PC Tips Tweaks and Maintenance

It is an unfortunate fact of most software, that as they age and become big names etc they get bloated, painfully slow to load and perform and too many mistakes are made. On top of that, many are grossly overpriced and can have terrible End User License Agreements and Privacy Policies. Software makers seem to think that once they are big enough they can treat end users terribly and they will keep coming back. Therefore it is always a good idea to keep an eye open for good alternatives to the overpriced bloatware that is infecting your PC and draining your wallet and wasting productive time with “extras”.

Here are just a few you should consider:

Big Name                       Clean Alternative

Adobe Reader                  Foxit Reader

Adobe Acrobat                 CutePDF Writer

Adobe Photoshop             Gimp

Microsoft Office                OpenOffice (also has PDF writing ability)

Quicktime                        Quicktime Alternative or Q-Lite

Real Player                       Real Alternative

Windows Messenger          Pidgin or Trillian

Outlook Express                Mozilla Thunderbird

Windows Media Player       GomPlayer

Of course we can not leave out Internet Explorer. There are many alternative browsers to consider. The most widely used alternative to Internet Explorer is Mozilla Firefox. Firefox is a cleaner faster and overall better browser, but it is also becoming a victim of bloat. That is not to say don’t use it, it is still my main browser, I have personalized mine and am quite happy with the add-ons and the extra security, I am just noticing it is not as fast as before. Hopefully, they will clean it up and keep it clean, the current bloat is minimal, but I want NO bloat.

My big issue changing from Firefox now is that not every add-on I use is fully compatible with the other browsers I am considering.

Unfortunately Opera has long gone into bloat and is even slower than Internet Explorer now. Interestingly one of the faster browsers is from Apple. The Apple Safari is available for windows and is definitely worth checking out though I recommend against betas of any program - wait until it is in latest full release. Two others you should consider are Maxthon and K-Meleon. Both are small, clean, fast and customizable.