My sister’s boyfriend gave her an iBook G4 for Christmas. The spec isn’t bad and I’ve been updating it and installing a few bits and pieces for her today.
Since she’s a fulltime student she needed some form of word processing package, so I opted for NeoOffice, which is a Mac port of OpenOffice. I also installed Firefox and Acrobat Reader.
As far as I know she only uses MSN, so Adium would be overkill.
What other software would people recommend for a student? Ideally it should be free or open source, but if it’s a really worthwhile addition I don’t mind forking out for a license.
I can’t think of anything offhand…
Adium might be sensible; Microsoft’s own MSN client for MacOS is extremely half-hearted, and doesn’t work well with most proxies.
Authoxy is handy if you need to work through a college network, as it allows apps which can’t themselves authenticate against a proxy to use an authenticating proxy indirectly.
Quicksilver is a must..Cyberduck is a solid FTP client. HandBreak to backup her DVD’s. VLC to play them. Burn to err burn them. Transmission is a clean and simple BT client. AbiWord just because..it’s Abiword. Skim for .pdf. Inskape for vector graphics, But above all else install Quicksilver will put everything at her finger tips.
/not a Mac user; Kinda suprised that they have not been falling over themselves to lend advice 🙂
@Rahood – I put quicksilver on it last night.
She won’t be using FTP, so Cyberduck would be wasted. Same with the vector graphics 🙂
She’s studying politics!
Michele
PS: The Mac fans must all be on holidays!
Rob
How hard is Authoxy to use? She’s not very technical, so proxies aren’t something she’d know anything about
Michele
Very easy, once it’s set up. It really depends on the college; if they don’t use an authenticating proxy there’s no point. If they do, though, you just give it the proxy details, then make it the system HTTP proxy.
Ok so. I’ll see how she gets on without it first, as I won’t be seeing her for a couple of weeks at least