Skip to content

Some free ways to make your PC run more smootly

Like the familiar route you take to work every day, we all find ourselves following routine — even when there may be a faster or easier way.

Like the familiar route you take to work every day, we all find ourselves following routine — even when there may be a faster or easier way.

Last week’s column explored some new Windows-friendly downloads you might add to make your computing experience a whole lot easier. This week, we add a few more.

Instant messaging has become a fundamental part of communicating across many offices, families, and sometimes between the kitchen and kids’ rooms.

If you use Google Talk but your boss likes Hotmail and your spouse is partial to Facebook messaging, trying to juggle them can fill your task bar with chat windows. Install the open-source program Pidgin (http://pidgin.im/) to consolidate your chats in one handy place. A multitude of third-party plug-ins will let you accommodate almost any chat service, customize notifications or pick a theme to blend in with your desktop.

As the number of electronic devices in the average household increases, so does fragmentation of the data we create with them.

Synchronize information with Dropbox (www.dropbox.com), an incredibly handy program. If you start writing a report on your computer at work, then think of something to add while waiting for the mechanic, Dropbox lets you access the document from your smartphone and have the most up-to-date version waiting on your office PC.

Every time I price a new computer, I grumble about the cost to get the Microsoft Office suite of programs, yet my computing life depends on Word and Excel. Now there’s an alternative: LibreOffice (http://www.libreoffice.org/). Supported by the open source community, it offers a fully compatible suite of free Word and data-processing programs.

While it seems like every time I turn around there’s a new music-streaming service, I love Spotify (www.spotify.com), a business based in the United Kingdom.

Listen to your own music through its player, share playlists with your friends and find out what they’re listening to. If Sally has an awesome dance-mix playlist, you can stream it online for free to kick up the tempo at your next shindig.

Are you considering that new Jay-Z album but hesitant to shell out the bucks without hearing it first? With Spotify’s new search tool, you’ll be grooving in just a few clicks and no time.

If the commercials make you crazy, you can pay $4.99 a month to stream ad free. For offline listening, pay $9.99 a month to download music to your MP3 player. Spotify currently is available in an invite-only beta version.

Send me a note at www.callnerds.com/andrea if you want to join the party.

Let me know if you missed last week’s list, have any trouble finding these programs or want to know my favorite Apple downloads.

Andrea Eldridge is CEO of Nerds on Call, which offers on-site computer and home theater set-up and repair.