Tag: "netbook"

Upgrade to FREE

By Holland Cooke
Radio Consultant

BLOCK ISLAND, RI —  Even pre-recession, before The New Normal taught us all to work smarter, my TALKERS coverage of the January 2009 Consumer Electronics Show reviewed that year’s Shiny New Object, the under-$300 netbook computer.

It was smaller/lighter than laptops/notebooks, and had longer battery life.  And back when many Windows users were cursing Vista, those new machines came pre-loaded with trusty Windows XP, since netbooks’ processors couldn’t run memory hog Vista.

“But,” I cautioned, netbooks were “light on word processing, spreadsheet, and other productivity software that comes pre-installed as MS Office on notebooks and desktop computers.  Even some low-end notebooks give you Works instead of higher-octane Office.”  Not to worry.  As I also discovered at CES2009, “before you spend for the Office upgrade, at least try out the same functionality FREE, by downloading the suite of look-alike programs from www.OpenOffice.org.” Read More