Click here to go to the NEW College Discussion Forum

Any thoughts on basic software for a laptop for a college freshman?
Besides word processing, how important is it to have Excel, Power Point, etc, for a basic liberal arts freshman courseload?
Thanks

By Emeraldkity4 (Emeraldkity4) on Friday, July 25, 2003 - 10:51 am: Edit

My daughter is a junior biology major, her research papers need spreadsheets graphics etc, she has gotten by OK with Appleworks. It opens all Excel files and can convert her files to Excel for those who needit.
If you are not on a Mac, I would suggest you look at THINKFREE a no frills OFFICE for $49 instead of whatever Office is running at these days
www.thinkfree.com/

By Morgantruce (Morgantruce) on Friday, July 25, 2003 - 01:34 pm: Edit

Kmom,
My daughter is an English major at an LAC. She needed to use Excel several times during her freshman year... and she used Power Point too. I believe it was for an elementary statistics course. She used Excel again in a biology course. MS Word is the main work horse.

Emerald,
Over the past couple years, I have read of several businessmen that have tried Office alternatives (Sun Office, Thinkfree) and have had problems in dealing with translating to the larger group of people who use Office. Perhaps the typical student never encounters a problem---that would be nice.

You have NO IDEA of how much pain it causes me to come to the conclusion that a Microsoft product is presently the way to go. It rubs me the wrong way in hundreds of different ways. I just plain hate Microsoft. I watch the Apple rumor boards every day to see if there's any hint of the expected Apple version of Office--and when it does come out, I will be there to buy copy #1.

(BTW, Netscape 7.02 is great on Mac!!! Nicer browser than Safari, nicer email than Mail) Other nice programs I use include BBedit Lite and iGetter.

By Emeraldkity4 (Emeraldkity4) on Friday, July 25, 2003 - 02:09 pm: Edit

I think netscape is too slow, my daughter uses icab but I don't like it. For mail she uses blitz which is just awful but that is her schools mail program apparently.

I don't hate microsoft but I don't want to spare the hard drive space or the bucks right now, and it horrifies me that the public school system is switching to Microsoft products just because they get a deal for them, even though there is no money for support or maintenance, and Windows seems to need a lot more maintenance than Mac products do.

I don't doubt that Office has things that are pretty cool, but I wouldn't use a Mac if I read manuals so there is no way I would take advantage of all the features.

One of the nice quirks of Reed is that it is a Mac & Unix dominated campus by far. Virtually all the student computers in my daughters dorm are ibooks or imacs. That was a nice treat for her, coming from a PC dominated high school. Probably why Appleworks is enough for her, because the professors are using it too. She also has Maclink, which has the abilty to translate more files than straight Appleworks.

I however am looking at MarinerWrite right now. It has lots of wordprocessing features Appleworks doesn't have and it is much smaller than Word. They also have a spreadsheet program called Calc.

Her school also has developed two biology programs PopBio & GelyMac, that she uses
http://academic.reed.edu/biology/software.html
They have stuff that lives on the server too that is Mac compatible and free for network use.
I bet other schools have similar.

( I cannot stand powerpoint- how unimaginative are the presentations and slow!- I have been going to school board meetings and everything is on powerpoint and they think it is so cool! What ever happened to Hypercard and Hyperstudio? I love Hypercard- didn't they use that to write Myst?)

By Morgantruce (Morgantruce) on Friday, July 25, 2003 - 03:02 pm: Edit

Hypercard! You're giving away your age!

Are you gonna start talking about those lovable old Beagle Brothers now?

I think part of our not being quite on the same page here is that my older daughter is going to a college where PCs dominate. She has a PC---on which I installed Windows 2000 Pro. That's about as stable an OS that ever came out of Redmond.

My younger daughter is leaving for college next month with a PowerMac. Her campus is a little less dominated by PCs.

Attending a college that is largely Macintosh oriented is a huge plus---and I'm not just talking about computers here. Of course, PC types have no idea what we're talking about... but that's why they continue using those awful machines! Right?

I had a friend who started emailing me jokes in PowerPoint. Ugh! HUGE slow files. Filtered that garbage right to the trash where it belongs.