Computer money saving advice

A-Wing · 4 October 2006 at 8:59AM

There seems to be a lot of money saving advice with regard to computers so I though I would put in my $0.02

Many old PCs still run Windows 98 which is now very vulnerable to a multitude of different attacks, and that is without all the flaws in Internet Explorer. A lot of these machines are not really viable for an upgrade to Windows XP, and even if they were, XP is expensive and you may need to buy upgraded hardware first. One solution is to install a Linux distribution such as Ubuntu or Mandriva (a quick google search will help you find cheap legal copies of these to buy or free to download). There are also distributions available for even older hardware.

These Linux distributions will run on cheaper hardware than XP and are much more secure. There are only a few viruses written for Linux, none of which work on the current releases, and if you do get a virus all that will be at risk is your files, the operating system will be protected.

If you need to stick to Windows and need to do some wordprocessing or spreadsheets but can't afford the retail tag of MS Office then there are cheap alternatives. There is a free office suite called Open Office which can be downloaded from their website and Tesco will very soon be releasing its own office suite in its stores for around £20. Both of these are compatible with MS Office files.

Despite all the warnings about phishing scams people are still getting caught out. The Mozilla foundation are shortly to release Firefox 2.0 and Thunderbird 2.0 (Mozilla's equivelent of Outlook Express) is due for release in December. Both will have built in anti-phishing measures to help stop you getting scammed. Firefox 2.0 RC1 can be downloaded now, it is very stable, and it will automatically upgrade itself should a new release come out.

There is more advice I can give, I hope people find this of use. I can provide links for all of the above upon request.