Comments on: Friends & family tech support: My default setup

By: Ronni Bennett

Ronni Bennett — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 11:48:19 +0000

This set up mirrors mine almost exactly. I don’t use Picasa and I have a different virus program. I do use Thunderbird, mentioned by Kieron and my webcam is built in to my relatively new laptop – not the greatest quality, but it serves its purpose.

This is such a good list for initial set up, I’m going to feature it next week on my blog.

By: Keiron

Keiron — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 16:18:09 +0000

Thunderbird however out of the box is not the greatest – you need to add something like lightning to give it calendar type functionality before people are happy not to have Outlook!

By: Stan

Stan — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 14:58:43 +0000

Ah yes, Thunderbird! That is a fine product indeed.

Not sure why I first used Avira…I know several other family-tech-support guys that use AVG with no problems. I’m sure part of it is because that’s what I use myself, so I know what all my “clients” are experiencing. E.g. this week Avira released a new version and was prompting everyone to upgrade.

By: Keiron

Keiron — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 14:12:25 +0000

Likewise I’m the go-to guy for friends and family… Some very interesting tips there… I wasn’t aware you could reconfigure OpenOffice to save in MS formats (I’ve trained most people!) but will go around and reconfigure that.

I’m more a fan of VNC for the accessing machines remotely (because I can do it on my phone as well when they’re really desperate!!).

For Anti-virus I’ve gone down the AVG Free route for some years what makes you prefer Avira?

I’d make iTunes part of the default installation these days (even if they don’t have an iPod) so many people us it just to download radio and tv shows (particularly outside the US where Hulu and Pandora are a no-no).

PrimoPDF is another one – so they can print direct to PDF (I know Open Office can do it, but when printing from Firefox it’s easier than cutting and pasting).

Most people I know tend to already have an email account and don’t want a gmail account – so Thunderbird is the order of the day!

Hope that helps!