None of these programs recommended are sponsored and I don't make any money if you buy them (but most of them are FREE and opensource programs anyway so why does it matter). And I don't care if you use or not use these programs. Use whatever you want you have free will of your computer. I just like these enough to want to refer them.

Office & Word Processing

Microsoft Office works just fine for office works such as word processing or spreadsheets. However, I personally don't subscribe to all that Microsoft 360 crap and I think whoever came up with Saas (Software as a service - meaning, instead of buying your software once, you pay for it monthly/yearly) should be locked up in an intergalatic prison.

I also don't appreciate AI telling me how to write better, because let's face it, it sucks shit. AI writing is only as good sounding as one of those instruction manuals that are poorly translated from Oriental.

So I stick to Office 2013 and older as that is the last version of MS Office without any AI tools built into it. I also think it's the last version of Office you can activate using a product key rather than linking it to your e-mail account - which is a big no-no in terms of privacy, safety, and computer literacy and stupidity.

For Mac, I use and recommend NeoOffice, which was the original Openoffice port to Mac. It's been around 2003 and it's pretty solid. It is very similar to OpenOffice and the subsequent LiberOffice, but I like NeoOffice more. It's just preference. Also, it's just better.

By the way, a very quick side note... whoever thought that the sidebar menu in Apple Pages was a good idea should also be sent to that intergalatic prison. Absolute abomination. It's bad enough we've got those stupid bloody ribbons in MS Office. Seriously we need to go back to the menubar, it's so much nicer and cleaner, doesn't take up space at all (I understand that Microsoft 360's ribbon is frickin gigantic and takes up like half of your screen). Oh, NeoOffice has actual menus you can browse through.

Click here for Neo Office (External link)

Multimedia

VLC Media player (Mac & Windows) will do all of your video files. It can play the most absurd file standards with no issue and is in my opinion one of the best program known to man. And the fact that it was kept open-source despite many ka-chings being offered is just amazing, sticking to your morals and beliefs even when money is waved relentlessly in your face is an absolutely impossible trait to find nowadays.

Click here for VLC (external link)

For viewing and light editing of photos, I like IrfanView for Windows. It is free, open-source, kind of an old program, but is still being maintained so no problem there. The controls are very intuitive and easy to use, little to no teaching (Googling) required to use the software and the menus are layed out very well.

Irfanview website (external link)

Credit where credit is due,however, Apple's built-in Preview for Mac is amazing. you can edit photos, resize them, rotate them, add pages to a PDF, add frames to a GIF, and much more. You just have to play around with it.

Also, good thing with both these programs (Irfanview and Preview) is that when you resize photos with them, they are not merely resized but are actually resampled which makes sure you don't get jagged edges and blurry faces like when you resize a photo in MS Paint.

Download Helper/Booster

I think download booster programs are great, and yes people use them for legitimate downloads as well (not just YouTube ripping) and I think it really does help speed up downloading a lot especially downloading big files whether that be big videos (lectures or conferences things like that) or big files like big programs or operating systems installers. I still like the tried and true Internet Download Manager (IDM) a program developed since god-knows-when. It's only 800 baht for a lifetime license so just buy it please. You can get boxed copies as well (well I could as recently as a few years ago).

Oh, if you're not familiar with how a program like this works, it basically "grabs" the download from your browser and does it instead of your browser. It's faster than downloading in the browser because it downloads many "streams" of the same file at the time. So instead of downloading a file from start to finish of the file, it'll split the file up into sections, sometimes 8 or 10 parts, and start downloading all parts at the same time. Much faster. Yes, it compiles it back into one file for you. Yes, the files don't corrupt. I've never had a file corrupt on me this way yet.

Graphics & Advanced Photo Editing

For more complex photo editing work as well as creating graphics, I recommend the Affinity Suite from Serif. It's close to a certain extent to Adobe Photoshop/Illustrator but without the looming feeling of big brother Adobe charging you excessively bonkers price PER YEAR for their software, then also claiming that everything you make on their programs they own and can use to train their AI. Fuck off, Adobe!

Affinity Designer / Photo one time purchase (external link)

Anti Virus

If you use a Mac you don't need an anti-virus. OS X is a closed operating system and programs don't have direct access to the core files or kernal so you're pretty much safe. Still, don't go to dodgy websites. You've been warned!

If you use a Windows I DO NOT recommend you download a "free" antivirus because nothing in this world is free my dears. Most of these "free" antivirus will either pop up their own ads so you pay for their paid version or they will snoop on your computer and send your files to their telemetry. Oh the things we give up for free shit.

Windows Defender is mostly alright if you don't hack the hell out on the internet. But if you want to spend a little money a year for antivirus (this may be the only Saas I'm alright with), then I recommend ESET NOD 32 antivirus. It's the most low key antivirus that won't eat up big resources on your computer or constantly scan everything all the time to the point where your computer is unusable (ahem Kaspersky). So yeah, I recommend ESET.

ESET antivirus available at your local computer store. If you're gonna pay for a program, at least get it in a box so you know you own it!

Also, if you are considering ESET NOD32, read here about Installing & Using ESET NOD32 without tieing in your account, in other words how to activate with the product key rather than creating (yet another!) online account.

E-mail and Browser

For email I recommend Mozilla Thunderbird. It's a great e-mail client that runs natively on Windows & Mac, rather than Webmail like Gmail or Hotmail which can just change the way shit looks or behave without telling you (which I absolutely HATE). Thunderbird will always look the same, and even if they change the interface, it will have to be through a program update. Then, just don't update! Problemo solved.

Click here for Thunderbird (external link)

I have removed the browser part because nowadays every browser tracks you and is mostly gone to shit. So pick one that you kinda like and yup... it is what it is.

Anyway that pretty much wraps this up. If I find new programs that I end up liking enough to put here, I will update this page. If not then thanks for reading and I hope you found some programs mentioned useful, or even better, if you alredy use them!

Oh and if you're wondering, I use Microsoft Notepad to code my website, so nothing fancy going on there. (the old GOOD notepad by the way, not whatever the hell they put in Windows 11 ugh)