I have a few tips and downloads for anyone you know who is lucky enough to get a new computer for Christmas. These little things will help ensure they get started on the right foot and make their overall experience much better than without.
You can really help them out by downloading a few of these to your computer now, burn them to CD, then install them on the new computers from the CD. Unprotected computers can pick up malicious spyware, adware, and trojan horses within minutes of going online.
I once completely reset my computer and only went on the Internet to get these programs. I ran the programs within 15 minutes of going online, and my computer had already been infected with three spyware programs! Trust me, burn these programs to CD and install them before going online!
These are the direct download links, so click them and save to your desktop or folder, which you’ll then burn to a CD:
- AVG free anti-virus
- Spybot free anti-spyware
- Ad-Aware free anti-adware
- Firefox free browser (yes, still better than IE 7)
So download these installer programs, burn them to a CD, then insert the CD into the new computer, drag the installer icons to the new desktop, and click on them one at a time to install them. You may have to reboot the computer a couple times during the installations. You should run each of the protection programs once before going online, so the program is set to defend.
Also, I have some recommendations to rev up your new computer. These downloads are not critical, but can make the computer much nicer to use. These are all free of cost. I am not going to link to them because you can (and should learn how to) Google their names and the word “download” to quickly find them on your own.
- iTunes is great for the whole family’s music and podcast organization because of the custom playlists feature.
- OpenOffice is exactly like Microsoft Office’s Word, Excel, and Powerpoint.
- Firefox Extensions make a great browser unbelievably customizable.
- Divx movie player is free and a common online media format.
- Gimp photo retoucher is an excellent and free Photoshop alternative
- Picasa photo organizer is excellent and free from Google
Finally, I recommend teaching new computer users how to use Windows Explorer to control and organize their system files (keyboard shortcut Control+E) and teaching them to organize everything possible under the My Documents folder. Otherwise files start getting spread out across the desktop and the C: drive.
And finally-finally, why not show them that local Idaho Falls community discussion website, IdahoFallz.com? Why not show them how easy it is to participate in local discussions through the chatbox or commenting on a story? Why not bookmark it for them? Why not drag our icon from the address bar to their links bar so it is easily reached? Why not set their home page or one of their home tabs as IdahoFallz.com?
Enough with the shameless plugs. Merry Christmas.
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Gato got runned over by Marcus many moons ago. Be ye daft, 2486? 
Let's have a new poll, alright, Joe?
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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Just a word of caution about anti-virus programs in general. Sometimes these programs will report false-positives — that is the anti-virus software will report that a legitimate (and sometime essential) file contains a virus when it does not. Deleting the ‘false-positives’ could render you computer inoperable. Do a little investigating before removing a suspected file.
Or…
You could just buy a Mac.
does the Mac come with cheeze…?