Five Free Apps For Your Netbook
By Craig Lloyd on Dec 15th, 2009 at 11:46AM
Netbooks — as convenient as they are — lack a bit in the performance category, but that doesn’t mean you have to settle for less in productivity and overall experience. You can get a lot of power out of your netbook by utilizing these five applications. The best part? They’re all completely free.
Daemon Tools
Probably one of the most useful tools that a netbook user can have. Since netbooks don’t have the luxury of an optical drive, it can make installing some programs impossible. However, Daemon Tools is there to save the day. If you need to install something on your netbook that requires a disc, you can easily create an image of the disc on your desktop PC and then pop the disc image onto a flash drive. Then have Daemon Tools open it up on your netbook by right-clicking the system tray icon and navigating to Virtual Devices > No Media > Mount Image and then find the disc image to open it. – Download
Google Chrome
If you’re using Firefox on your netbook, consider switching to Google Chrome. I found it to be less sluggish when I have multiple tabs open and Chrome simply takes up less resources. – Download
GIMP
It’s obvious that most netbooks don’t stand a chance running Adobe Photoshop. Instead, GIMP does everything I need it to when doing on-the-fly edits. Better yet, try out GIMPshop, which resembles Photoshop even more. – Download
OpenOffice.org Suite
Why pay for a second license to Microsoft Office (if you already have it for your desktop, that is) when you can simply and easily get away with a free productivity suite that works just as well. OpenOffice.org is a great addition to your netbook. Heck, if you like it enough, you could ditch MS Office all together. – Download
VLC Player
Your netbook can make a great portable media player, but you obviously need a solid media player to make that happen. VLC Player has you covered. It’s a very lightweight application that will play pretty much anything you throw at it. Media Player Classic is another good, free option for lightweight video playback. – Download
