Recommended Software

Please contact me with any questions on the following software. My methods of installation allow you to make the most from these programs.

Nearly all the programs I recommend are free. How is this possible? Home users are often eligible for great free software. These companies make their money from business users or from sales of other products.


Libre Office

Libre Office is based on Open Office, a free suite of programs compatible with Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint. It also includes programs for drawing, equations and databases.

I specifically recommend Libre Office as it is capable of opening virtually any type of word processor document, and loads quicker than Open Office.

The ideal solution for free productivity.

http://www.libreoffice.org/


eM Client

There are many different ways to access and manage your emails. They all fall into two brackets: webmail (i.e. gmail.com, hotmail.com) or a desktop client (i.e. Outlook, Thunderbird).

For many years, Windows Live Mail was an easy to use and convenient desktop email client. Microsoft ceased development for this in 2012, and as such it does not support many of the security standards for modern email accounts. Microsoft then introduced a free, basic email program into Windows 10, simply called Mail, but this lacks many standard features such as dragging and dropping into folders, and opening more than one email.

Em Client is a perfect replacement, and supports the largest selection of different types of email services that I have ever used, including syncing contacts and calendars with cloud services and other devices,. It is free to use if you only have 1 or 2 email addresses.

Allway Sync

Having a backup of your files is crucial. Even if you are aware of this, exactly how to have your files backed up is unclear and littered with choices.

In my experience, I have found that dedicated backup programs save your data in an awkward format, leaving you dependent on that program to recover anything.

Therefore I use Allway Sync, a program that can detect any differences between your main data and your backup disk, and make the data identical. You can then reliably use your backup disk on any computer to recover data.

Allway Sync is sold at a discount price through Willis IT Services. For more details, see here.

I can make Allway Sync run automatically to take the hard work out of needing to back up.