Over time, the laptop operating system builds up cruft and useless files that take up space. It’s also capable of playing audio, along with all sorts of other tricks. Whether you need to play videos recorded on your ancient cell phone or in some weird format you’ve never heard of before, VLC will get the job done. It’s capable of playing nearly every format imaginable.
You should still keep a solid player around on your desktop for when you need to play media files locally.įor this task, nothing beats VLC Media Player.
In addition to your normal antivirus app, you should keep a copy of Malwarebytes Anti-Malware Free installed for occasional deep scans. Under the General tab, scroll down and uncheck Show Panda news, and you won’t hear from Panda unless there’s a problem.Īside Panda, check out Avira Free Antivirus or 360 Total Security. You can do this by opening the app, clicking the three-bar menu at the top-right, and choosing Settings. Related Article: A beginner’s guide to buying a laptop.Īfter you’ve installed it, take a minute to disable the promotional ads. Setup is quick and easy, and if you want to set up scheduled scans or exceptions, you can. It’s a cloud-based solution, so it doesn’t bog down your system resources.
While you can take steps to protect your PC without an antivirus program, it’s smart to keep one installed. This is because if a person has access to your personal information via the laptop, your physical security is compromised. It goes a long way to protecting you too physically. The security of your laptop is very important. It offers a much better deal than buying Office 2016 on its own, including a terabyte of OneDrive cloud storage.
It’s a completely free and powerful office suite that includes alternatives to Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, and more.įor those who can’t get by without Microsoft Office, look into Office 365. However I will also recommend LibreOffice. Dominantly, we have Microsoft Office as the most popular office suite. You’ll also need a tool that lets you work with documents, spreadsheets, and presentations at some point.
OneDrive, Microsoft’s cloud software, comes installed on Windows 8 and 10, and while Microsoft cut the free storage significantly, OneDrive remains a solid choice, too.
Google Drive offers an impressive 15 GB for free, and you can upgrade to 100 GB for only $2 per month. It’s also super easy to share files with others, and the service sports a great interface on the web and desktop. Dropbox offers an app for every major device so you can take your files anywhere.
Dropbox offers 2 GB, though you can increase that by referring friends and other small tasks. There are various cloud storage options but our top picks are Dropbox and Google Drive. Storing of information on via the internet has become an everyday occurrence. Storage of your data is vital as it can be retrieved for usage at anytime. You can also read why you should choose Firefox over Chrome. Chrome is super-speedy, includes little conveniences like instantly searching Google for an image, and hosts a great library of extensions. Our top picks in this category are Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox. An internet browser is vital as it helps you access the Web easily. If you don’t want to use your laptop to browse the Internet, then you are probably under using it.