Google packs together free, great software
Clever Google. Now the advertising megalith (which also does some, um, Web searching) is offering a quick-and-easy start-up software package that puts a lot of Google stuff on the user’s computer.
Called Google Pack, it’s a collection of mostly useful tools, not all of them from Google, that are free and pretty much essential to getting full Internet enjoyment. (The full list is below.)
With one button, visitors can download the whole collection, or first customize it in any way they like.
The pitch is to new computer users, i.e. the folks to whom Santa was good, but it’s also a good spot for laggards, the people who haven’t really touched their software options since they got their last new computer a few years back.
Below, borrowed from the Google Pack page, is the list.
Quick reactions: Google Earth is awesome, and really great for kids. Google Desktop will creep out privacy advocates but is very useful for finding that file you stored in the wrong folder. I haven’t found a better photo organizer than Google’s Picasa, but then again, once I found it, I stopped looking.
Google Toolbar is almost unnecessary, made redundant by the recent browser updates. Love, love, love Firefox, though IE is catching up, but you should try it. The Norton product is a good deal, but when that six-month trial ends, you will be nagged constantly for an expensive upgrade and/or new subscription.
Oh, and the links below seem to work out of this blog. Sorry about the empty image space.
Source: featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com
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