Top 10 Essential Apps For Students 2013 Discussion

(Updated on August 8, 2013)

With a new school year now at hand, it's that time again...time to make sure that students are outfitted with the best software applications for academic success.

Every college or high school student needs a good office suite, of course, for putting together those all important school reports. Other types of software can come in very handy for taking notes in class, converting speech to text, enhancing photos, and producing videos. Students also need software for backing up their work, keeping their PCs tuned up and virus-free, and -- let's face it -- just plain having fun.

Here's our list of top ten essential software applications for academic survival, with updated information about new and upcoming releases of some these products. All of these applications run on Windows, and most are also available for Mac OS?X and/or mobile platforms such as Windows RT, iOS, and Android. To find out more about each software application, click on the links below and read the full, in-depth reviews on NotebookReview and TechnologyGuide sister sites such as TabletPCReview and DigitalCameraReview.

Read the full content of this Article: Top 10 Essential Apps For Students 2013

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Certainly not a list for students on a shoestring budget. You know, 98% of them.

 

Evernote and Spotify are free programs, and Photoshop Elements (relatively cheap for paid editing software) can easily be replaced with GIMP (free). I'd think that CCleaner and Revo Uninstall, along with the default Windows maintenance tools, would be better than Advanced System Optimizer.

As for Office and anti-virus, most universities typically offer that to students for free or for low cost. But I'd rather have Office 2010 than 2013 and/or 365, due to the newer versions' licensing terms and the fact that 365's functuonality can be freely replaced by Office 20xx and Dropbox/Skydrive/whatever.

 

As said above but to emphasize. Legitimate free alternatives to all paid suggestions above. I think a more interesting thread an discussion would be to breakdown the category/function. Say where MS Office is mentioned mention some of the free alternatives. Anti-virus the same thing. Movies Crackle is free. If parents have HBO at home you can watch free on line and so on.

I have Netflix so I am not a hater of paid but I think the choices are very important. I think the comment about 98% of students being financially challenged might be an overstatement the sentiments are 100% spot on.

While I do not mean to question the integrity of the lists author it sure does read like a pay/ad/financially driven list for the most part.

So without claiming the freebies/alternatives do all or everything they do offer legitimate consideration and might work for many.

#1 MS Office- Open Office/LibreOffice4.0/IBM Lotus Symphony (based on Open Office)
#2 Office 365- This is really an alternative to #1 so should not even be it's own "#" but....But with Google Doc's (5GB free I think) or DropBox ( I got 60GB free) and one of the free office suites you could do much of what this offers.
#3 Evernote- Am I wrong or is this really just a fancy GUI that I can already do with my free apps and DropBox or many other combinations?
#4 Adobe- GIMP as already said.
#5 Dragon- Windows 7 has it built in.
#6 Carbonite- Aren't we back to nothing more than a Fancy GUI and some Cloud storage here.
#7 Norton- Well we can argue about AV until the cows come home but I am amused and would love know how this one was pulled out of the pile. I won't even suggest the best but AV is something you really do not need to pay for.
#8 Advanced System Optimizer- Look at what Kuroi said above.
#9 Netflix- Crackle is free. I pay for Netflix but Hulu is an option. I also have my cable (Xfinity) on my notebook, and HBO/Cinemax. Also have on my phone.
#10 Spotify- Fine choice. Not the only choice.

I have nothing against the suggested apps but I do find some no where near "essential". I recognize that all students are not computer science majors. Some of these apps are just GUI's so I do have a little issue with the need for such things when the ability already exists. Maybe I am just scared that the future leaders in finance/business/technology/politics/media lack basic skills and need to be spoon fed. But then again I am highly cynical of the current crop of leaders. If they can't handle the relatively simple tasks how will they comprehend the complexities of society and captain the ship? Norwegian Cruise Lines here we come, bring a swimsuit for the unscheduled swim.

 

Well, I have 5/10 and have alternatives to almost all the others.

Have to give a shout-out to Spotify though; that has been one of my all-time favorite apps.

 

I also think I don't agree with most of them. Microsoft Office is essential, but it can be replaced with Open Office. I think most students are typing rather than using Dragon. I agree with Ultra-Insane.