A good antivirus, browser, Office and P2P software are essentials
There are thousands of free applications to download from PortalProgramas. However, there are a few programs that are essential for any computer and that most people download:
- A software like Ares for file sharing. Although there are also other P2P applications like eMule. There are specific programs for downloading only music, only videos, documents… File sharing is one of the most common tasks among Internet users.
- In today’s computers, a good antivirus is a must. Although there are many free ones, the truth is that the most effective ones are paid because they are more updated, detect and resolve incidents better that we might have with viruses or any other Internet threat. And the problem is not just viruses, on the Internet we encounter spyware that adds advertising to our computer, programs that pretend our PC is damaged to sell us a supposed solution that actually does nothing, theft of passwords from Facebook, Hotmail… we need to keep our computer safe from Internet threats.
- Download a good browser like Google Chrome or Firefox. They are the best, fastest and safest, and they also have a lot of plugins (mini applications) that add useful features to your browser.
- A word processor is important because nowadays office software is widespread and everyone needs to write documents, create Powerpoint presentations, create databases, make calculations in Excel… The most used tool is Microsoft Office, but we also recommend OpenOffice.org because it is free, open source, 100% compatible with Office and offers almost the same functionalities. It also has its own Excel sheet (called Calc), a program to create presentations…
Other highly downloaded applications
- We cannot forget the multimedia world. We need programs to watch movies, burn CDs, DVDs, listen to music… The most well-known program for burning CDs and DVDs is Nero, certainly an excellent option as it offers Blue-Ray features, playback, conversion… if you want a free software, try ImgBurn or Infrarecorder. For media players, a simple and good one is VLC Media Player.
- Who doesn’t read emails from their computer? Having an email client is essential for any PC. Outlook is very popular and powerful, but you can also find other programs like Thunderbird.
- We have password storage programs that are very useful so you can securely store all the passwords of the websites you visit. This way you won’t forget them and avoid using the same password all the time.
Tips for knowing which software to download
This is the basic and fundamental. But you will also find thousands of applications to download for things you can’t even imagine that will make your life easier when working with your computer. Our recommendations as software experts go further:
- Get to know open-source software. There are many applications that are of high quality and that we can use on our computer if we want to promote free knowledge and don’t want to pay for commercial applications. Our team of computer experts has selected thousands of free and open-source applications with many features that won’t expire.
- Make backups: It’s that simple. It is important to always have a backup of all your computer’s data because in IT you never know when a virus might come, the hard drive might break… and at PortalProgramas we don’t want you to lose your data, photos, programs…
- Computer maintenance is necessary. Is your PC running slow? Slow Internet connection? These are very common problems that downloading maintenance programs can detect and solve. There are many simple programs that we can use without having IT experience or being technicians.