PC Clinic
Interesting Free Software
We are looking at hosting some of this software locally, so in future you may be able to download them from our server. But until then here's some software we think you may be interested in. If you have any problems downloading or installing, drop into the Student PC Clinic. Please note we cannot provide much support for these.
NiNite
NiNite provides a service where you can select all the free programs you want to install and allows you to download them together. Once it's done, it'll install them all for you. It features some of the free software we mention below.
Microsoft Updates – Operating System and Office
Hopefully you've switched on the Windows or Apple Updates, but it's also worth running the Office Updater.
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If you are running Microsoft Office 2007 you will need to either use the full Windows update service, or navigate to the Office downloads site, and search for Office 2007 updates.
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Mac OS X users of Microsoft Office can visit the Microsoft Macintosh Downloads page.
Browsers
Windows users, you've already got Internet Explorer, but you may like other browsers.
Firefox is available.
Safari is available.
Google Chrome for Windows and Google Chrome for Mac are available.
Mac OS X users, you've already got Safari so if you want Firefox it's available.
Chat clients
There are far too many to detail them all here, and it's very dependent on what your friends are using. But the main ones are Windows Live Essentials, which includes Messenger and a number of extra software packages which you may not need, or for Mac users Messenger for Mac OS X.
Other freeware Mac clients include:
aMSN or Adium which allows connecting to pretty much any chat system.
For Linux users and those on Windows wanting to incorporate a lot of messaging clients together, you can download Pidgin.
General Applications
OpenOffice (a free full featured Office suite).
Adobe Reader / Flash / Shockwave
GIMP (similar to Photoshop, except free).
VLC lets you watch most films no matter their file type but make sure that anything you watch is a legal copy.