Software for College Students

In the last two installments of this series, I mention 10 Items and 10 Websites for college students. Now, here is some essential software for college students.

Microsoft Office

This is a Software Suite you will use every step of the way throughout college. Familiarize yourself with Word, Excel and Power point. Not only is it the best of its kind, it’s pretty much the standard in college and the real world.

Free Alternative: Open Office– With Open Office you can create and open Word, Excel and Power point files. A great alternative if you don’t want to shell out the $100 for the student version of MS Office.

MS Outlook

With Calendar, Address Book, ToDo List and Notes, MS Outlook is a nice one stop shop for organization. This also comes with the MS Office software suite. It also syncs with most smart phones and PDAs.

Free Alternatives: While I haven’t seen something quite like Outlook, there are a number of tools (mostly web-based) that can help you out. Online, I use Google Calendar, Remember the Milk for tasks and Google Notebook for notes. As far as desktop software goes, Thunderbird is the way to go for email. Plus with Lightning, you can get a calendar built right into Thunderbird.

Anti-Virus Software

Let’s face it. You will be on a residential network with possibly thousands of students using the internet. Most wouldn’t be able to spot a virus. Anti-Virus software is essential all of the time, but especially if you are moving out of the house and onto a shared network. My school made me install their brand of computer protection, but if you have the choice, I recommend Norton Anti-Virus.

Free Alternative:– AVG Antivirus. It’s pretty rock solid and a nice free piece of software.

Those three, I feel, are the most important pieces of software. Below is a list of free software that might not be exclusive to college students, but still very helpful.

• ITunes– I am not a fan of ITunes. I use Windows Media Player 11. However, living on campus, where a majority of people on your network use ITunes, it could make discovering music easier. With MyTunes Redux, it is easier to share music with your friends. There is also something out there called ITunes U, which allows schools to add content to ITunes for its students to download.
• Picasa– Photo Organizing and Editing by Google
• Ad-Aware– Free Spyware cleaning program.
• AIM/Google Talk– Instant Messaging programs are pretty essential in college. IMing is the quickest and easiest way to get in contact with someone, especially since most campuses are pretty well connected; not to mention IM makes it easy to keep in touch during the summer and after graduation.
• FireFox– The best, most secure browser, period.
• Skype– Free VoIP (over the internet phone calls) and very cheap calls to US and Internationally. Great if you have a prepaid cell phone (or no cell phone).
• FoxIt Reader– PDFs in college are inevitable. While Adobe Reader is the more popular PDF reader, FoxIt Reader is much more lightweight and very easy to use.

As a Comp Sci guy, IDEs, Linux and notepad got me through my Undergrad program. What software helped/helps you?