oh, and one final alternative - there are a bunch of online applications that kinda emulate Photoshop's interface. One of the ones I've tried and thought was worth my time was SumoPaint. It's a bit slow at times, and not fully loaded with features, but it certainly does a decent job when you are paying nothing and not even having to install an application. Excellent for editing on the move.


Playing Videos



For playing videos, DVDs, Blu-rays and stuff like that you can do it all with VLC.
It's free and simple to use.

There is a slight issue that some people will warn you about... The question of legality. Check into this for yourself if you're unsure. Basically (and don't quote me on this - just my understanding from what I've read elsewhere) VLC decodes DVDs using a non-standard process: it guesses the encryption code - which takes seconds as the encryption is very weak. The approved process is for the software maker to pay the company licensing the DVD format for the rights to decode the discs. That is after both the hardware manufacturer of the DVD drive has paid for the rights to play discs, and the DVD producer has paid for the rights to encode the disc in DVD format.
To date no-one has ever been so much as reprimanded for the use of VLC or any other alternative that uses this approach. VLC has also been downloaded about 50 million times from legal software site CNET Downloads, which would surely kick up a fuss if there was a real legality issue.

Check into the VLC pages for their interpretation of whether it is legal to use their services, however this basically comes down to them saying that they are a French company, the use of VLC is legal in France, but all other countries have different laws and it's up to you to be a lawyer and determine it for yourself.

Anyway, this is a sure-fire way to get video files to play on your Windows computer, and if you have any doubts feel free to install one of the paid-for alternatives like CyberLink PowerDVD.

Security


Ok, so my choice of virus protection has been AVG for a while. It is a bit bloated, so it slows stuff down a bit. Also it is terribly annoying in that it tries to install all sorts of 'bonus' protective programs when you install the free software. Make sure you decline the offer to install the AVG Toolbar, AVG Search and all of the other junk.

Windows 8 comes with an exciting addition to the security suite - Windows Defendor. It provides antivirus protection and firewall and other good stuff.
Sadly the reports are that Defender is a bit rubbish...
So for now I will stick with AVG.

I am not currently running a software firewall anymore as the previous best option was ZoneAlarms, which has now become very whiny and grumpy and is always popping up alerts for software updates, or to encourage me to install software I don't want.
Most wireless routers now come with hardware firewalls too, so you are much better protected by that than you ever were with your dial-up modem ;)

If you suspect you might have a virus or other infection on your computer you should be aware that no anti-malware software is going to protect you 100%, so it's good to check with a backup.

For this I use MBAM - MalwareBytes Anti-Malware. It doesn't offer 'live protection', but for scanning a computer for infections it does a great job.

I also use CCleaner to check/clean my system periodically.
On Windows XP it took ages to load the Add/Remove Programs menu when your system was fully loaded with software, so CCleaner became my default Uninstaller.
It also helps clean up orphaned Registry entries and other junk on your system.


Coding and taking notes:



The Windows Notepad is great and I use it frequently to copy and paste text from webpages, take down details during phone calls, or just for general quick-draw notes. I tend to use the keyboard shortcut Win+R to bring up the Run command then type notepad and hit enter. That takes me about 2 seconds from anywhere in Windows and I can then start taking notes.


For the times when I'm taking lots of notes of something - or more commonly coding several webpages - I like a lightweight, yet powerful tabbed notepad.
For this I tend to use Notepad++, which provides me with useful note-taking features, plus a whole lot more - including code syntax highlighting - which allows me to 



Windows 8 Essential:

If you've read my 'Fixing Windows 8' blog post you'll know that I heartily recommend ClassicShell as a great way to get back control of Windows 8 from the cruel grip of the Start Screen and save you from the Start Menu free Desktop.
Read that post for more info. In my opinion this is an essential one!






Well I hope this has been useful.
I suspect I shall update this list if I discover anything that drastically changes my choices, but for now that's what my system looks like.

What are your favourites? Do you disagree with my choices?
I'd be interested to hear. Leave me a comment below.

Thanks loads.
Happy installations!

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